EPISODE 37: Bill, David, & Doug Hsieh
We continue our popular series of “The Youngest Life Master” with long-ago former record holders Bill and Dough Hsieh, along with their older brother and inspiration David Hsieh. In this episode, they taught me just how much our game has changed. From the abolition of smoking at the table to masterpoint inflation, and to the resurgence of youth bridge, bridge has evolved. However, one thing continues to be the same: its power of leaving happy memories that survive over the span of decades.
Episode Highlights:
1:50- Be the once in a blue moon and pronounce their last name with “C”
4:05- How the Hsieh brothers got started on bridge
7:00- Imagine being interviewed by the local newspaper for every tournament you go to
7:55- 6-year-old-Doug’s opponents thought Doug was a joke and refused to play
10:20- The masterpoints inflation is real
11:05- Bill’s dad was the original engine behind his pursuit for the record
13:24- An unlucky split costed Doug beating the record by an additional 10 months
14:44- Bridge can consume you
15:48- The past versus the current state of youth bridge
18:50- The Hsieh brothers’ current exposure with bridge
22:40- David’s favorite partner
25:15- It was inevitable that Doug will beat Bill’s record
26:50- Ron is a great role model!
30:35- The Hsieh brothers’ influential mother
33:05- Back when everybody smoked at the bridge table
36:00- People still remember stories from Midnight Swisses that happened 40 years ago
40:15- Bridge opens up connections in the work place
Transcript:
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, this is intimidating. I have the famous Hsieh Brothers. How do you say your last name?
DOUG HSIEH: “C.”
DAVID HSIEH: “C,” like “ABC.” Like the letter.
BILL HSIEH: “C.”
DAVID HSIEH: Like “ABC,” yep.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Really?
DAVID HSIEH: Yep.
BILL HSIEH: Non-phonetic.
JOHN MCALLISTER: I was never gonna get that. [Laughter]
BILL HSIEH: No, no way.
DAVID HSIEH: Nobody ever gets that right.
DOUG HSIEH: If you had gotten that, you would have been –
DAVID HSIEH: Once in a blue moon.
DOUG HSIEH: In the 0.01 [inaudible].
JOHN MCALLISTER: These guys don’t even play bridge anymore. I’m not sure why we’re having them on, but they’re palpable. They are committed to the technology and making sure – their appearances. We’ve had all sorts of exciting chatter. Anyway, welcome, and it’s great to have you on, David, Bill, and Doug. Hi – “C”. Doug “C.”
DOUG HSIEH: Yes, there you go.
BILL HSIEH: Actually, the interesting thing, now that we’re older folks – bridge has actually become very popular. So, my wife plays. She’s got all her friends playing. I mean, it’s actually become quite a social thing. And, of course – because it’s actually a talent is now worth something. All those years when you were a teenager in college and everyone looked at you sideways – now, all of a sudden, it’s actually got a little bit of social path to be a bridge player. Who knew.
BILL HSIEH: That might be sad, actually.
DAVID HSIEH: It probably is sad. That means we’re old.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, do you play it with your wife, then, Bill?
DOUG HSIEH: Occasionally, yeah.
BILL HSIEH: I do. I play a little bit for fun, and I do – I help people, teach a little, or do little things for our annual auction event. They threw an event for a bunch of years where they gave me tips, from what I remember.
DOUG HSIEH: I played in the fall nationals with you.
BILL HSIEH: Yeah, we all did. We played in the nationals. We played a little bit once every couple of years.
DOUG HSIEH: When it was in San Francisco.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Oh, so you guys did play in the fall nationals of 2019?
DOUG HSIEH: I think it was 2018, actually. It was San Francisco, so – what year was that?
BILL HSIEH: It was – I played with my aunt, who was [inaudible] years old. And actually, she passed away like a month later, or a couple months – yeah, a month later.
DAVID HSIEH: Yeah.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Well, the origin of this [inaudible] – Doug – well, first Bill and then Doug, both Hsieh record for Life Master. And David also earned the title of Life Master at a young age of 16. So, let’s talk about – Bill, you became the youngest Life Master. Was that something that you intended, going for that?
BILL HSIEH: We were definitely going for it, yeah. My parents got divorced when we were maybe – 9 or 10 years – when I was 9 or 10 years old. Dave was 12, and Doug was six. And then, my father decided to go back and play bridge. Serious bridge, not social bridge. And so, David – I’ll give David – David is the one who got us all started because my dad had a – he was playing a club game, and he brought Dave along, and there was a tournament – Dave, why don’t you finish that story.
DAVID HSIEH: So, yeah, no, I was hanging out with my dad at 11 years old or something. And one day, they were short a player. And I knew how to play, but not seriously. But one day, they said, “We’re short a player. Do you know how to play?” They were sort of desperate. So, I’m like, “Sure.” And I think that sort of opened up my dad’s eyes, and he said, “I’m going to teach you to play.” And so, we played and then, of course, older brother, younger brother, younger-younger brother – yeah, you gotta follow. So, that got Bill started, and then that got Doug started. And all of a sudden, we were a bridge-playing foursome.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Doug, we haven’t heard from you yet – the classic youngest brother. What’s your memory of all this?
DOUG HSIEH: Playing. And I wanted to do whatever they wanted to do. So, I would go over to my dad’s house and honeymoon bridge, so the two of us would just play. And then, eventually, very early on, we were playing honeymoon bridge, and I side. I was so amazed that I could even do that. We’re going to go play in a club game and see how we do. And so, that was how it started for me.
BILL HSIEH: And that’s when he learned that psyching doesn’t always work. [Laughter]
DAVID HSIEH: The very first thing that Doug had to learn, though, was how to hold his cards. Now, you think, “Well, that’s not that hard.” But when you’re six, you have really small hands. And so, holding a hand is actually not that easy.
