Jack World Champion Computer Bridge 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006!!!
$59.95		(Win95/98/Me/XP/Vista) (DVD Case) (JACKBRIDPR) Version 4.0
$29.95		(Win95/98/Me/XP/Vista) (DVD Case) (JACKBRU3PR) Update from Jack 3.0-3.01 to Jack 4.0 (Requires Jack 3.0-3.01 to work)
$39.95		(Win95/98/Me/XP/Vista) (DVD Case) (JACKBRUPR) Update from Jack 2.0-2.04 to Jack 4.0 (Requires Jack 2.0-2.04 to work)
$19.95		(Win95/98/Me/XP/Vista) (Jewel Case) (JACKBR02PJ) Add-on with 1749 Tournament Deals (mainly from 2002). Some are annotated and quite educational.

Publisher: Kuijf & Kuijf Software

Game / Card

The Best Bridge Program In The World

World Champion Computer Bridge 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006!

Jack is a computer bridge program developed by bridge players for bridge players. One of the developers is former world champion Berry Westra (Bermuda Bowl, Chile 1993). Jack uses state of the art computer algorithms and is the current world champion of computer bridge. Jack's possibilities exceed those of all other bridge playing programs. Besides its exceptional bidding and playing strength, Jack offers a very user friendly interface with many interesting features.

User Friendly Interface:

• Play with all cards visible, take back cards or restart a deal at any time.
• English cards. At higher screen resolutions the cards automatically become sharper and prettier.
• Interactive help with many examples.
• Former World Champion Berry Westra announces bids and cards.

Bidding and Play:

• Over 30 play levels with special features enabling you to reduce Jack's playing strength. Special Menton 2003 setting.
• Create your own convention cards using over 65 conventions. Many built in convention cards like Standard American Yellow Card, Dutch Acol, 2/1 GF and Jack's own convention card. Of course convention cards for novices are available as well.

Special Features:

Play bridge over a local network or over the internet with up to four players.

Tournament environment with practical functions.

Create your own tournaments, duplicate, imps and imp pairs.

Complete support of the PBN standard, used to exchange data on the internet.

Extensive printing capabilities.

Fastest double dummy solver in the world.

Complete control over the generated deals using a deal profile.

Determine the par score of a deal.

List of Changes for Jack 2 update to Jack 4.0

Completely rewritten bidding and playing engine, used at the World Championship Computer Bridge in New York 2004. More options to control Jack's bidding and play and his thinking time. Jack 3.0 is considerably stronger than Jack 2.

New method of scoring when playing random deals: Compensation scoring (also known as Russian Scoring). The stronger side gets penalty points depending on their combined HCP strength. Penalties are user adjustable.

New convention cards. Amongst others: Bridge World Standard, Jack New York (the exact card that was used in New York 2004) and Moscito: a strong club system developed by the Australian international Paul Marston. Please refer to www.jackbridge.com/moscito/moscito.htm for a brief summary.

New bidding conventions. Amongst others: Variable 1NT, additional defences against 1NT, Puppet Stayman after 1NT. Many other bidding additions as well, e.g. you can specify the style of overcalling you would like Jack to use and it is possible to count an extra trump when using RKC Blackwood.

Fit points. After discovering a fit it is good practise to re-evaluate your hand. Jack does this by using fit points. It is based on Berry Westra's teaching methods of adding and subtracting points in fit situation. You will quickly learn to correctly re-evaluate your hand in fit situations. The fit points are entirely user adjustable.

Deal annotations. You can add comments to a deal (and store them). Printing is possible but you can also redirect the output to HTML. This is the internet file format and allows you to directly bring the information online, look at it in your favorite browser, email it to your partner or edit it with a word processor.

Deal profile. The powerful deal profile in Jack 2.0 is made even more flexible. By adding distributions, combined values for North and South, and playing tricks it is possible to specify almost any situation. Export to PBN has been improved.

PBN file maintenance. It is possible to copy deals from one PBN to another and delete deals from a PBN.

