Simply updating based on current NGS rankings resulted in the loss of 7% of the mapped players which seems too many to have died or dropped their EBU membership over a four month period. Something else is probably going on, perhaps members are allowed to hide their NGS ranking. Now use last three snapshots of the NGS rankings, pulling from older data when more current rankings are not available.
These boards are not stored by BBO and therefore not available from BBO My Hands. BBO Helper now saves these boards locally and offers export functionality via the new Bidding/
Note: If you press the Redeal button without completing the auction at a Bidding table or without completing the card play or making a claim at a Teaching table, the board is not recorded, just as it does not show up in the BBO History Pane. If you complete the auction at a Bidding table and roll it back with Undo, the exported output will contain the same board twice with the separate completed auctions. This mimics the duplication in the BBO History Pane, which is either a bug or a feature depending on your point of view. (Sometimes it is nice to record the multiple ways your partnership might bid a board depending on close decisions.)
Requested by Thorvald Aagaard and Vincent Milner, and strongly desired by the developer who often uses Bidding tables.
This is now possible because Firefox finally implemented the full Clipboard API in 2024. If you are using an old version of Firefox, e.g. an Extended Service Release (ESR) on Windows 7, the behavior will remain as before.
Auto Alert improvements:
There is a new Balancing seat defense to 1NT section. When the “Same as direct defense” box is checked, the text boxes for the balancing seat defense will be inactive (“greyed out”) and not apply. Uncheck the box and add descriptions. Even if a suit simply shows that suit, it is beneficial to indicate this because pairs have many different agreements.
If you play a version of Drury not well described by “1-way” meaning 2♣; shows 3+ card support or “2-way” meaning 2♣; shows 3 card support and 2♦ shows 4 card support, leave it as “No” and alert it manually.
There is considerable variation here with Bergen, Weak, Mini-Splinters, Fit Jumps, and additional treatments all having adherents. Since treatments will often be different for passed hands (e.g. Bergen is off), these Auto Alerts only apply to unpassed hands.
Support Doubles no longer needed to be alerted in ACBL events but full disclosure is encouraged, and easy with this option. Only the basic scenarios of 1x (P) 1♥/1♠ (1♠/1NT/2♣/2♦/2♥/Dbl) Dbl/Rdbl are covered. If you play Support Doubles through a higher level, after 1♣ (P) 1♦, or in logically extended cases like 1♣ (Dbl) 1♥ (1♠) Dbl, you’ll need to manually explain these.
This functionality, not available until 2025(!), offers a Save As dialog with a suggested filename whereupon the user can modify the filename and/or change the folder where the file is saved. If you are using an older version of Firefox or Chrome which does not support showSaveFilePicker, the old behaviour of automatically saving a file with a fixed name to the user’s Downloads folder will remain.
This addresses essentially the same issue fixed by the demangling of alerts starting in BBO 1.4.12. Around January 2026, BBO started adding non ASCII Unicode characters to tournament names, e.g. ✨ (“Sparkles”). With this fix, names like “ð¥ Promo â¶ACBL Sun 6PM…” and “…Prime Time ⨠Gold ⨠Pairs” will properly appear as “🔥 Promo ▶ACBL Sun 6PM…” and “…Prime Time ✨ Gold ✨ Pairs” respectively.
This is in addition to existing asterisk replacement for the cs_login message. This change is necessitated by changes BBO made to the client software around May 2024. This plugs a potential security issue, though very few users would have been affected because traffic logging is an advanced feature mainly used for troubleshooting.
{handviewer d=e&v=e&b=6&s=sJT5hK9874dT8c642&w=sAK8hQT65dAQ9cQT9 &n=s63hAdKJ76532cAK7 &e=sQ9742hJ32d4cJ853 &sn=harveywall &wn=pkopala &nn=airglow &en=RSSTAR &a=PP1NX(One suited hand) 2H(Spades) P2S3DPP3SPPP &p=CAC3C6C9 HAH2H4H5 CKC5C4CT C7C8C2CQ SAS3S2S5 SKS6S4ST S8D2SQSJ CJH7D9D3HJ}
You may remove player names by deleting the text that starts with &sn=, &wn=, &nn=, or &en respectively, remove or truncate the auction by modifying the text that starts with &a=, or remove or truncate the play by modifying the text that starts with &p=. Within the auction, explanations are provided in parentheses after a call. You may change the final call to a question mark to pose a question in the displayed auction box.
This broke due to BBO application changes when BBO implemented Bridge Experience Points (BXP) in May 2025.
Now have 1886 BBO stars and all Royal Awards: 140, 69, and 25, and 1 players respectively the for J, Q, K, and A letter badges. The remaining 15 players in the top 250 ranks are BBO stars which can now be confirmed via the “Lifetime leaders” list of BXP Leaderboard which BBO added in May. Updated BBO Royal Awards as of Nov 21, 2025 to reflect rank changes and players who have lost their Royal Award.
