Terms of Service

Last updated: October 16, 2026

1. Who we are and agreeing to these Terms

BridgeBidder.com ("BridgeBidder", "we", "us") is operated by Dennis G. Douglas, a sole proprietor in Bend, Oregon, USA, doing business under the registered assumed business name BridgeBidder (Oregon registry number 264114290).

These Terms of Service ("Terms") apply to anyone who visits BridgeBidder.com or uses its practice service (the "Service"). Our Privacy Policy is part of these Terms.

When you create an account or buy hands, we will ask you to tick a box confirming that you have read and accept these Terms and the Privacy Policy. By ticking that box, or by using the Service, you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

2. Who can use BridgeBidder

• Adults. You may use the Service if you are at least 18 years old, or the age of majority where you live if that is higher.
• Players aged 13 to 17. Younger players are welcome with a parent's or guardian's permission. The parent or guardian must agree to these Terms, makes any purchases, and is responsible for the young player's use of the Service.
• Under 13. The Service is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If we learn that a child under 13 has given us personal information, we will delete it and close the account.
• Where you live. The Service is available worldwide, except where U.S. sanctions or export laws prohibit it. You confirm that you are not located in a country subject to U.S. embargo and are not on any U.S. government list of prohibited or restricted parties. If you use the Service from outside the United States, you are responsible for following your local laws.

3. The service

BridgeBidder is a practice tool for contract bridge bidding. You choose the conventions to practice; an automated tutor deals hands, bids for your partner and the opponents, judges your calls and explains its reasoning. After each auction it shows all four hands and an estimate of how many tricks the contract takes.

The tutor is artificial intelligence. Its explanations are written by an AI language model (Claude, made by Anthropic). It follows rules written for BridgeBidder, but it can make mistakes in its explanations, its judgment of a call, the hands it deals or a trick count. Its output is for practice only. It is not an authoritative ruling, and you remain responsible for your own decisions and results at the table.

Teaching standards. The tutor teaches common methods (Standard American and 2/1 Game Force, with ACOL offered). Partnerships and teachers differ; your own partnership agreements take precedence at the table.

Not affiliated. BridgeBidder is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), Anthropic or any bridge organization. Names of other organizations appear for identification only. Practice on BridgeBidder does not earn masterpoints.

New features. We may offer new or trial features, labelled as such. They are provided as they are and may change or be withdrawn at any time.

4. Your account and access key

• When you buy hands you receive a personal access key. It is for one person. Keep it private and take reasonable care of it; anyone with your key can use your hands.
• Tell us promptly at support@bridgebidder.com if you think your key has been shared or stolen. We may ask you to confirm your identity, and we can then replace the key and move your remaining hands to the new one. To prevent abuse, we may limit how often keys are replaced.
• To protect you and the Service, we may disable or reissue a key that we believe has been compromised.
• You are responsible for activity under your key until you tell us it has been compromised.
• Keep the email address on your account current; it is how we contact you (section 20).

5. Free hands, packs and payment

• Free hands. New players may receive a small number of free practice hands, one free allowance per person. We may change or end the free offer at any time, and we may refuse free hands where we see abuse, such as repeated sign-ups.
• Packs. Hands are sold in packs. The pack sizes and prices are shown on the website before you buy. A hand is used when it is dealt to you.
• Hands never expire. Hands you have bought stay in your account until you use them.
• Payment. Payments are processed by Stripe. You authorize us, through Stripe, to charge your chosen payment method for each purchase and any taxes due. Prices are in U.S. dollars; sales tax, VAT or similar taxes are added at checkout where the law requires. We do not receive or store your full card number. Stripe handles your payment details under its own privacy policy.
• Payment problems. We may suspend an access key if a payment is reversed, charged back or appears fraudulent, until the matter is resolved.
• Price changes. We may change prices for future purchases. We will post new prices on the website before they take effect. A change never affects packs you have already bought.

