Alessandro Calmanovici Built Bridge Tricks to Make Bridge as Popular as Chess

Lero: I think everybody has this experience when you go to a bridge championship and you spend the five days there, somehow you are in another you feel like you're living in another life or another universe. I saw the movie was shared maybe on Bridge Winners at some point. And I was like, yeah, what is this? Let's have a look. And I was younger. I was much younger than now. I started ⁓ to play and I was like, shit, I think I've played this event. Giovanni Bonatti when he reached the fiftieth one in his strike he spent one hour on this one because the kit like all his life is there. So on this very last fifth you lose your strike. So in the end he missed it. Hi, I'm here today with ⁓ Alessandro ⁓ Komonovici. And ⁓ Alessandro is just really a great example of how small the bridge world is. And ⁓ the reason I'm gonna say that is I'm gonna start by playing a clip for you from ⁓ Double Dummy. I knew you were gonna do this. Using nineteen to eleven at last ⁓ four boards we made six points, six points, seven points, eight points. We want at the last that's more. It's incredible and I am very so ⁓ that was from the film that I made, ⁓ Double Dummy. Yeah, yeah. And this was in twenty twelve at the World Junior Championships. And I I love that scene, man. ⁓ it's it's a great scene and ⁓ I I haven't seen this ⁓ video until many years after it was published. When when did you release it actually? In which year? ⁓ so we've released two versions. ⁓ it was in both versions because it was really an excellent kind of, you know, like you know, dramatic moment. That was at the end of the qualifying. ⁓ so the first version we released was in twenty eighteen and then ⁓ we recut it ⁓ during COVID and then the second ⁓ version we released in twenty twenty one, which is which is like fifty four minutes long as opposed to eighty six minutes long. It must be Yeah, one of the greatest movies production in Bridge ever. Because I think this is exactly w what our world needs. We need more of these. And not just ⁓ as a yeah, pro professional video production but everywhere on social media. It's it's really well done. And now with cutting, you might even cut pieces, which I think you're already doing with some of your podcasts and ⁓ publish them everywhere. I think ⁓ yeah, that's what we're missing in the world of Bridge right now. Well you certainly know how to ⁓ you know ⁓ you know to butter me up. Are you planning more projects like that? yeah, actually, ⁓ I mean ⁓ yesterday I was at our local bridge club ⁓ and I'm doing a project called ⁓ Bridge with Ballers. And ⁓ we were recording ⁓ with you know, had a had a camera guy there, had three cameras. ⁓ I played ⁓ in a club game with this ⁓ all American basketball player from the States ⁓ named Sean Singletary, who just started learning bridge a couple of min a couple of months ago. This was his first time ever playing at the bridge club. And ⁓ so yeah, we yeah, so yeah, I am doing ⁓ other stuff like that. ⁓ it was it was it was interesting, man. Like he yeah, I don't think he knew he didn't really know it was coming. He's been he's been practicing. He hasn't been on your website yet. He's he's not re he's not ready to They'd say it's a bit more advanced as of now, but how did you get him into bridge? Or was it ⁓ you know, so I had this idea ⁓ some years ago, ⁓ where I I I s I met somebody at a bridge tournament who didn't play. And ⁓ and and I was try I was sh I was like t explaining bridge to her and so I got her to open up Bridge Master on her cell phone. And then I got her to play some of the beginner deals and I explained what the what the process was. And then that turned into wanting to do that with like athletes because I think, you know, these athletes are really competitive people, and then at some point they c they don't put they can't play their sport anymore, you know, like they retire and so they g have something that they've spent their whole life focusing on and now they can't do it and they don't have that outlet anymore. And so I ⁓ he's the first person, the actual athlete that I got to do that. And then I s then it kind of morphed into like, let's learn from bridge for a year and document it. That's a great way as well to promote the game, obviously. When you get famous people, we need you need to get Magnus Carlsen, that would be everyone's dream, right? I mean my my dream, ⁓ there's a couple of American athletes, Dwayne