Gaining rank: Q → K: kampioen31, luckyloser; J → Q: capycino, carmela36, fikri, gerbs5, peteracol, shark65, rbg; new Q: gill; new J: 0 41 ustad, ashdown4, clhun, danrai, emanuelec, galileo60, heiab, maciek 57, marekw, matcauthon, napp0, oldbridge2, rcm515, rockfort, scorpio67, stelios_t, sukip, tasis, tefski1, tiiduke, vladi_13, willemm, xx man. Losing rank: K → Q: adyapb, xbl__1963; Q → J: ani123, ketch up d, savedirish, sundaze, supli; No longer a royal: black man, ceres948, cooleyesee, dagks, enxie, hansen50, kirkeby, marjorieo, nycp, simada.
Fixed display of player names and field strength for tournament results.
This broke on or around February 17th when BBO made changes to the tournament results display, replacing text based BBO handles with elements (CSS class clickable-username) containing the BBO handle. Clicking the player’s handle displays a popup with information similar to clicking on a player handle in the BBO application either at a playing table or in the People pane.
The automatic login functionality that BBO added at the end of May 2024 sometimes resulted in a race condition where BBO Helper did not intercept the BBO WebSocket traffic. In this case BBO Helper would not know a board was complete (all 52 card played, accepted claim, pass out, etc) and not see the message with the full board, and therefore not query the double dummy solver (BSOL). Likewise the play of cards would be missed and so no timing information would be observed. Now intercept BBO traffic as early as possible (specifically via "run_at": "document_start" in the extension manifest).
This was also related to the BBO automatic login. A new MutationObserver was sometimes needed to watch for changes in the board number in the History pane.
Support double dummy display for Challenges and other event formats that use the BBO REST API provided at bboardapi.
This is an approach BBO has been taking for at least a couple years, probably in part as a matter of scalability. The main websocket based approach is handled by a single server (actually two, painfully split out as competitive and social play during the peak of the COVID-19 related demand), whereas the REST API can easily be handled simultaneously by many servers. Requested by Thorvald Aagaard and several other users.
Note: Record of timing information is not yet supported for event formats that use the REST API.
Cleanup: Par is now recalculated for cached results if the vulnerability does not match the vulnerability assumed for the cached par result stored with the double dummy result.
The odds of this being an issue accidentally are astronomical. However, if one replays boards whose board numbers get shifted somehow, the par could be wrong prior to this fix.
Cleanup: BBO Helper now demangles alerts made in languages which do not use the Latin-1 character set, e.g. Chinese, Russian, and Arabic, correcting a flaw in the BBO software. For example an alert of 警报 normally appears in the standalone handviewer as the cryptic è¦æŠ¥ when clicking the Movie link in BBO My Hands. BBO Helper now fixes this issue in most places, including the History pane of the BBO application, the standalone handviewer, the Alt+H copy-and-paste functionality, Session HTML, as well as LIN and PBN files created by BBO Helper. Note: technically the fix violates the PBN standard which requires the character set to be strict ASCII rather than full Unicode; however the mangled crap also violated the PBN standard.
I think an improper database column is the source of this issue. In the Amazon RDS database (basically MySQL) where BBO stuffs the LIN text, they appear to use a Latin-1 column instead of a proper type like utf8mb4_unicode_ci which supports the full Unicode set. Remarkably it is possible to demangle this mistake though I was starting to have doubts that it was possible. BBO Helper 1.3.1 addressed the special case of demangling the suit symbols when they were explicitly used in an alert instead of inserted via !c, !d, !h, or !s. The new demangling procedure is general.
This issue has bugged me for a long time. A fix was also requested by a user whose e-mail I accidentally deleted. Please contact me if this was you and I'll list your name.
Updated BBO Royal Awards to reflect a few rank changes and players who have lost their Royal Award. Now have 118, 66, and 25, and 1 players respectively the for J, Q, K, and A letter badges (84% of the 250 total Royal Awards).
Gaining rank: J → Q: 100567, ppvv123, super1963. Losing rank: K → Q: bmtred, kampioen31; Q → J: birdie1486, tiger bait, youpie68. No longer a royal: darlo, defcon0, fmbob, kalem, rjbrown1, taurus514, windy21, all now 92–97.
For additional information about this release see the BBO Helper 1.4.12 announcement on Bridge Winners.
Added ability to download a session of boards in LIN format. The new button appears between the and (Session) buttons. Note: the Download PBN button text has been shortened to PBN to fit the new LIN button. Requested by Tom Trotter.
LIN files may be imported into your Deal Archive in BBO via Accounts (pane) → Deal archive (tab) → + (button) to create a new folder → click on new folder → Import LIN (blue button at bottom).