JOHN MCALLISTER: It makes total sense that your parents getting divorced – that that ended up being the catalyst that got your dad to teach you all bridge.
DAVID HSIEH: Yeah, that was the catalyst.
BILL HSIEH: My dad was kind of an outside-of-the-box thinker, and at that point in time, there really weren’t kids playing. There was – well, there was a few that had played before us. And so, we thought, “Maybe we could really do this.” And so, he started, like he was apt to do, to take it kind of seriously and really try to teach us how to play the right way. And so, we’ve had a lot of exposure to a lot of his good thinking and others and learned how to play well.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Were you guys – or was your dad good friends with Alan Truscott? Because in researching you all, you guys got a lot of the New York Times bridge columns, I thought. It seemed like maybe there was a friendship there.
BILL HSIEH: Yeah, no, they weren’t – it was a small community. Yeah, I wouldn’t say they were good friends.
DAVID HSIEH: They had a really big PR firm we hired.
BILL HSIEH: Yeah, exactly.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
DOUG HSIEH: Actually, in a lot of ways, it was the reverse. We started playing, and especially when we were playing, there was immediately a lot of attention. The club and the ACBL, they all wanted to publicize it as a form of PR. And I was – I think all three of us were pretty shy. I didn’t really love that, to be honest with you. But they kept on – they kept pushing us to do more and more PR. And by the time I was getting close – because Billy had broken the record already – every tournament I went to, I was interviewed by the local newspaper. I was on television. And it was a real – it was really overwhelming for me.
DAVID HSIEH: So, the two things, you made me think about it. Right? Poor Alan Truscott had to write a column every single day. Like, imagine if you had to do a podcast every single day. After a while, you start really running out of ideas. So, I think that was part of it.
JOHN MCALLISTER: How old were you when you played your first club game, Doug?
DOUG HSIEH: My first club game, I had just turned six.
DAVID HSIEH: He was six.
DOUG HSIEH: I just had turned six, and actually, my first club game, I sat down. In the first round, the people – the couple that we played looked and said, “This is a joke, right? You’re pulling a practical joke on me.” And we kept on saying, “No, it’s not a practical joke.” And they almost didn’t play against us. And then –
BILL HSIEH: I hope you beat them.
DOUG HSIEH: We sat down against a very, very elderly woman. And she looked at my father and said, “This is a joke, right?” And he said, “No, this is not a joke.” And she said, “Listen, I’ve been playing bridge 50 years, and I didn’t get this far so I could lose to somebody who can barely see over the surface of the table.” And she refused to play against me. And we called the director, and the director was like, “OK, we’ll just give them 2-0.” And you know, you can just imagine – I was six. I was like, “What is going on?” I was like, “Man, they won’t play with me.” It was like, you go to the playground, and the kids won’t play with you.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, your dad – he was the one who took you to the club for the first time?
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah. And then, that –
BILL HSIEH: I’m taking credit. I taught him how to play, though.
DOUG HSIEH: That’s true. My brother, Bill, is the one who actually taught me to play.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, your dad started it. And then, was there a snowball effect?
DAVID HSIEH: We weren’t playing a lot in the early days. We’d just play at the club once in a while, and then, my dad started to go to sectional tournaments and regional tournaments. He had other partners, et cetera. But after a while, I think he figured out that, oh, we could all play. So then, we started to play as a family, and it just sort of went from there. And then, he sort of got the bug, and then we started to travel and sort of get really into it.
BILL HSIEH: Yeah, but he actually had an active bridge career outside of us. I mean, we were doing school and doing other stuff. And so, for us, it was a weekend, or we would go on trips to do it. But we weren’t playing every day, by any means, because we had tons of other stuff we were doing.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Would you play at home as a foursome? Like it went to that?
DAVID HSIEH: [Laughter] No, never.
BILL HSIEH: Never.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Really?
BILL HSIEH: I mean, maybe early on. Very early on. But after that, only at the club, really.
JOHN MCALLISTER: And when did you start getting masterpoints?
BILL HSIEH: I made it when I was probably – I was a Junior Master when I was nine, I think. And Doug was probably six. Six or seven.
DAVID HSIEH: I remember playing in a club game maybe a couple of months after I started playing. I think I finished like, fourth, and I got 0.07 masterpoints. And I was super psyched. [Laughter]
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, what was winning – like, 0.03 or something?
DAVID HSIEH: Yeah, I don’t know. [Laughter] Something like that.
JOHN MCALLISTER: And so, David, did you go for youngest Life Master and just miss it by a wide mark, or –
DAVID HSIEH: No, no. I mean, I got – you know, I think actually, I ended up being like, fourth or fifth youngest Life Master. So that’s like, a double-asterisk. By the time I really got going, it was way too late. We just started playing and then, I think we realized that Bill could really make it. And so, that’s sort of what really got things going.
JOHN MCALLISTER: How long do you think you’d been playing when you heard about the title of youngest Life Master, Bill?
BILL HSIEH: Oh, I mean, we probably knew about it when I was about 11 or 12. Probably 11. And my dad was that kind of a thinker. Once he got it in his head, he’s like, “Oh, we can do this. And these kids are going to play, and they can do this.” For him, it was a little bit of an experiment because, of course, the idea of the kid playing bridge, and there were a few people that had done it before, but a very small number. And he really thought that it was possible.
And so, it was a little bit of an experiment, from his perspective. He thought it was possible. He thought it would be really good training and really good education for us, and kind of an interesting challenge. And so, once he got it that it was possible, we all bought in, and that was it. And we went for it pretty hard at that point.