Creating tournaments. Almost any PBN can be converted to a tournament in Jack 3.0. The tournament environment has a new file format and it can easily support hundreds of tournament sessions.

Printing. Deals can be printed directly to the printer or exported to HTML files. You can specify in detail what to print (diagram, auction, play, footnotes, alerts, annotations)

Fun and games. A completely new and interactive environment. You will find interesting and amusing facts, teaching material and puzzles like Double Dummy problems. A lot of content available already.

Search for updates. From inside Jack you can search for updates and install them directly. No need for visiting the website and look whether there is new material.

Tournaments. All tournaments available in Jack 2.0 and on our website have been converted to the new format. All the Computer Bridge finals have been added.

New set of Playing cards. New and very nice German cards provided by Carta Mundi, the well-known playing cards manufactor.

Lots of changes that enhance the current options, like replaying a deal in four different ways but also: deals from a PBN can be used for network play.

Requirements:

Windows 95/98/Me/XP/Vista: 32 MB memory and at least 40 MB free on your hard disk. A CD-rom drive is mandatory. The processor speed is very important. Even though Jack will run on any Pentium system we advice at least 200 Mhz. To exploit Jack's full potential you need a 700 Mhz system or faster.

Reviews:

JACK RECAPTURES WORLD TITLE - June 22, 2006

Of the seven teams that vied for the 2006 Computer Bridge World Championship in Verona, Italy, June 17th through June 22nd, four emerged from the qualifying round-robin (six 28-board matches. The Dutch program Jack, seeking to regain the crown he had lost to the French program Wbridge5 in 2005 after winning the previous four championships, won all six of his round-robin matches and led the field by a wide victory-point margin. The final standings in the Round Robin: 1. Jack (Netherlands) 124 VP 2. Micro Bridge (Japan) 104 VP 3. WBridge5 (France) 102 VP 4. Q-Plus Bridge (Germany) 99 VP 5. Bridge Baron (USA) 82 VP 6. Blue Chip Bridge (England) 66 VP 7. Shark Bridge (Denmark) 52 VP In one 64-board semi-final match, Jack annihilated Q-Plus Bridge, 239 IMPs to only 41. In the other semi-final, Micro Bridge edged defending champion Wbridge5, 141 IMPs to 133. Both programs had improved substantially from last year, but the highly enterprising style of Wbridge did not succeed against the newly-aggressive Micro Bridge, which had switched from last year's four-card major system to five-card majors. So as in Toronto, Canada, five years ago, Jack faced Micro Bridge in the 64-board final. Jack had won easily enough in 2001, but in Verona he dominated Micro Bridge completely, winning 217 IMPs to 54.

ACBL Bulletin Sunday July 18, 2004

Jack Wins Computer Title

Jack (the Netherlands) retained its title of world computer bridge champion, defeating last year’s finalist, Bridge Baron (USA), 157-97 in the 64- board final. Hans Kuijf’s robot Jack, winner of the last four annual championships, is on top of the computer bridge world.

PRESS RELEASE - JACK RETAINS TITLE ONCE MORE

At the world computer bridge championships in New York City, the Dutch program Jack once again defended his title successfully. After winning in Toronto (2001), Montreal (2002) and Menton (2003), Jack was crowned world champion for the fourth time. There can be no doubt that the brainchild of Hans Kuijf is the strongest computer bridge player in the world.

The 'Jack Team' consists of Hans Kuijf, Wim Heemskerk, Martin Pattenier and former Bermuda Bowl-winner Berry Westra. After Jack won last year, they worked very hard to improve Jack even further, making the most progress in the bidding. That turned out to be necessary, as rival programs improved also. Almost all the programs use simulations and try to plan ahead. However, this championship proved that Jack still has an edge over its competitors. Defense is undoubtedly the weakest point of Jack's game. If he can improve on that he will be very hard to beat in the coming years. More information about Jack can be found at the website http://www.jackbridge.com

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