Sometime shortly after the BBO Helper 1.4.9 release, between BBO versions 6.14.5 and 6.17.2, BBO made a small change to the user interface that broke the name tooltip functionality due to a race condition. Note that BBO now logs the user in at bridgebase.com/
When the new option Append [B++] to all auto alerts in the BBO application options section of the full settings is selected, [B++] will be appended to all auto alerts. Flagged alerts will be indicated in the board copy-and-paste aid and Session HTML by B++. If you launch BSOL, flagged alerts will appear as (B++), owing to BSOL swallowing up the straight brackets. Note: alert dialog substitutions such as “hsgt” → “Help suit game try” are not flagged because for substitutions the player almost certainly deliberately intended the alert.
Also see the BBO Helper 1.4.6 (important update) announcement on Bridge Winners.
Player database improvements. Added 4,000 players from various sources.
Added 400 players from the BBO Royals & Masters Tournaments. These are strong and/or frequent BBO players. Now have 1, 26, 62, and 122 players recorded for the A, K, Q, and J Royal Awards respectively, i.e. 84% of the 250 total Royal Awards.
This may be nearly all the Royal Awards. Many of the remaining 39 players who would qualify for a Royal Award could also be BBO stars in which case BBO displays only the ★ badge. For example, there was no A for years because Leo Lasota was also a BBO star until Silviu Lovescu (usla) became the top BBO point holder in May 2023. Similarly Samuel Marks (sammarks) was a Q in 2022 before being awarded a BBO star.
Improvements for English Bridge Union (EBU) events and players.
Real Name improvements.
The Real Names functionality is augmented by over 4,100 BBO handles that were not previously mapped to names using automated procedures. This includes 1,130 (probably most) BBO stars (★ badge), many regular high rankers in ACBL events, and many players with a lot of BBO points (typically 7 or higher badge). About 1,800 of the players are from outside the ACBL, notably Great Britain / England, Israel, Türkiye, Poland, Italy, Norway and India. This closes a request by Adam Wildavsky to have his handle and several other players added, but goes significantly beyond the original request.
Because most of the added players are strong players, the field strength for ACBL events will usually be higher than before.
Improved localization.
The board copy-and-paste aid (Alt+H) now uses language specific honor cards letters (e.g. E, K, D, and B for the ace, king, queen, and jack in Danish), compass directions, notrump designation (e.g. UT in Danish, SA in French and Italian), and for pass, double, and redouble (if not using the P, X, XX short calls) when invoked from within the BBO application. This does not apply to standalone handviewer because BBO itself does not support localization in the handviewer.
If you want to use the English designations instead of your language, perhaps to reach a wider audience, you may uncheck the new user preference Use local language for board display rather than English in the BBO application options section of the full settings.
Cleanup: code improvements and simplifications
See also BBO Helper 1.4 on Bridge Winners.
Added ability to download an HTML file containing all boards from the session using the new HTML button next to the existing Download PBN button in BBO My Hands.
The initial output HTML conforms to user preferences for copying boards as HTML, for example those under the Full Board Copy display section of the full settings, but many options may be adjusted via a set of checkboxes on the generated HTML without the need to regenerate the page.
Individual boards copied as HTML have always inlined the CSS styling to maximize the preservation of the formatting when pasted into a target document. By contrast the boards in the Session HTML are largely formatted by CSS classes, enabling the aforesaid checkbox functionality and allowing easy style changes to the output by those familiar with CSS.
Session HTML boards include the raw score (e.g. +1430), the score (MP percentage or IMPS), and a link to the traveller.
The new preference Always include double dummy table in session HTML determines whether the double dummy table is included in the session HTML only when the double dummy result is cached (fastest download) or always included. If you played or observed a board, the double dummy result will be cached. If you are pulling someone else’s boards, the double dummy query will require about one second per board.
John Goacher’s Bridge Solver Online (BSOL) is now invoked using the lin URL parameter. This means that the player names, auction, contract, and card play are now passed to BSOL allowing you to replay the hand as it was actually played, similar but faster than replaying the hand in the BBO History window. However, unlike the BBO double dummy review, you are not locked into this line of play and may also choose a different contract played by a different seat.
The names passed in lin parameter adhere to the application setting chosen for Include player handles / seat names. Use: pulldown. You may chose “Compass Direction” to protect the guilty. This change causes a minor update to the Privacy Policy.
Reworked logic for saving timing information and displaying the double dummy table.
Cleanup: Auction clock display is now turned off after the auction is completed at a Bidding table. Previously it remained on screen, seemingly misaligned in the lower right corner, because BBO resizes the auction box at the end of the auction at a Bidding table.
See also BBO Helper 1.3 on Bridge Winners.
Cleanup: Improve auto-alert default descriptions to make some meanings clearer in keeping with the principle that the name of a convention is not an explanation. Specific changes:
“Jacoby 2NT” → “4+ card supp, GF, no shortness (Jacoby)“
“Splinter” → “0 or 1 !c with 4+ card supp (splinter)” (4♣︎ case)
Contact me if you would like to provide a translation for a language.
See also BBO Helper: Now for Google Chrome announcement on Bridge Winners.
Initial release.
See also the BBO Helper: A web browser add-on announcement on Bridge Winners.