JOHN MCALLISTER: How much did it ramp up once you had that as a goal?
BILL HSIEH: Well, you know – look, during the schoolyear, you could only play so much. Right? I mean, we were all doing the school thing. It was pretty intense schooling. But all summer, we would play. We would go from one end of the summer to the other. And then, you could kind of see that if we did it the right way, we could make it.
JOHN MCALLISTER: And what was the lineup?
DAVID HSIEH: [Laughter]
BILL HSIEH: Good question. I guess David and I – I don’t know. Actually, David and I played a lot together. And then, at the end, I guess – I think it was more Dave and – I actually don’t know. Was it you and me and Doug and Dad, I guess?
DAVID HSIEH: By the time that Doug was old enough, he had already been playing with all these guys for a few years. So, he didn’t need sort of quite the jumpstart, if you will. He was more raised into it.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Were you jealous when Doug beat your record, Bill?
BILL HSIEH: No, not at all. We didn’t hold it all that tightly. And then, I think in fact, it became really a family goal. We wanted him to beat it by as much as possible to make the record as hard to beat as possible. And at the time, he was almost two years younger than me. He didn’t just beat it by a little, he beat it by a lot. And we knew he was going to do it. It was no question. It was obvious very early that I had – my record was not going to stand for very long.
It’s an interesting thing when you do anything from the time you’re that little. It really does become a part of your brain. We were doing it from such a young age. And you dream in bridge. All of it becomes just part of your whole psyche.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, and actually, I was in Iowa when I was nine, and there was a slam that we ended up with a 4-0 break, with the jack-fours offside. And if that hadn’t happened, we would have won that event, and I would have been a Life Master at nine.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Wow.
DOUG HSIEH: So, I think I took 18 months off the record when I did it. And it would have taken – I would have added like, another 10 months or something.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Because you needed, like – that was that many points? Or you needed the gold points, or –
DOUG HSIEH: I think I needed the gold points. I think that’s what it was, although I had a lot of gold points. I think it was just – in those days, it was very hard to accumulate lots of points. To be a Life Master, it took 300 points. And I won an event in Kentucky, and I think I got 28 masterpoints. And the field was like – I don’t know how big it was, but it was like, 16 or 17 sections with a few hundred tables.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Your recollection of bridge history from six and nine years old is pretty remarkable.
BILL HSIEH: [Laughter]
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That is the thing that I did, though. I mean, you know, Billy’s recollection is that we went to school. But I almost didn’t graduate from fifth grade, I took so much time off playing bridge.
BILL HSIEH: [Laughter]
DAVID HSIEH: Yeah, he was really serious. I was just a hacker.
DOUG HSIEH: [Laughter]
JOHN MCALLISTER: That’s the thing. I made this documentary movie, which is how this podcast got started. And it’s like that’s the other side of bridge that you can’t tell people about. It’s actually just going to throw everything in your life out the window because you’re going to become consumed by it.
BILL HSIEH: Yep.
JOHN MCALLISTER: And so, that’s like, the dark underbelly. Maybe that’s why Doug’s son has all these chess trophies. Chess is much more accepted.
[Brothers all laugh]
JOHN MCALLISTER: Sorry the listeners can’t see us, but I can – we’re on a video here, and Doug is in his son’s room, which has got chess trophies out the wazoo. And we were lamenting that Doug’s son is playing chess and not bridge.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, I don’t know how that happened. I couldn’t get him to play bridge.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Did you try?
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, but he wanted his own path. Like, he didn’t want to live – you know. And it’s true, I think – even now, when I go and play in tournaments, or I play – you know, first of all, I make everyone feel really old. They remember. Then they’re, by definition, really old. And number two is, I don’t know, I think there was a group of people who play bridge, and I sort of represented what was possible that they thought was impossible.
So, it was an interesting moment. It’s not like today, where there are a lot of youth players. There’s a whole youth program. I didn’t see a person that was even in the same range of age until after I became the Life Master. So, I never – I remember there was this one time that we played in Philadelphia, and we played against another family. And the daughter was my age and then, I think they had two brothers. Their two brothers played against my two brothers, and her dad played against me and my dad. And I think we beat them like, 64 to 3?
DAVID HSIEH: I was going to say, I think we kind of destroyed them.
BILL HSIEH: And then –
DAVID HSIEH: And then, they moved –
DOUG HSIEH: And I never saw them again. And I remember saying to my dad, “Gosh, I really feel bad that we did that.” And he was like, “I don’t feel bad in the least.”
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter] That’s actually encouraging because the story goes that bridge is dying, and it’s so old. But really, we have a lot – it sounds like we have a lot more young people playing today than we ever have, if that’s the case for you in tournaments.
DAVID HSIEH: Yeah.
BILL HSIEH: Actually, there’s a gal out in the Bay Area that we – Zuckerberg. And she’s got this whole youth movement, and there’s lots of young players. And actually, she went – I knew her when she was a high schooler. And there’s a bunch of kids who learned to play bridge that I would play with. And they got hooked into it, and some of them ended up becoming professionals. And I always say I’ve ruined some of their lives, I’m sure. But Debbie was part of that crew, and she actually now has a whole youth movement out here on the West Coast that’s been very successful. So, kudos to her.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah, you’re talking about Silicon Valley Youth Bridge. Yeah, they’re the model.
BILL HSIEH: Born in New York City. She was a New Yorker that made her way down here.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, what was the – so, Bill is the person that I’ve been communicating and setting up this interview. What was the email threads like amongst you guys, David? Because originally, I didn’t want to interview David. I didn’t even know about David.
