ACBL Virtual Game Guest Player Policy (Revised)

ACBL has eased up on some of the restrictions on having people from outside our club play in our Virtual Club Games.

New guidance from ACBL:

The rules for visiting Virtual Clubs on Bridge Base Online (BBO) have relaxed, letting you play more online bridge than ever. Previously, to join a Virtual Club you needed to have played face-to-face bridge at that club in the last year. Now you can play as a visitor!

If you used to play face-to-face bridge at that club but moved – you can play! If your partner is a regular at the club – you can join them! Some rules do apply. Virtual Clubs are limited to a certain percentage of visitors each week, and club managers still control who may access the Virtual Club.

Here’s how you can be a visitor:

From the BBO home screen, click on “Competitive.” At this point there are several options. One is “ACBL Virtual Clubs.” If you go there, you will only see games that you are able to play in as a non-visitor. In other words, these are clubs where we have a record of you playing in face-to-face over the last ~18 months.

If you wish to see other clubs, instead of going to “ACBL Virtual Clubs,” go to “All Tournaments.” This will produce a very long list.

To narrow that list down, you can type the name of a specific club into the search box at the top of the screen. Alternatively, if you wish to see all Virtual Club games, type “vacb” in the search box, and it will show you all Virtual Club games that are open for registration.

The club director of the Virtual Club you wish to attend will need to “follow” you in order for you to be able to register for their game. Quite often the club will put instructions for this in the “Details” tab. You can also send them a private message by clicking on the VACB number that is in the “Host” column in the list of tournaments