Wade, ⁓ the basketball player. And ⁓ Peyton Peyton Manning, the football player. If I could have any two guys on ⁓ on on the show, it would be it would be those two guys. Yeah, that's that works as well. But I remember doing the same kind of thing when I had ⁓ friends at university. So I I I lived ⁓ four years in Pisa, that's ⁓ city in Italy, very famous for for its tower. And you know, in Pisa there's ⁓ the the regular country university where everybody can apply and get into but then there's also some ⁓ more advanced universities where there you have to pass a very hard selection to get into that. Some elite schools. ⁓ And I had ⁓ some colleagues in my class because in the end we follow the same classes, it's just that they have to take some extra exams. And ⁓ there was one of them I g I got really ⁓ developed good friendship with him and I s I I knew he was extremely extremely smart guy and I said let's try to to solve the first bridge master hands like how to yeah the first ten and I just explained briefly how the game works and he was doing them pa pa pa but very easily but he never got into the game unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's funny that you had the same idea. I guess it's not it's not a novel. If you think about it, those beginner hands are the perfect ones to to try to present to somebody who's completely new. You just explain a bit of the logic of how tricks works and ⁓ yeah, they can pick it up very quickly. I think that they're really good for that. So what about you? You ⁓ you know that that was ⁓ that was in twenty twelve, that was the world junior championships. Basically what happened there for context in the video, ⁓ you guys qualified in the last round and and on like the la you won like maybe close to to twenty four amps or something or twenty three, twenty two amps on the last four boards to like just barely qualify for the knockouts. Yeah, I remember that day. I I have a profile on bridge winners and ⁓ and they they're asking ⁓ what's your favorite bridge memory? And if you read what I wrote, it's exactly that that day. Because ⁓ well I obviously I I didn't know while playing that we needed this very last hand, but the the moment I started to come out of the room, I see my coach and everybody else coming to us, greeting us and kissing us. So I was like, What the heck is going on? And then yeah, I realised we made ⁓ a miracle because we were losing by yeah, more than twenty before the last four boards. Wow. And so we needed really this ⁓ this very last board as well. And that was ⁓ I guess Israel, if I remember correctly. We were two two girls who are still active in the dreaming rich scene. ⁓ yeah, they're good friends of mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And ⁓ yeah, then we went I remember we went for dinner with the coach and ⁓ our under twenty one team and we had the best dinner in the best restaurant of of what what was Taekwond. You know because ⁓ that was ⁓ some some of our Giacomo Percario who's ⁓ also professional bridge play the partner of Giovanni Donati, he yeah he was eating ⁓ in China and this in this championship he was eating only biscuits and he couldn't like enjoy the food and he lost like four or five kilos of until and yeah ⁓ I remember he was so happy to eat in a good restaurant ⁓ for that day. Yeah, you mentioned that. So ⁓ so there's y there's two there's a there's a pair from your team, ⁓ Donati and Picarmo, ⁓ who are are one of the top pairs in the world right now. They're you know, they're playing on the Italian open team. Mm-hmm. And I I knew g I knew Giovanni was ⁓ was playing in that tournament. I think he like twelve years old maybe. He was very young, ⁓ playing then. But I didn't realize that he was playing with ⁓ with Picarmo e ⁓ all the way back ⁓ All the way back to to twenty twelve. I think yeah, in that year they were playing together. No, I checked it. They played the last set. You checked it? Okay. ⁓ Yeah. They played the last set together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because at the beginning ⁓ Giovanni was playing with someone else, I think. When he just started in the national team and then s and then some time later he switched and they started to play with Percario. And ⁓ we used to spend Apart from bridge the rest of the time playing ping pong on the last floor of the hotel, if I can remember. And yeah, they weren't they are the only ones in my generation I would say that ⁓ made it to Professional Bridge from