Help is organized in the following sections.
Bridge is a challenging four-player game. The rules are available on many web sites and books. One web site we recommend is wikipedia.
Bridge bidding is one of the most challenging parts of the game. If your team does not end up in the right contract after the bidding, excellent play will not help you.
There are many bridge conventions and bidding methods. NeuralPlay Bridge supports the following bidding systems.
Conventions of the bidding system can be customized. For example, you may choose to play with Roman Key Card Blackwood or play without Michaels Cuebids.
There are many helpful books and websites. Here are a few of the books we have found helpful.
And here are a few of the websites we have found helpful.
Bidding explanations are provided. During the bidding or bidding review, touch a bid to view an explanation.
One of the most popular methods for bidding is Standard American Yellow Card (SAYC). SAYC is a natural five-card majors system with a strong one notrump opening (15-17 hcp). NeuralPlay Bridge supports most of the SAYC conventions. Supported conventions include:
ACOL is a natural four-card major system with a weak one notrump opening (12-14 hcp). Supported conventions include:
The Mostly Natural system may be desirable for beginners or players who wish to bid naturally without many conventions. It is a five-card major system with strong two bids. Blackwood and Gerber are used for ace asking; Stayman is used after notrump openings; and takeout doubles are used after opening bids. Many of the the SAYC conventions are not applied.
When defending, your computer partner will attempt to give standard count (high even, low odd) and attitude (high encouraging, low discouraging) signals. Attitude signals are given when partner is leading or discarding. Count signals are given when declarer or dummy is leading.
At this time, the defensive signals are for your use only. The computer players will not consider signals during play. The east and west computer players will not give signals. The computer declarer will not consider signals during play.
In settings, you may choose to use upside-down signals instead of the standard signals. You may also turn off signals or enable the signals for the east and west players.
The computer follows a standard opening lead strategy. The strategy is based on the ideas outlined in this article.
NeuralPlay Bridge offers many features to help you learn and improve your play. These features may be enabled, disabled, and/or adjusted in settings. The features include the following.
NeuralPlay computer players offer six levels of play. Play at level 1 is fast and will be ok for beginners. Play at level 3 should be fun for most players. Play at level 6 will be the most challenging.
The AI bots employ different AI methods depending on the level. Level 1 uses a rule-based AI. The AI consists of rules such as: "In 3rd seat, do not trump partner's high card" and "In 4th seat, play just high enough to take it when an opponent is winning", etc.
Levels 2+ use Monte Carlo Simulation and Double Dummy Analysis to determine the best play. Basically, the AI will deal out the unknown cards randomly. The AI will then try each legal play and play the deal to the end to get a result. This is repeated for many deals of the unknown cards. The average result for each legal play is computed and the legal play with the best average result is chosen.
Levels 2+ differ in how many times the unknown cards are dealt out. In general, the more deals the more accurate the simulation. This results in better quality plays. The trade-off is that more deals take more time, play may be slower on level 6 than level 4 depending on the device.
Since levels 2+ do not use rules, you may observe either surprisingly good plays or odd mistakes that may seem not to follow any logical rules. We also find the randomness makes the computer feel a bit more human-like and fun.
We are continuing to research improvements and new computer AI algorithms. We will continue to update the bots as we develop improved algorithms.
NeuralPlay Bridge offers many useful settings to customize your play and practice. We'll highlight a few here.
In addition to the default hand characteristic deals settings (like south hands balanced 15-17 hcp deals, etc.), you may specify the types of deals you want to play with custom hand characteristics. You specify the type of hand you would like dealt to each direction: north, south, east, and west.
The format to describe a hand has two parts: hcp and distribution.
An example is.The hcp part shows the number of hcp: 12 indicates exactly 12 hcp; 12- indicates 12 or fewer hcp; 12+ indicates 12 or more hcp; and 12-14 indicates 12 to 14 hcp.
The second part shows the distribution in suit order: clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades. 5431 requires exactly 5 clubs, 4 diamonds, 3 hearts, and 1 spade. If there is a '*' attached to the end the distribution then the requirement is not suit specific. 5431* indicates any 5431 hand. A ':' can be used to indicate 'or': 4333*:5332* requires the hand has either 4333* or 5332* distribution. A ',' may be used to include and separate ranges. 7-9,x,x,x* indicates a hand with a 7 to 9 card suit. For simpler distributions like xxxx, 2245, etc. the ',' is not needed and optional; "x,x,x,x" is the same as "xxxx". However, when ranges use the '-' or '+' the ',' will be required. For example, to specify a distribution with 6+ hearts use "x,x,6+,x".
The dealing algorithm is best effort. It deals many random hands and checks to see if a deal matches the criteria (currently >10000 hands). When one is found that matches the criteria it is used. If no deal is found then a random non-matching deal will be used.
Examples:| 12+ 5xxx | 12+ hcp and 5 clubs |
| 13-15 5xxx* | 13-15 hcp and a 5 card suit |
| 15-17 3334*:5332*:3244* | 15-17 hcp and a balanced distribution |
| 13- x,x,4-,4- | 13 of fewer hcp and 4 or fewer hearts and 4 or fewer spades |
After you have set up custom hand characteristics, set the "Hand characteristics" setting to "Custom" and start a new game to enable your settings.
The hand over display is shown at the end of the hand. The score display depends on the type of game you are playing.
