The BBO videochat facility for virtual clubs has gone live, offering CBAI members playing under a virtual club licence the opportunity to see and talk to their partner and opponents while at the table. This is a welcome development, as it will bring some of the social features of bridge to online play. Please note that participation is optional, not compulsory, and also that BBO will be charging for use of videochat from 1 April – see below for more details.
To activate the videochat facility for a tournament, the Director needs to tick a box in the set up process, as indicated in the screenshot below.
To turn on the videochat facility as a player, click “Join” as indicated in the screenshot below.
If you subsequently wish to turn off either your camera or your microphone, or both, you can do so using the buttons indicated in the screenshot below.
As mentioned above, BBO has indicated that it intends to make an additional charge for the use of the videochat facility, commencing on 1 April – full details here. While the charge in itself is small (BB$0.03 per player per board), there are a couple of other factors to be borne in mind. Firstly, BBO has confirmed that the charge will apply to ALL players in any tournament for which the facility is activated, even if some of them choose not to use it or or cannot in fact do so – the facility only works at the moment on PCs or Macs, and cannot be used on a tablet or smartphone. And secondly, the videochat fee will be subtracted upfront from the total revenue stream, with only the remainder being shared in accordance with the agreed revenue-sharing model. So organisers will need to bear all of this, as well as player preferences, in mind before deciding whether or not to enable the videochat facility for their tournaments.
A few CBAI clubs have used the videochat option at this point, and we have received somewhat mixed reports to date. In particular, we gather that (a) incorporating the videochat facility places more strain on your broadband connection, which seems logical, and (b) that background noise can sometimes be a problem, so players using videochat are asked to please turn off any other noise sources in the room in which they are playing. We are sure that BBO will continue to work on this element of its offering, so if you have any feedback on it, please pass it on to your virtual club organiser and ask them to let us know what our members think.