Italy. now there's another young player who's called Federico Porta, but he's ⁓ not so much in the US, mostly in Italy. But I I think from that generation it's only Giacomo, Percario and and Giovanni Donati, yeah. And the one before we had some more like we had Manno, DiFranco, Zanazi. Yeah. They are they yeah, they're the only few ones who are doing just bridge. So speaking of Giovanni Donati, ⁓ he is one of the ⁓ wizards on ⁓ you've you've created a website. So this conversation ⁓ is taking place because you've created a a website called Bridge Tricks. ⁓ Where ⁓ I I I saw a post about it on Bridgewinners maybe like three weeks ago. Mm-hmm. And ⁓ I'm getting ready for the ⁓ world championships in Katavice, ⁓ which start on the twenty seventh this month. ⁓ which your pr listeners will probably it'll probably be past that day when this is published. ⁓ but ⁓ you know, like I I've been I was reading a book recently about ⁓ how do we get better at things called Peak, which was suggested to me by a a listener named Adam Voldowski. And ⁓ it's an amazing book. I I loved it. I read the whole book. And he talks about the authors talk about deliberate practice in that book and really challenging oneself to, you know, to to to get better, you really have to challenge yourself and you have to get kind of like a good strong feedback loop. And so for me, ⁓ your website Bridge Tricks really came at the perfect time. And so I've been doing ⁓ a bunch of ⁓ suit combination ⁓ practice on there and it's a very humbling ⁓ it's a very humbling ⁓ website but also it's you know like it now I I'm starting to think very differently ⁓ when I see a suit combination and ⁓ and whenever I see a suit combination that I'm curious about I can put it in your suit combination solver and ⁓ and now I know ⁓ you know I know what the best line is. Yeah, it's a great tool I think for practicing ⁓ two suit combinations and as you said, doesn't take long before you start to change your thinking mindset because they ⁓ y you said it perfectly. There's a feedback loop, right? You you you first try to play it. If you make it correctly, okay, great. But when you miss, you can ⁓ go to the solver and have a look at ⁓ which layouts ⁓ you're not covering with the way you played and which layouts are covered by the best ⁓ solution. So you really start to develop some kind of ⁓ intuitive or very fast way to understand what you should be playing for in this with combinations. You start to realise okay I win every three three ⁓ and ⁓ I need to be careful on four twos, but maybe also on five ones in certain scenarios. So you you start to develop this ⁓ stinking mindset and it comes quite quite quickly I would say once once you start practicing ⁓ thirty, forty, fifty of them you get better quickly. And that's what ⁓ I like that. And you have this thing ⁓ you have this thing on there called ⁓ Survivor, where you try to see how many you know, you've created a bunch of like fun ways to interact with suit combinations on there, by the way. And and and just in the short time that I've been on there, you've added like a bunch of ⁓ a bunch of new stuff. ⁓ but the Survivor thing, you just see how many suit combinations in a row you can do. Yeah. And ⁓ I and I've gotten up to eight in a row, which is not I'm not saying this is like a point of you know because Giovanni and maybe he I haven't checked, maybe he's done more he's he did like forty seven in a row, I think. Yeah, but the other day he shared a screenshot where he made fifty. ⁓ really? He's been doing it like ⁓ on repeat. He got ⁓ really addicted to it. And ⁓ not just him, also some other one like Simon or Simon, I I don't know how you Simon Device, yeah, he also hit addicted, yeah. So they are currently the best players in there and they keep challenging each other and trying to have the best ⁓ record in survival. But ⁓ yeah, forty seven or fifty, it's just crazy. It's crazy. I asked him about it. I I sent him a direct message on there and I said, Can you give me s coaching? Like I'm really amazed with your with your with your forty seven and he ⁓ he was very kind in his response. He gave me a little suggestion. ⁓ but he did say that well and this is for him, you know. That that some of the ones he did were ⁓ were were were pretty easy. Yeah, you need to get lucky as well. 