In addition to your result, you may optionally see the results of another table ("If AI played" result) or the double dummy result.
For rubber bridge, by default, an AI result is not shown. In settings, you have the option to show an AI result.
You may review the play of the hand with Play Review or perform further analysis with Double Dummy Analysis (available as a menu item).
Play review allows you to step through your play, view the double dummy analysis of the hand, and compare your play to the optimal double dummy play.
Here are some of the options available on the play review menu.
While viewing the play review, a double dummy solution with the lead from the play is calculated in the background. When the result is ready it will be shown.
Double dummy analysis shows how many tricks can be made with perfect play and complete knowledge of the deal.
Tap on a card to step through the double dummy play of the hand. The green and yellow tags on the cards indicate how many tricks the team will take with perfect play if the card is played. Tap on the green tags to follow a line of play that maximizes tricks taken or explore other lines of play.
Compare the play with the optimal double dummy play. At the start of the hand and while in line with the play at your table, the card played at your table will be raised.
You may jump directly to your first non-optimal play or step through all non-optimal plays. See Menu - Optimal Play Difference. Optimal Play Difference compares the play to optimal double dummy play for this deal. A difference is shown by raising the card that you played. The other tags indicate how more tricks could have taken on this particular deal. Note that this is optimal dummy play for this particular deal. For other deals, the best play may differ. The non-optimal play for this particular deal may be the best play in general.
The hcp of each hand is shown on the bottom right. The display will look like the following.
| 6 | ||
| 11 | 7 | |
| 16 |
The 6 at the top indicates that north has 6 hcp; the 7 on the right show that east has 7 hcp; etc.
On the top left, the table of the makeable number of tricks for each declarer and suit combination is shown for the deal. See Settings - Double Dummy Analysis to adjust this to show the makeable contracts or to disable this feature. In most cases, the calculation is quick, however, depending on the device and the deal the calculation may take a while. When the calculation is finished, the result will be displayed. The display will look similar to the following when displaying the makeable number of tricks.
| ♧ | ♢ | ♡ | ♤ | NT | |
| N | 11 | 6 | 11 | 7 | 7 |
| S | 11 | 6 | 11 | 7 | 7 |
| E | 2 | 8 | 2 | 6 | 5 |
| W | 2 | 7 | 2 | 5 | 4 |
| Par: 5♡ NS | |||||
| Pts: 450, Vul: None | |||||
And the following when displaying the makeable contracts.
| ♧ | ♢ | ♡ | ♤ | NT | |
| N | 5 | - | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| S | 5 | - | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| E | - | 2 | - | - | - |
| W | - | 1 | - | - | - |
| Par: 5♡ NS | |||||
| Pts: 450, Vul: None | |||||
This table shows that 5♡ can be made when played by either north or south. East can make 2♢. But if west plays, only 1♢ can be made. The '-' indicates that not even a one level contract can be made in that suit by that declarer.
The par contract, "Par: 5♡", indicates that 5♡ is the contract such that neither side can improve their score by bidding further. The score for the par contract is 450 points. The score is always shown from the north/south perspective. If the par contract were 5♡ by east making, the score would have been shown as -450 points.
In some cases, the par contract will be a sacrifice. For example, perhaps east can make 4♡, but north can bid 5♢ and go down only 2, when not vulnerable. In this case, the par contract will be 5♢ by north down 2. The par contract may also be "passed out" in the case when no one can make a contract. There are more complex and rare cases where multiple players, possibly on different teams, can make the same bid. When this occurs, only one of the possible par contracts will be shown.
You may view and play deals from PBN files. Play a single deal or play all the deals from the file. From the Main Screen, see the PBN option to open a file on your device. You may also open PBN files and launch NeuralPlay Bridge directly from most email programs and file management programs.
Go to the main screen and choose Menu -> Reset. This will reset all settings back to the original defaults.
See Settings -> Hand Sorting. You can change the rank order, suit order, and choose to alternate red and black suits.
For comparison to your play, you may choose to show either the "Double Dummy" or the "If AI Played" result at the end of the hand. For the "If AI played", the AI will play the same contract as you. For the "Double Dummy" result, the AI will analyze the fully exposed deal to see how many tricks can be made with perfect play. Note that the "If AI played" result will not be shown for the duplicate teams type (the Table 2 result will be similar). See settings to adjust.
While playing a hand or at the end of the hand you may use Menu -> Share Hand to send the hand via email or other methods available on your device. The bidding and play of the hand will be saved in the PBN format. You may email the PBN file to a friend to ask for bidding or play advice. You may also email the PBN file to yourself to view later.
Yes. Your friend will be able to view the shared hand with a web browser. However, to play the shared hand NeuralPlay Bridge must be installed on a supported device.
No, the AI does not cheat. A simplified explanation of how the AI works is given here. Information from both the bidding and the play is applied to guess a possible layout of all the cards. With this layout, our double dummy solver is applied to find the best play. This process is repeated for many different layouts of the cards. The card that came up the most as the best play is chosen as the card to play. The AI is able to estimate a good play without peeking at the actual distribution of the cards in the deal.
On the higher AI levels, the AI searches many possible layouts of the cards for a good play. The time required depends on the device's CPU.
Claim means you will take the remaining tricks. When your hand is clearly high, you may claim the remaining tricks to speed up play. If the claim is successful (the AI will check), you will receive the remaining tricks and the hand will end.
Please contact us at support@neuralplay.com.