[Laughter]
JOHN MCALLISTER: Because I was calling, you know, the names in lights.
DAVID HSIEH: That’s okay. I kept saying there’s, like – Bill’s the youngest Life Master and partner. And then, there’s Doug Hsieh, youngest Life Master and partner. So, I’m “and partner.”
BILL HSIEH: You’re used to a little bit. But he’s the whole reason we got started, so we have to give him some props.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN MCALLISTER: One of my questions was, do you play amongst yourselves anymore?
DOUG HSIEH: Definitely not.
DAVID HSIEH: When we’re on vacay –
DOUG HSIEH: No, we don’t play.
DAVID HSIEH: No, no, when we’re on vacation as a family.
DOUG HSIEH: That’s true, that’s true.
DAVID HSIEH: Mostly because Bill’s wife really likes to play. And so, I’ll bring a deck of cards, and she’ll be like, “Okay, we’ve got to play.” And so, yeah, we’ll sit down. But you know, it’s cutthroat because it’s three brothers. And we don’t care about the score. We just want to beat the other one. [Laughter]
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, how do you – do you cut for partners? How do you choose partners in this situation?
DOUG HSIEH: Actually, we usually – don’t we usually let Amy decide?
DAVID HSIEH: Yeah, usually Amy picks her partner, and then –
BILL HSIEH: And for some reason, it’s not me. I don’t know why that is.
DAVID HSIEH: [Laughter]
DOUG HSIEH: It’s never Bill.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Who do you think’s the best? Who do you think’s the best out of the three of you?
BILL HSIEH: We’re all supposed to say at the same time, “Definitely me.”
[Laughter]
BILL HSIEH: Doug had a subsequent – once I started working, I really stopped playing. But Doug actually continued to play a bit afterwards, and actually took a year off and basically played professionally. So, he actually had a little time where he actually played more seriously as a career for a little bit.
DOUG HSIEH: And I still play rubber bridge for money, so.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Where do you do that?
DOUG HSIEH: Well, I used to belong to the Regency [Wisk] Club. And then, there were some clubs here in New York, and they have like, one table. And then, I just go and join the game and just get into it. Like, for pocket money. Playing for mad money.
JOHN MCALLISTER: It’s funny because it said you preferred rubber bridge in one of the Alan Truscott articles from like, 30 or 40 years ago. [Laughter] It’s funny that that’s still your thing.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, I enjoy rubber bridge. There’s much less commitment, and I find it a lot more challenging having random partners.
BILL HSIEH: The rewards are better. [Laughter]
DOUG HSIEH: And the rewards are better, yeah.
DAVID HSIEH: Actually, the truth is, you pick three of us, we all had somewhat different playing styles. So, “best” could be different depending on which thing you’re talking about.
BILL HSIEH: It’s a great window into somebody’s mind to how they play bridge.
DAVID HSIEH: Exactly.
DOUG HSIEH: Absolutely.
BILL HSIEH: David’s a marketing guy and marketing executive kind of by training, and he plays as a marketing guy, as you think he would. Kind of very creative.
DOUG HSIEH: Creativity is at the forefront of it all.
JOHN MCALLISTER: What’s an example of his creativity?
DOUG HSIEH: Well, the last time I played with David, I was just trying to make sure we didn’t end up in a 4-2 fit. That was my main.
[Laughter]
BILL HSIEH: When we were young, we would play with – we were all a little wild, you know? I mean, we’re young kids. We’re all in experimentation mode all the time. And so, we did a lot. We all declare pretty well. And so, we just would – and we also learned from some people that – guys like Ron, who were amazing matchpoint players and very much masters of the psychology of how you take from the players that are there and then feed their mistakes. You know? And so, that was a big part of how we played. And so, we would go through these periods where we were a little out on the edge. We’d play a little bit on the edge. But David more so than the rest of us.
[Laughter]
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
DAVID HSIEH: Our dad was like – he was a very rigid thinker. He definitely was foresighted. But when you had a system, he was very, very into the system, you know? And for a while, we played these super complicated bidding systems, and all these conventions, and everything else. And I hated that, actually. So –
BILL HSIEH: So, David’s favorite partner of all time is?
DAVID HSIEH: My favorite partner of all time was Ira Ruben. His nickname was “The Beast.” And Ira loved to play four-card majors, which would just screw people up all the time. It was like a whole different system. And I loved doing that because it sort of appealed to me that we were playing in a way that nobody else played. They couldn’t figure it out. Everything they knew sort of went out of the window. You’d have these sort of bidding things, and you’d figure out that they missed a slam in the suit that you opened in because you were short, and they didn’t know that’s the way you were playing. And you’d see all these kind of fun things.
BILL HSIEH: Yeah. He was also kind of natural. I mean, in those four-card majors, natural bidding wasn’t adorned with all kinds of stuff. And of course, Ira was one of the all-time great card players, so he had a lot of success with a [inaudible].
JOHN MCALLISTER: No, I know the name. How do you think it – how did it first happen where it’s like, Bill said to David, or David said to Bill, I’m guessing, and not Doug, “Let’s go to the club and play, the two of us.” Do you remember how that happened?
BILL HSIEH: [Laughter] It’s a really good question. I think the honest truth is, my dad was involved in all that. I mean, we were kids. How did we know? Yeah, my dad was – he had a vision. And so, he was very – he would organize things. One of my kids is a golfer, and he played golf in college. But we did this whole junior circuit, and it’s very much like that. The parents kind of have to organize the whole thing. It’s too complicated for a kid, you know? I mean, we just had no clue. We were just like, go where we were told and play where we’re told. And so, my dad was definitely –
DAVID HSIEH: He was a planner, for sure.