'Cause they they are popping up randomly, so you might have a trake of ⁓ very easy ones. But when you reach fifty, I mean ⁓ luck it's not that much involved. Fifty is it's just too many to have only easy ones. So yeah. He's ⁓ he has very He's I I called it in in my explanation video that I made about the so I said he he has some kind of superhuman talent for for bridge and specifically for playing cards. ⁓ he's I I he's one of my best friends and we speak a lot about bridge. So I know how he thinks and how quick his mind is. And I've never seen so the thing is, I I've been in the bridge scene for a long time, but I don't know that well ⁓ all the top bridge players. So I don't have a su such a huge sample size in terms of ⁓ how to compare him with. I know, for example, Agus Madala, and he's also an incredible player, but I think Giovanni's brain is ⁓ for certain things is just extremely fast and maybe there's nothing ⁓ matching this kind of ⁓ quickness in the whole world. ⁓ and it's some and it it's not working in the same way our brains do. Because I think The way we reason at Bridge is in logical ways, in a way. Like ⁓ if I do this, then they do that. It's ⁓ yeah, a chain of events. But I have the impression he's much more instantaneous somehow. He sees it directly. It's like an image that is there and he knows the solution right away. And I remember there's something crazy that we were ⁓ doing ⁓ maybe ten years ago. we gave ⁓ We we we ⁓ dealt a r a random hand to thirteen cards ⁓ to four players and ⁓ we we showed him the first thirteen cards for just ⁓ two seconds or three, not more. Then the second thirteen cards again for two seconds, and the third thirteen cards for three seconds, but the fourth one because he can deduce them we didn't show. ⁓ and then we asked him what's the bar? on this hand. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we asked him what's the power. I swear, this is a real story. We were in Salso Maggiore in a in a bar that everybody who's been to Salso Major knows 'cause it's called Piccolo Bar. And ⁓ it was many of us there. So yeah, we and I he can't do it again. I mean obviously it's nothing special for him. So we could ⁓ w once ⁓ have him live and do it. But yeah, so we we asked him what's the po of this port. And then he started to think and in the meantime or Now I can't remember exactly if we already analyzed it before or we did it ⁓ in the meantime. So we thought we didn't put too much effort into, we thought the pie is four spades made by East and West. And then we asked him and he didn't say four sp he said four hearts doubled ⁓ two off. And we we thought ⁓ no that's not possible because five hearts diamond doubled, it's three off, it's not two off, so you might you might must have made a mistake. And What he did, he's he proved us wrong because he saw in his head that there was some kind of very weird way to only go two off on that hand. Which we didn't see by lock by watching all the four kind. I was there with very good players too. So this shows you how ki which kind of crazy abilities he he has. So you're just you're a couple years older than him, right? Yes, I'm from ⁓ ninety four and I think he's maybe Yeah, ninety-eight or ninety-nine, something like that. Four or five years. Yeah. But because he started ⁓ that early in Bridge and ⁓ he was such a good player, so he progressed directly from the under twenty-six when he still had four four years to go in the under twenty-one. So we ended up on the same team very quickly. Yeah. ⁓ so was he one of the first people that when did you launch Bridge Tricks? So Bridge Tricks I launched it I think somewhere around February. But ⁓ yeah, at first it was not a real launch. It was just between friends to see how that's going. And ⁓ the real the first time I posted it on Bridge Winners, that's where most of my traffic came anyway, was ⁓ in March. But ⁓ it started ⁓ as ⁓ just a simulation tool. So you know, it all started last year, around summer. My wife came home ⁓ Well back then she was not yet my wife, but she said ⁓ at work they're giving us free access to a tool called Lovable. That's ⁓ a website that's getting ⁓ very popular now to build ⁓ websites on your own with it with it. Okay. And so I said, ⁓ really, I never heard of it. Let me let me let me just try. And that's how it all started and there and that's how I got into AI coding models, which ⁓ were much weaker than they were na than they are now, because in the last year they have made incredible progress. ⁓ the the capacity the capabilities of these AI coding models have ⁓ really ⁓ increased exponentially and ⁓ it's gonna get just better and better. Probably next