More About the Bots
Some of the bridge players looking at this page may well use a bridge robot like Jack 6.11 for example for practising, or for when your playing partner isn't availabale. This section will tell you a bit more about the bridge robots mentioned on this site, and which ones are still available to buy, or are free. There are robots here that are now only used on a web based bridge server, and not available to buy any more. There are also some private robots here, which I have been lucky enough to acquire, thanks to those bridge robot authors for supporting this event. Jack 6.11 is missing the event this year, details about Jack can be found in the "More About the Bots" link on the 2023 Championships pages. Here is a bit about their history and availability below.
WBridge 5.12
WBridge 5.12 is probably the most famous of the bridge robots here. The author Yves Costel made the program freely available a while ago. Like Jack, WBridge has won the Official World Computer Bridge Championships a few times, 5 times in fact, in 2005,2007,2008, and 2016 to 2018. WBridge is still freely available. The version used at the official World Computer Bridge Championships however, is a few IMPs stronger than the 5.12 version I use here because Yves has added the Veronica Ventos Boost to his Championships version. Yves tells me that WBridge is 0.2 IMPs stronger per board with the boost, so not much. Yves is also now involved in the more recent bridge robot breakthrough relating to Neural Networking, where WBridge was tested against some of the new thinking in bridge robot programming. See the below link.
https://www.computerbridge.se/ai-and-bridge-2/
Micro Bridge 13.3
Micro Bridge has been attending the World Computer Bridge Championships dating back to the first WCBC event in 1997. Micro Bridge was runner up in 20007,2012,2013, and 2016. Micro Bridge finally won the event the last time the Official World Computer Bridge Championship was played prior to COVID in 2019. Tomio Uchida is now retired and I am guessing that there will not be any further major new updates. The link to the Micro Bridge site is still live however, and Micro Bridge is still available to buy. The 13.1 version can be updated to 13.3 from the website. See Robots Taking Part page.
Shark 2.1 2024
I have been lucky enough to acquire Shark 2.1 from the author John Vermehren-Norris, who was happy to support this event for the last two years, Thank you John. Shark 2.1 2024 is one of the private bots here. This version was compiled after the 2011 and 2014 version that was twice World Computer Bridge Champion in 2011 and2014, and was very unlucky to miss out at the Semi Final stage at my event earlier in the year.
Shark has been attending the official World Computer Bridge Championships since 2006, and as stated above, won the event in 2011 and 2014. Shark was runner up in 2008 and 2010, and reached the Semi Finals 5 times. Shark is no longer available on CD commercially, but the 1.8 version of the robot is now used on the SharkBridgeCompany server for online play. See Robots Taking Part page.
Q-Plus 15.7
This is a new and latest version of Q-Plus for this year. As I understand it this version is a free update for any legitimate owner of the 15.3 version. Q-Plus was also at the 1st Official World Computer Bridge Championships from 1997 and was Runner Up in 1997, and again in 1998,2000, and 2011. Q-Plus quite often makes it to the Semi-Finals of the official World Computer Bridge Championships. Q-Plus is the current champion of the Unofficial Computer Bridge Championships, and is still commercialy available. The global outlets are listed on the Q-Plus official website. for details see the Robots Taking Part page.
GIB 6.2.0
GIB is another one of the bridge robots that was at the Official World Computer Bridge Championships right from the start in 1997 finishing 5th in 1997, but came back and won the event in 1998 and 2000. GIB finished 4th out of 7 robots in 2002, but has not appeared at the Official World Computer Bridge Championships since then. GIB is no longer commercially available, but is now used as the in house robot for Bridge Base Online. See Bridge Robot Authors links for 2023. I will be operating for GIB in 2024, as GIB now has Table Manager capability, which is available from the GitHub Repository. This original 6.2.0 GIB version pre-dates the BBO versions, but has been modified and strengthened for 2024. GIB 6.2.0 finished 5th out of 8 at my 2023 event, earlier in the year. GIB is still quite strong for it's age, so still very playable at events like this. Matt Ginsberg, the author has now moved on to other projects.
Meadowlark 4.2
Meadowlark has been to the Official World Computer Bridge Championships a few times, and won one of the two events in the Millennium year in 2000. The Millennium year was interesting as It was the only year where the World Computer Bridge Championships was held twice. This was because the World Bridge Federation Olympiad, and the Bermuda Bowl were held in the same year. The ACBL tournament organiser decided to have a World Computer Bridge Championships at both events. Rod Ludwig had re-written Meadowlark for the 2023 event, and an updated version of Meadowlark 4.2 is again taking part in this years event. Meadowlark is another of the private bots at this event and not commercially available. Meadowlark is however the in house robot for the TrickyBridge site https://www.trickybridge.com/ so is available for online play. Rod is happy to be contacted at the email address on the Robots Taking Part page, about Meadowlark.
Ben 0.2 11.25
Ben is a newcomer to my competitions, and is one of the first bridge robots based on Neural Networking technology to take part at this type of event. Ben is an open source program with instructions available on the GitHub repository. The original version and work was created by Lorand Dali, but this version has since been modified for my competition by Thorvald Aagaard and Eamon Galligan. Ben has already had a fine result in tests against the already established GIB 6.2.0, and showed up well in tests against Q-Plus 15.7 and WBridge 5.12. Although not successful. It is early days for Ben at this stage, and we are looking forward to see how he gets on.