DOUG HSIEH: Mm-hmm.
BILL HSIEH: And he was a big planner. He was very good at it.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, what was the custody agreement that your parents had? Was there any sort of – you had to spend certain nights at each other’s house, or was it just sort of –
DAVID HSIEH: We were in the city. So, you know, it was pretty flexible.
BILL HSIEH: Yeah. But mostly, we lived with my mom, and we would spend weekends with my dad.
JOHN MCALLISTER: And would you go to the club on weekends, or would you go weeknights, or –
BILL HSIEH: We’re a little more of a rarity just because of school.
DAVID HSIEH: Although in the summer, we would go all the time.
BILL HSIEH: All the time, yeah. During the summers, it was just we would go from tournament to tournament.
DOUG HSIEH: And by the time Bill was going towards youngest Life Master, in the summers, we were traveling a lot, and we were going to local tournaments in Pennsylvania, Connecticut – all over the place.
BILL HSIEH: Then, we started to go all over the country.
DOUG HSIEH: And then, we started going all over the country, yeah.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, you were kind of an afterthought in that, Doug? You didn’t really think about the fact that you would – I mean, when did –
DOUG HSIEH: No.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Were you being groomed?
DOUG HSIEH: No. It was discussed from the day I sat down. As soon as Bill was going for the Life Master, we had already been –
BILL HSIEH: It was inevitable.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah.
BILL HSIEH: It was inevitable. It wasn’t a question. It was inevitable.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, yeah.
BILL HSIEH: And it wasn’t just a question of whether he would beat my record. It was by how many years. There was no question it was going to happen.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, yeah. And so, I already had a lot of points. I mean, I was already getting close. I was getting closer and closer by the time Bill broke his record. I don’t think there was a question, at that point.
DAVID HSIEH: And Doug was coming to all the tournaments with us.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah.
DAVID HSIEH: So, he was playing.
JOHN MCALLISTER: How would you describe your dad’s playing – bridge-playing career or record? Was he a Grand Life Master, or did he win any NABCs?
DAVID HSIEH: He didn’t win an NABC. I mean, he was a Life Master, and he kind of prioritized us kids. I mean, he liked playing, but once Bill was going to go for Life Master, that was the priority. And then, when Doug was going for Life Master, that was the priority. We were all just going to help make it happen.
DOUG HSIEH: I think he was a very good technical player who had three sons who were his partners. And we were not that great, especially at the beginning. And so, he really sacrificed his bridge career. I don’t think there’s any doubt that he would have won a national championship if he had focused on his own game instead of ours.
JOHN MCALLISTER: If he had spent a weekend on an island with John Mulligan and not with Bill?
[Brothers laugh]
DOUG HSIEH: You heard about that story.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah, that was a new – you got cut off.
DOUG HSIEH: Actually, that week that we spent – was it a week, Bill, or two weeks that we lived with –
BILL HSIEH: Oh my gosh, yes.
DOUG HSIEH: With Ron and Bunny Haas? Oh my gosh.
[Laughter]
BILL HSIEH: Yeah.
DOUG HSIEH: I’m surprised we survived that. That was like – that was holding us truant.
BILL HSIEH: Yes. I don’t know if you knew Ron at all, but he was a very colorful guy.
[Laughter]
BILL HSIEH: You can imagine him – and you know, it’s not like he had kids, or whatever. He was a three-pack-a-day smoker or something. I mean, he was, you know. And he had – anyway. So, my dad sent us out to go. I can’t remember what the circumstances were.
DAVID HSIEH: It was between tournaments. And instead of going home –
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, right. We were going to go – we lived with him.
BILL HSIEH: That’s right.
DOUG HSIEH: But the thing was – he had, like, congestive heart failure. And so, he was basically bedridden for half the time. But then, the other half of the time, he felt like, okay, well, I gotta make up for it by doing things that I don’t think any parent would be very proud of.
[Laughter]
DOUG HSIEH: Including that time – I’ll never forget, we went to the supermarket. And Ron goes down the cereal aisle, and he just starts randomly opening boxes of cereal and eating a little bit of the cereal, and then putting it back. And I remember going to the grocery store with my mom and thinking, who the heck goes and eats – opens a box of cereal at the grocery store and then puts it back? Well, it turns out it’s Ron. So, that’s what he was like.
BILL HSIEH: Oh, gosh. Yeah, yeah.
JOHN MCALLISTER: How old were you when you spent this two weeks at Ron’s house?
BILL HSIEH: Probably nine or ten.
DAVID HSIEH: I think I was nine or ten, yeah. And we came back, and it was like, oh, you’re never staying with Ron ever again.
BILL HSIEH: And we loved Ron. He was –
DAVID HSIEH: We loved Ron.
BILL HSIEH: A great person. But he did teach us a few little things that probably little kids shouldn’t see.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter] Whose idea – do you remember whose idea originally it was to – like, your dad said – were you involved in the decision? Or your dad just said, “You guys are going to spend two weeks –”
BILL HSIEH: No, we were just like – with Ron, yeah. I remember him, like parking illegally, and he said, “Here, watch this.” And then, he got out of the car, and he started limping like he was handicapped.
[Laughter]
BILL HSIEH: I’m like, whoa, okay, [inaudible].
[Laughter]
DAVID HSIEH: That’s right. That was part of that trip, yeah. That was so funny, yeah.
BILL HSIEH: Yeah, and we all learned how to swear pretty well with him, too, so.
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter] What did your mother think of your accounting these stories to her?
DOUG HSIEH: Oh, she didn’t know anything.
BILL HSIEH: We didn’t tell her anything. Are you kidding?
DAVID HSIEH: Yeah, we wouldn’t tell her anything. She didn’t know about any of that.