year ⁓ they will be much better than any other human ⁓ on the planet. So it's ⁓ it's insane what's happening right now in in this world. But let's not go off topic. So yeah, I I said let me try. And I I realized how f how easy it is to to create your own website and ⁓ that there's a chance now. I there's an op I always dreamt to to build my own thing and ⁓ to apply it to bridge. for example, I I hated that we didn't have a good simulation tool. So that's how it all started. It always started with a bridge lab and I thought I was gonna be ⁓ super successful with the bridge lab and making a simulation to then I posted it on Bridge Winners and some other places and nobody cared. So I thought, yeah shit, okay. That's not going well. But I didn't give up. ⁓ because partly because I don't yeah, I try normally I get obsessed over stuff. So I I I thought, okay, like I'm gonna keep going. And also because I had a lot of fun doing that. ⁓ so it was not ⁓ hard or it was not ⁓ yeah, I I had ⁓ enjoyed their whole experience of building it and making it better and sharing and seeing some people thanking me because they like it. So the motivation never went away. And slowly I started adding stuff. The second thing I added was the bidding architect, which is ⁓ yeah, you know it already, it's just another tool to build your system in there and have a digital system. And that also gained traction, but not as much as I wished, because I I thought that's such a good thing for pr bridge players. But I I also saw that was the thing is I also should be more patient, I have the impression. Like the guy from Cubits, he told me I we we speak a lot and he told me took him two years ⁓ for qubits to start picking up and at first it was a lot, I was just with his friends, so yeah. Given that I've only published in March. I think now we have around ⁓ two to three hundred ⁓ active users per day, mainly ⁓ to thanks to the suit trainer. That's something that really went more viral. Yeah, so I think it's going well and ⁓ yeah I'm I'm very happy about ⁓ the whole ⁓ experience and that the feedbacks I got, like I I I got a private message on Bridge Winners from Fred Gittelman, who's the god of bridge, ⁓ online bridge. And you he wrote me Bridge Trix is my new favorite website. And it didn't mean just bridge website, it meant like a really website. And he's he's using it a lot. So these kind of feedbacks, ⁓ they really motivate a lot and ⁓ yeah. So so Fred Giddleman ⁓ was a f was ⁓ one of the founders of Bridge Bridge Base online, ⁓ where a lot of people ⁓ mu you know, that's like probably the most popular online bridge website. But ⁓ he also ⁓ used to have a A column in the Bridge World ⁓ magazine ⁓ on ⁓ suit combinations. ⁓ really? I didn't know. He wrote a book. He wrote a book. Hold on a sec. He wrote a book on suit combinations. About suit combinations. Hold on one second. Yeah. I didn't know. Yeah, so this is ⁓ this is Fred's book. Crazy. I didn't On suit combinations. Which I bought because of Bridge Tricks. Because I feel like I'm so clueless on suit combinations and I'm trying to like understand, you know, needing some like more meta kind of ⁓ you know advice about it. Yeah, yeah. So that does not surprise me that Fred Gittleman ⁓ loves your website. And he I think when he wrote that, he was ⁓ just fully on the bidding architect. I think he didn't use it. Yeah, yeah. He said ⁓ I haven't explored ⁓ all the other features but yeah I didn't know he wrote a book about that. Yeah that yeah There are also encyclopedias of suit combinations like Yeah, yeah. The Bridge Bridge Bridge ⁓ Bridge Encyclopedia has suit combinations in it. But yours is so much more fungible and so much more easier to access and ⁓ it's not it's not really close. Yeah, I I think it's ⁓ huge progress in the in this field, let's put it like that, of suit combinations because you have a book, but ⁓ first of all You cannot really see all the layouts that I want and ⁓ this way makes it interactive. You can ⁓ really even now build your own plan and compare your plan with the Solver Plan and see where they are different. So you can go as deep as you want into understanding what's going on. And the crazy thing is that ⁓ like the other day, I dunno if you if you know Leonardo Cima is also very ⁓ famous a British professional who ⁓ yeah has been playing bridge ⁓ professionally for all his life and ⁓ he made the final in the Spingold recent maybe last year. Chima, Chima. Chima, Chima, yeah. Yeah yeah yeah got it