6. Refunds and restored hands

• Refunds. You may ask for a refund of a pack's unused hands within 30 days of buying it. Email support@bridgebidder.com from your account's email address with your order number. Hands already dealt are not refunded. Refunds go back to the original payment method.
• Restored hands. If the Service fails to deliver a hand you paid for (for example, the tutor stops partway through an auction), email us within 7 days with your order number or access key, and we will restore that hand.
• Outages. Because hands never expire, you do not lose hands when the Service is unavailable.
• Your legal rights. These refund terms are in addition to any refund or cancellation rights you have under consumer laws that cannot be waived.

7. Fair use

You agree not to:

• share, sell or publish your access key, or let others use it;
• resell packs, hands, accounts or access to the Service;
• create accounts automatically or in bulk, or use bots or other automated tools to play hands;
• copy, scrape or bulk-download the Service's content;
• reverse engineer, decompile or try to extract the source code, prompts or rules behind the Service, or try to get the tutor to reveal its instructions;
• try to get the tutor to do things unrelated to bridge practice, or to produce harmful, offensive or unlawful content;
• upload malicious code, interfere with the website, probe or test its security, or overload it;
• use the Service, or its content, to build a competing product or to train an AI model;
• use the Service for anything unlawful, or in a way that infringes anyone else's rights.

The tutor answers questions about bridge bidding and the conventions you practice. It declines other topics.

We may investigate suspected breaches of these Terms, and we may keep or disclose records where the law requires it or where needed to protect the Service and its users.

8. No help during live play

You may not use, or try to use, the Service during any game, tournament or online session that is in progress, whether in person or online. If we reasonably believe an account has been used this way, we may suspend or close it, and its remaining hands may be forfeited without refund (see section 14).

9. Content and ownership

• Our content. We and our licensors own the Service and everything in it, including the website, its design, the convention reference pages, the tutor's rules and the BridgeBidder name. Subject to these Terms, we give you a limited, personal, non-transferable licence to use the Service for your own non-commercial practice.
• Your practice sessions. As between you and us, the hands, auctions and explanations produced in your sessions are yours to use for your own study. You may print them, keep them and share them with your partner, teacher or club for non-commercial teaching. Because the explanations are written by an AI model, your rights in them are also subject to any limits in our AI provider's terms.
• Conventions and our descriptions. Bridge conventions themselves (Stayman, Jacoby Transfers and so on) belong to no one. Our reference pages describe them in our own words, and those descriptions, their arrangement and our other original material are protected; you may not copy or distribute them except as these Terms allow.
• Permission to run the Service. You give us a worldwide, royalty-free permission to store and process your session records in order to provide the Service, keep your history, fix problems and improve the Service, as described in the Privacy Policy.
• Feedback. If you send us suggestions or feedback, we may use them freely, without owing you anything.

10. Copyright complaints

If you believe something on BridgeBidder infringes your copyright, email support@bridgebidder.com with: your name and contact details; a description of the work you believe is infringed; where the material appears on our site; a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorized; and a statement that your notice is accurate. We will review it and remove material where appropriate.

11. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect, why, who processes it on our behalf (including Anthropic for the tutor and Stripe for payments), how long we keep it and your rights. It is part of these Terms. In short: we keep what we need to run your practice sessions, we do not sell your information, and we do not use it for advertising. Please do not type personal or sensitive information into the tutor; it only needs your bids and bridge questions.

12. Other companies' services and links

The Service relies on other companies, including our web host, Anthropic and Stripe. Their own terms apply to the parts of the Service they provide, and we are not responsible for their acts or failures. We may change providers at any time. The website may also link to other bridge sites and resources; we do not control or endorse them and are not responsible for their content or practices.

13. Availability and changes to the service

We aim to keep BridgeBidder running at all times but cannot promise it will be. It depends on outside services and may be down for maintenance or outages. We may improve, change or retire features, including the conventions offered.

If we ever close the Service, we will give at least 30 days' notice by email and refund all unused hands, however long ago they were bought.