DOUG HSIEH: No way.
DAVID HSIEH: Yeah, that would have not – that would have made things harder for everybody.
JOHN MCALLISTER: But your mom did play bridge. She was actually playing a hand when Bill was being –
DAVID HSIEH: Oh, man. Somebody really did their research.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Well, it’s in the thing.
BILL HSIEH: Oh.
JOHN MCALLISTER: This is where I show off the research that I did.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, that was me the day after I became a Life Master. I played with my mom.
DAVID HSIEH: No, but mom was an influential player. And actually, the reason my dad gave it up originally was mom wasn’t very good, and it was like – it was a cause of marital strife. So, they would play it at friends’ houses for parties and stuff, but my dad didn’t want to play anything more than that because the whole husband-wife thing was not a good scene.
DOUG HSIEH: My mom told me this story that when she went into labor with me, they were actually playing bridge. And they were in a slam, and my mom said, “My water just broke.” My dad said, “Can we finish the hand?”
[Laughter]
BILL HSIEH: Yeah, exactly.
DOUG HSIEH: And her answer was no, which probably tells you why they weren’t together.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Oh, because it read it and it said that Bill – when her water broke with Bill, she wanted to continue playing the hand.
BILL HSIEH: I think that might have been revisionist history.
DAVID HSIEH: Yeah, no.
BILL HSIEH: That’s okay.
DAVID HSIEH: I don’t think so.
BILL HSIEH: My mom passed away this past year, so we’re only going to say good things about her.
JOHN MCALLISTER: She seems like – I mean, what a woman. Wow. Reading her –
DAVID HSIEH: Yeah.
JOHN MCALLISTER: She was a powerful figure.
DAVID HSIEH: Yup.
BILL HSIEH: Yeah, she was an amazing person. But not that involved in our bridge careers. It was definitely my dad’s handicraft.
DOUG HSIEH: But I would say that her influence on us in terms of how to be successful, of how to fight through problems – those were all things we learned from my mom that I think were instrumental in our success playing bridge. So.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah, I mean, I get goosebumps just hearing you say that. Yeah. Reading about her – because Bill told me in some of our early communications, he told me that you had lost your mother on December twenty – I found that in the obituary. But I wanted to learn about her, and reading about her, I was – it was really –
BILL HSIEH: Yeah.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah.
DAVID HSIEH: And it was probably a good thing that she wasn’t paying a super amount of attention because basically, her three young sons were hanging out with all of these adults in smoke-filled rooms. All these glory spots around the United States. Pocatello, Idaho and Lexington, Kentucky.
DOUG HSIEH: Any of those places, they’re actually all perfectly lovely. But that’s kind of what we did in our summers. We’d go from tournament to tournament, and there were some interesting places.
BILL HSIEH: I hesitate to think about how much secondhand smoke we inhaled.
DOUG HSIEH: Oh my god, yeah.
BILL HSIEH: I mean, and I don’t know if people remember what it was like before they got rid of the smoking, but it was – I mean, you would come home, and you would just smoke the last cigarette. Four hours of –
DAVID HSIEH: Oh, 8 to 12 hours a day depending on how many sessions, right? And when we started playing, if I remember right, there was no non-smoking and smoking, even. It was just you showed up at a table. Like, two-thirds of the tables were smoking. Yeah, and as a little kid, I remember you’d walk into the room and especially if there were low ceilings, there was just this haze, you know?
JOHN MCALLISTER: [Laughter]
DOUG HSIEH: Haze, yeah.
DAVID HSIEH: You’re locked in haze.
BILL HSIEH: And every table had an ashtray on the end.
DAVID HSIEH: It’s not the environment most mothers probably picture their kids in. [Laughter]
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, you guys never – no smokers in the group here?
DAVID HSIEH: No, no.
DOUG HSIEH: No.
BILL HSIEH: No, no.
DAVID HSIEH: After all the secondhand smoke, none of us needed to.
BILL HSIEH: Yeah, that’s exactly right.
JOHN MCALLISTER: I remember being in a car when I was a kid, and my uncle was a smoker. And he was smoking, and the windows were up. We were parked. We were waiting, and the windows were all up, and I was just like, “Oh my god, I will never do this.” [Laughter]
DAVID HSIEH: That was pretty much like [inaudible] ever hit, you know.
BILL HSIEH: Yeah.
DAVID HSIEH: And again, sometimes you’d be in these hotel ballrooms that really had low ceilings, and that was the worst. At least if you had high ceilings, there was a little bit more air.
DOUG HSIEH: Or at the Beverly Bridge Club.
BILL HSIEH: Oh, that was just a total smoke pit.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, smoke pit.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, this is for our advertising for bridge. We can show you the errors, you know. No smokers in this group, in spite of being exposed to all these smokers.
DOUG HSIEH: Exactly.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Bridge is like, one of the last bastions of smoking in the world. You go to a NABC, and people would be complaining that the smoking area’s so far away from the – and the fact that there even is a smoking area.
[Laughter]
BILL HSIEH: Exactly right.
JOHN MCALLISTER: That’s how back in time bridge is.
BILL HSIEH: I have to say, this has been interesting to me because at least in my area, there’s a lot of people who want to play. And it might be a sign of just my age and state a little. But people are kind of into it. And it’s not just us. It’s like, even my cousins are playing.
DOUG HSIEH: It’s true.
BILL HSIEH: Yeah, I mean, our aunt. My grandma. My mom’s sister, who passed away last year, she was really into it. She really wanted to come and play at the nationals. It was like, a totally bizarre concept that she would want to do that. Yeah, all our – a lot of people are playing. People are still playing. It’s just the older set.