yeah. Yeah there was one suit combination that was ⁓ really tough and ⁓ he called me because he thought the solver was wrong for this specific and it's like no it can be and I am convinced ⁓ my solver is is correct and I also ⁓ spoke about with Giovanni and Simon and ⁓ yeah we all agree. But ⁓ he he has a point in in his own way and ⁓ it makes you understand how ⁓ complicated sometimes the suit combinations can be. Like y even if there's a solver, there might still be suit combinations when where You really struggle to understand why you have to play it in a certain way. And ⁓ we might even go into this, the one we debated the other day if if it's if you want to. You want to? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so should I share the screen and talk about Yeah yeah, that'd be great. I think you're the first guest that I've had that shared the screen. By the way, you're the first Italian that I've had and first Swiss. First ⁓ Swiss resident as well. This is a guy who deals in a lot of suit combinations when he says two point three percent isn't that isn't Isn't that small? This is a guy who's deep in the weeds. One of the suit combinations life. Well there there are some that are much, much tougher than that. Th there was one like ⁓ Yes the the or no, Kevin this is Kevin Rosenberg. He he wrote is the last one actually that Two extra six one breaks is zero point zero nine percent better. And if you're not playing for the best one, even if it's zero point zero nine percent, you will fail it. So and yeah, I I have the the impression this is often the case in bridge, that ⁓ you make marginal mistakes sometimes. Yeah. That are losing maybe only in in two or three percent of the cases. Yeah. And often that's that was not what ⁓ would have punished you at the table. But when you play big number of boards, these small mistakes start ⁓ popping up and ⁓ that's where the champions make a difference because they make less mistakes than everybody else. So so you mentioned Cubids, ⁓ which is this great ⁓ app ⁓ that ⁓ tournament players love for practicing their bidding and they've got all these all these features on it. And ⁓ you you've It pardon me if you've already if you've already thought of this, but ⁓ I think you guys should do a a collaboration with them because you get the you know, you get the par it gives you a par score ⁓ for your contract. But I think you should do a a collaboration where you you play the suit combinations in the ⁓ it be it where you're able to play the suit combinations in the in the contracts you reach. Because sometimes it's it's a little bit goofy, ⁓ some of the par scores in there where you feel like, Wow, you know, we're in we should be in We should be in six ⁓ six hearts here, but ⁓ you know, we need some stuff we need to guess some stuff. So you know it's funny, I I spoke in the last days a lot with him because ⁓ yeah when I published my web ⁓ my f new feature, Suit Trainer, he wrote me the next day and he said ⁓ shit, I'm I was planning to publish something else very similar in a new app. And ⁓ obviously I that was not good news for me because ⁓ I I would have loved to have to be the only one doing this. And ⁓ so far he hasn't published it, so I I don't know what's gonna come up with. but yeah, we talked a lot and we also thought about ways to collaborate with each other because yeah, we are both ⁓ independent ⁓ developers and ⁓ there are also very big guys out there in bridge, so it makes sense for us to ⁓ to combine our forces and and try to to yeah to gain bigger market share but ⁓ yeah it's also not so easy right we are we both have our own brand and ⁓ yeah it's not it's not easy to find ⁓ agreements and ⁓ about what you proposed yeah that's for sure interesting but applying the same concept to a whole bridge end is much harder than a suit combination. Because with a suit combination, you obviously it takes some computational power to solve it fully. And ⁓ it's not even solved fully when when ⁓ when the solver takes it on the website. It's it's pruning it, it's stopping, it's it's exploration at of up to a certain point when he realizes the chances that something ⁓ is uncounted are almost zero. So it stops. But if you would have to to compute every single possibilities of how the the it's a huge tree and it would never run on time in this two seconds. So imagine doing that for a full bridge hand which ⁓ has a huge number of of ways that thirteen cards aligned because it's here it's only one suit. So