14. Suspension and closing accounts

• You can stop using BridgeBidder at any time. You may ask us to delete your account and session records; we will do so within 30 days, except for records the law requires us to keep (such as purchase records for tax purposes).
• We may suspend or close an access key that is shared, resold, used during live play or otherwise used in breach of these Terms. Where reasonable, we will email you first and give you a chance to explain or put things right. We may act without notice where needed to stop fraud, abuse or a security threat.
• Your hands. If we close a key because of a serious breach of sections 7 or 8, its remaining hands may be forfeited. If we close a key for any other reason, we will refund its unused hands.
• When an account is closed, your licence to use the Service ends.

15. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent the law allows, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. We do not promise that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that the tutor's explanations, judgments, deals or trick counts will be correct or suited to your partnership.

16. Limit of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

• we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, such as lost results at the table, lost data or lost time; and
• our total liability for all claims arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the greater of US $50 or the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

These limits do not apply to liability for fraud, wilful misconduct, or death or personal injury caused by negligence, or to any other liability that cannot be limited by law.

17. If you misuse the service

If you use the Service unlawfully or infringe someone else's rights through your use of it, and a third party makes a claim against us as a result, you agree to reimburse our reasonable costs of that claim, to the extent your conduct caused it.

18. Disputes, arbitration and class-action waiver

Talk to us first. Most problems can be settled quickly. Before starting any claim, you or we must send the other a written description of the problem (to support@bridgebidder.com, or to the email address on your account) and try in good faith to resolve it for 30 days.

Arbitration. If we cannot resolve it, any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be settled by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before a single arbitrator. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this agreement to arbitrate. Fees are paid as those Rules provide; for consumers, that means we pay most of the arbitration costs. Hearings will be held by video or phone, or on written submissions, unless the arbitrator decides otherwise; any in-person hearing will be held in the county where you live or in Deschutes County, Oregon, as you choose.

Small claims. Either of us may instead bring an individual claim in small claims court where you live or in Deschutes County, Oregon, if it qualifies.

No class actions. Claims may be brought only individually, not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective or representative proceeding, and the arbitrator may not combine claims of different people. If this waiver is found unenforceable for a particular claim, that claim (and only that claim) will be decided in court, as described below.

No jury. Because disputes are decided by an arbitrator, you and we each give up the right to a jury trial.

Opting out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing support@bridgebidder.com within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, with the subject "Arbitration opt-out" and your name and account email. Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms.

Courts and governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Oregon, USA, apart from its conflict-of-law rules, and by the Federal Arbitration Act. Any claim not subject to arbitration will be heard in the state or federal courts located in Oregon, unless the law where you live gives you the right to sue at home.

Players outside the United States. Nothing in this section removes rights you have under the mandatory consumer laws of the country where you live, including any right to bring a claim in your local courts.

19. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. The date at the top of this page shows when they last changed. For material changes, we will email account holders at least 30 days before the change takes effect. If you do not accept a change, you may stop using the Service before it takes effect and ask for a refund of all your unused hands. If you keep using the Service after the effective date, the updated Terms apply to you. Changes never apply to a dispute already notified under section 18.

20. Notices

We will send notices to the email address on your account, and a notice counts as given when we send it. You can send notices to us at support@bridgebidder.com.

21. General

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service. If they conflict, these Terms control.
• Severability. If any part of these Terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a term straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.
• Transfer. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms. We may transfer ours as part of a sale or reorganization of the business, and the Terms will continue to protect you.
• Events beyond our control. We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control, such as outages at our providers, internet or power failures, or natural disasters.
• Survival. Sections 9, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 21, and any refund owed to you, continue to apply after your account is closed.
• Headings and language. Headings are for convenience only. If these Terms are translated, the English version controls.

22. Contact

Questions, refunds, restored hands and anything else: support@bridgebidder.com. We aim to reply within 2 business days.

To report a security problem, email the same address with "Security" in the subject line, and please give us a reasonable chance to fix it before telling anyone else.

BridgeBidder · Dennis G. Douglas · Bend, Oregon, USA