JOHN MCALLISTER: What event did you play in in San Francisco?
BILL HSIEH: I think we played in the side game one day, and then we played – two side games. I think we both played in side games.
DAVID HSIEH: I’ve got a good story from that, though. So, I was sitting at the table with Bill’s wife because we were playing together, and some old dude kind of ambles over, and he goes, “Are you David Hsieh?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” And I’m looking at him, and it’s just an old guy. A nameless, faceless old guy. Well, it turns out this nameless, faceless old guy and I play together in a – we played in a midnight swiss in Las Vegas like, whatever it was, 40 years ago. And we won the event. Bill had a crush on a girl. I won’t name her. And so, we finish playing whatever the real event was, and he’s like, “Okay, I really want to play in the midnight swiss with this gal. Will you do it?” I’m like, “Sure, but I’ve got to find a partner.” And so, she had a friend, and he wasn’t very good at the time. And I said, “Sure, what the hell.”
So, the four of us played a midnight swiss, and I actually had a good day. And so, despite the fact that my partner was a relatively novice, we were just crushing people. It was awesome. And Bill had googly eyes. He was playing with this girl he was hot after. And so, he came back, he goes, “Well, we have a couple of good results. We have a couple of not-so-good ones.” And they were like, [inaudible], but we managed to win. And we won the event, so that was good. They didn’t stay together, though, despite the fact that we had this sort of miracle win.
But anyway, the guy was my partner, and we had this hand where we got into – I’ll just call it a creative slam. And I basically had to do a double finesse when somebody wasn’t paying attention so that they didn’t slip. Right? And so, that was the only way to make the hand. And we did, and that’s basically why we won the event. And this guy remembered that hand from 40 years ago. [Laughter] So, it just goes to show you, there’s a bunch of people that are still out there.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah. That is really strange. I was on a business trip in Las Vegas, and they were having the nationals in Las Vegas. So, I don’t know what year that was. That was a few years ago. And so, I went down. I just happened to be staying in the same hotel where the nationals were being held. So, I went down. I think they were playing the spin gold. And I went down to go see if I knew anyone, and there were all these people that I knew. It was really –
DAVID HSIEH: You just look really old. [Laughter]
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, and everybody was like, “I don’t know if I’m more depressed of how old I am, or I’m more depressed at how old you are.” They just couldn’t wrap their head around how old I was. I saw Bobby Levin, and Bobby was like, in his 20s –
BILL HSIEH: Twenty-five.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, he was a young guy.
DAVID HSIEH: A young, hot, studly guy. Right? And he was one of the hottest up and coming players, and –
DOUG HSIEH: And Ron Smith. I saw Ron Smith. And Ron looked good, but he just couldn’t believe it. He was like, “You’re how old? What?”
BILL HSIEH: Yeah, our memories of these people are frozen in time, a little bit.
DAVID HSIEH: Well, yeah.
BILL HSIEH: So, these are all guys, you think of them as young guys. Or some of them even, like, in their early 20s. And now, of course, some of them are in their 60s and 70s. It’s different. It’s an interesting thing.
JOHN MCALLISTER: So, Bill, when you quit, was it kind of like conscious, or just – work just –
BILL HSIEH: So, Doug and I, we both – I worked for an investment bank, and I was working 100+ hours a week, and there was just no chance. Though, even during that time, I did – my dad was sick, and I did basically take a little small break, and that’s when I did those junior world championships was during that time. So, I was basically out of playing. That was in my 20s. And I was working really hard, but somehow or another, I managed to creep out a little bit of time. And I did this mad dash training thing and played a couple of times at those two tournaments.
But pretty much, other than that, I didn’t play at all. I was just working too hard. So, you know, your career takes over. And I’m kind of in an intense profession, so it wasn’t – it’s like anything else. If you want to do it well, you’ve got to play.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Is your company called Bridge something –
BILL HSIEH: Bridge Street Advisors. Yeah, that’s it. It’s a boutique investment bank.
JOHN MCALLISTER: I saw that you worked at a place called Bear Stearns, and I was like, this must be –
BILL HSIEH: Yeah, yeah. Well, I did. I did play there. And it’s actually a funny story because I actually – I was going in – I was [inaudible] investment banker, and I was going in there and had been recruited by somebody who was working there.
So, I called up, and I said, “I should probably just let Jimmy know I’m coming in.” I hadn’t seen him in 15 years, or something like that. And I call him up, and of course, Jimmy’s the CEO of this pretty big company. Picked up his own phone. I called at like, 6:00. And he said, “Oh my gosh!” I said, “You know who I am?” He goes, “Oh yeah, I remember.”
And then, he called down to the training desk to go – you know who Warren Spector is? Warren’s been playing recently. And he gets – he says to that guy, “Is Warren there?” He goes, “No, Warren’s sick.” He calls up Warren, and Warren’s at home. He calls him at home. He goes, “Warren, I got Bill, and Bill’s – he was also the king of bridge, just like you.” And Warren, of course, is like, home ill. He must have been like, what the heck is this?
But anyway, I did end up going to work there, and Jimmy’s a great guy. I was there for quite a few years and really enjoyed it. It’s a great place.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Is that where you were working? Because they’ve got a bridge culture there. Is that where you were doing the 100-hour weeks, or was that after that?
BILL HSIEH: That was before then. I went to Bear after I’d been in the industry for seven or eight years already.
JOHN MCALLISTER: And did you get recruited by bridge players, or was it totally –
BILL HSIEH: Nope. Total coincidence.