it's thirteen cards in total there is thirteen cards per per player. So unfortunately it's too too hard to apply the but I'm I'm saying you could just do one key suit. You know, you could do the key suit, like how do you play ⁓ like the key suit on this hand because I yeah, I I I get it. And also, you know, like I also know as a bridge creator, bridge content creator, ⁓ I'm very familiar with like easier said than done. Hey, thanks for the advice, John. You know I don't want to make names, but we we had a coach in the Italian team when that he always was telling you, Yeah, why didn't you play like that? Or why didn't you pit like that? And obviously it was always always result oriented. Yeah. That's also hard in bridge to not be result oriented and to try to find yeah, to find the best pit that does not Conditioned on the result. So how did you start playing at twelve years old? So my father is a bridge player, and back then the bridge scene in my hometown was very active in Cagliari. So I come from a little town in Italy, it's called Cagliari in in Sardinia, the island where a lot of ⁓ Italians and Europeans they go for summer holidays there. ⁓ by the way we also have a very beautiful bridge festival now every year that's organized by Chima and ⁓ Barbara Desi, that's ⁓ this partner. So I I come from there and back then in in in the 80s they were playing all night long ⁓ rubber bridge at the clubs and they were really rich people who had no family and they had a lot of money to lose. And they were playing for very high stakes and some of them got a lot of money by playing them and in the meantime they were also having fun. They didn't care to lose. So they were they were playing all like the whole night. I I I know some players that died now who told me they were even playing for thirty hours in a row, then sleeping and then back at it back at it again. So it was a very different scene. At least ⁓ the bridge scene was different from from what we know now. And he was ⁓ one of them who was playing a lot there at the club, but not for money because he he had no money. And ⁓ he got me into bridge. ⁓ he organized a class ⁓ for me and some other kids in my school, ⁓ with a coach, ⁓ teacher who also died ⁓ some years ago. And ⁓ that's how we got started. But I would say it was not the bridge who really ⁓ hooked us It was more the social part of it. When when we first went to the first tournament ⁓ Italian junior championships, I remember yeah, we spent time with all the other players and we had so much fun and it was also the the prestige about winning and ⁓ getting there on the podium. So I would say that was a big part of it, the social element and the competition when we were so young. And then you progressed onto the Italian junior team and ⁓ won some medals and juniors. Yeah, ⁓ we won on the first championships. It was me and my partner back then, Roberto Sa, it's called. We won the the beginners championship and and since then yeah, we started to play I think the first one was we were fifteen or something like that. We went to Pol in France on our own. That was my first ⁓ trip on my own. Wow. And and it started and yeah, ⁓ since then the this Sardinian we were four from Sardinia. We always played the the under twenty one and the under twenty-six. Yeah. Of course we got then better access to coaching and ⁓ yeah we we were kind of the best juniors in in the scene in our age. And that's also a bit sad that now Things ⁓ have been going down, have been going south in the Italian ⁓ bridge scene. The number of people playing is ⁓ lower every year, juniors ⁓ basically extinct and ⁓ the level is lower and lower, so that's also what motivates me. I would really love to build a stronger bridge community and try to get more people into the game. And I I don't I don't do it only for for me, for for my personal interest. Obviously I would like to to have it as a business, the the whole thing. But I think we ⁓ collectively need to ⁓ engage more people with bridge and to put some effort into that because I I don't see how we're gonna save the game in in the next ten years where the average age of the player is ⁓ super high and ⁓ yeah. the the the game itself is at risk. Maybe it's growing in other regions, like in other countries, like in the East or in China. I don't know the numbers that well there, but what from what I see in in Europe and in the US, the situation is not right. And that's what I wanted to say, y what you did with ⁓ your video production