DOUG HSIEH: No, in fact, after I accepted an offer to become an investment banker at Dillon Read, which is where I started my – I was in the analyst program for the investment bank – I took that year off, and I was training for the World Junior Bridge Championships. And I played against – not Jimmy, but Jimmy’s wife. And we got all done, and she looked at me and she said – oh, we just started talking about where I was. And I said, “Oh, I’m going to go become an investment banker.” And she looked at me and she’s like, “What? You’re not going to go work at Bear Stearns?” And I said, “No.” And she said, “Oh, I’m going to go have to tell Jimmy, and he’s not going to be happy.”
[Laughter]
DOUG HSIEH: And then, I didn’t really think too much of it. And then, I was walking down the hall of the bridge tournament, and Jimmy comes up from behind me, and he’s like, “Why are you not working at Bear Stearns? What is wrong with you?” And I think he was with Alan Sontag, I’d known since I was a little kid. And they were just laughing their heads off.
JOHN MCALLISTER: I feel like I need to explain to our listeners that Bear – Jimmy Cayne was the CEO of Bear Stearns, which he’s a huge bridge lover. And Bear Stearns had this culture of hiring bridge players for years and years. I think a lot of it was built – like Warren Spector, who is the president of Bear Stearns –
BILL HSIEH: And then, Ace Greenberg. Ace Greenberg is also a good player, too.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah.
BILL HSIEH: And there’s more, too. There’s a few more. There are a few more of us.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Weinstein. Steve Weinstein.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah.
BILL HSIEH: Oh, didn’t – yeah – familiar with it. Yeah. It was a great place.
DOUG HSIEH: You were there for a long time.
BILL HSIEH: Until the bitter end.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Oh, so when you had this phone call with him, you were coming into work?
BILL HSIEH: I was being recruited to work there.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Oh, so you literally called –
BILL HSIEH: Then, I ended up working there.
JOHN MCALLISTER: You literally called Jimmy to tell him you were getting recruited to work there?
BILL HSIEH: Yeah. I just thought it would be a nice thing, and so, yeah.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Wow. So, that kind of – I mean, that’s a pretty good connection to have. To be able to call the CEO of the place where you’re getting recruited. Because you don’t want to upset him, that he doesn’t know.
BILL HSIEH: Well, [inaudible]. He didn’t know me that well at the time, but I just thought it would be the right thing to do. There was no strategy. It was just like, I thought I should call him.
JOHN MCALLISTER: No, I get it. I get it, I get it.
BILL HSIEH: And yeah. But I was there for a long time, and so. A steady career there until the bitter end, so to say.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Well, that must have been tough.
BILL HSIEH: It was an interesting experience. Not recommended for most people. Not my favorite.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Gotcha. So, the next generation of bridge-playing Hsiehs…what are we looking at? We don’t have any breakers of Andrew Jones’ records, despite of Amy liking the game. Doesn’t sound like there are any promising –
DAVID HSIEH: You know, they all ended up having their own pursuits. We’re going to have to go after the grandchildren, I think.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Are you guys related to Tony?
DAVID HSIEH: No.
BILL HSIEH: We’re not.
JOHN MCALLISTER: How often do you get asked about youngest Life Master versus related to Tony?
BILL HSIEH: These days, related to Tony way more often. Nobody even knows that we were bridge players. Maybe our friends do, but –
DAVID HSIEH: Although, you know, Tony has a brother, whose name is David. And his mom used to send me emails to him every once in a while. We obviously have an email address that’s pretty close, and so, I would get – oh, they were great. They were like, classic mom emails. Things like, “I haven’t seen you in a while. Uncle So-and-So’s a little sick. I’m going to go see him on Thursday. When are you coming over for dinner?” You know.
BILL HSIEH: You should have accepted.
DAVID HSIEH: I know.
[Laughter]
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah, Tony, he was a legend. A friend of mine wrote about him in an investment letter before he died. And then, he died, and I was so surprised because – like, what he did at Zappos was so –
DAVID HSIEH: Amazing. And then, what he did for Downtown – no, Downtown Reno, right? Was it Reno or Las Vegas?
DOUG HSIEH: No, Las Vegas.
DAVID HSIEH: Anyway, but you know, he did a lot of interesting things.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Alright, well, thank you all for doing this. It’s been fun getting to meet you. I’m excited to know how to pronounce your last name.
[Brothers laugh]
JOHN MCALLISTER: I feel like I have it internalized. And you know, thank you.
DOUG HSIEH: You’re welcome.
DAVID HSIEH: Thanks for having us.
BILL HSIEH: Thanks for making it happen.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, this was great.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Alright, well, we’ll be publishing it probably in a couple weeks’ time. And we’ll do a transcript. And it’ll be on our website. And hopefully, we have recordings of most of it. And, yeah. I’ll send it to Bill.
DOUG HSIEH: Alrighty, sounds great.
BILL HSIEH: Thank you very much, John. Really nice meeting you.
DAVID HSIEH: John, thanks.
DOUG HSIEH: Nice talking to you, thanks. Nice to meet you.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Yeah, likewise. Hope to see you at the table.
DAVID HSIEH: Yeah.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah, yeah.
DAVID HSIEH: We talk about it every once in a while, getting the band back together again.
DOUG HSIEH: Yeah.
DAVID HSIEH: It’s an idea that has occurred to us.
BILL HSIEH: Yep.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Austin.
BILL HSIEH: We’d have to go and train. Most of us have forgotten how to play a little bit.
JOHN MCALLISTER: It’s a competitive family, I can see. You don’t want to show up and embarrass yourself.
DAVID HSIEH: We won’t want to embarrass ourselves.
JOHN MCALLISTER: Alright, well, thanks a lot, guys.
BILL HSIEH: Alrighty, take care. Buh-bye.