and what you're doing now, trying to spread bridge content on social media, I think that's really the way to go and what can help us to gain more traction. It's sad sometimes to see content creators pushing out so many videos and ⁓ having such little engagement on social platforms because yeah mm average Bleach player is is older and ⁓ doesn't even watch content on these platforms. So We need a way to engage younger people. That those are the ones that are spending all their time on the phone and they can really ⁓ pick up a new hobby because Bridge has a huge potential. Bridge is an amazing game. And I I think it's a wasted potential as of now. Well, ⁓ this is very somber. It's very? Sorry? Very somber. Very somber very somber ⁓ you know ⁓ statements by you there. I mean I know what you mean. I I I am yes, I'm making light ⁓ a little bit. ⁓ it's I'm sorry to hear that ⁓ you know I'm sorry to hear that you when you say when you said ⁓ that ju junior bridge in Italy is like basically extinct. I I hate to hear that for starters. Yeah. I'm quite sure the numbers have been going down and there's no replay. Like our generation was the last one was was which was let's say competitive. But now the younger players ⁓ yeah they don't have ⁓ that level anymore but there's not enough people also to push it ⁓ and to ⁓ to grow and to feel stimulated to improve. So it's ⁓ like everything in life you can have downward spirals or upward spirals and sometimes ⁓ it's hard to get out of it and even little steps help ⁓ to change direction and that's what I think we need to try. all collectively to ⁓ not just think about ourselves in in this bridge world I know there's a lot of personal interest obviously because yeah there there's professionals ⁓ there's people who are involved with federations and organizations ⁓ so there's also a lot of money involved ⁓ but we should think about the game overall and how I I I always have a dream to see bridges popular as chess and we when I look at chess content online and recently there was this ⁓ esports ⁓ championships where ⁓ ch where Mark Carlson won the final with ⁓ an amazing queen sacrifice. Imagine having these kind of competitions for bridge players too. ⁓ I think it's achievable but we we have to work for that. Everyone ⁓ we have to to share bridge with as many people as possible. We have to try to to be more proactive on social media and Change the public image of Bridge. Too many people see it as the old ⁓ woman ⁓ pastime who has nothing else to do, and ⁓ many friends when they hear bridge they think we're you're weirdo or you're a nerd. So we have to change this perception, I think. And ⁓ we we all have a p ⁓ can play a part into that. So how did the two combinations come to your to your site? Just try change the subject. Every day I I have thousands of ideas about what I could add. There's like now with AI, there's unlimited possibilities of what you could build into that. And ⁓ I have in a pipeline a lot of stuff already. And that was simply part because I I knew there are solvers online for bridge combination. So I knew there's a way to solve them. And ⁓ I wrote so there's a A solver online that's called CC Analyzer. And I I text I emailed the guy I remember months ago and I asked him if he had if he wanted to collaborate with me because he has the solver, and I thought ⁓ yeah, we we can build this tool which I made with his help. He gave me he gave me access to the solver and I build everything around it. Because the solver is the toughest part in the end. And he said ⁓ weeks or months later. That he was not interested into this. And ⁓ I already tried back then with the with the ⁓ coding models back then to to to have one that would make us over to build it on my own and I couldn't manage it. They were not strong enough. But ⁓ as I said before with the advancements in ⁓ AI coding capabilities, the latest models, ⁓ obviously with a lot of help, but they they were able to to build it for me so I didn't need his ⁓ support anymore and that's ⁓ that was the key because now I I was able to yeah build a solver on my own. it's not just a solver, then you have to ⁓ really make sure it's ⁓ running in in the in a short amount of time because otherwise you cannot just plug it in and let people play. So there was a lot of challenges along the way, but yeah, the idea just came when when I realized ⁓ this is something ⁓ where we could turn it into a game somehow. And there's a lot of I have a lot of ideas like this. It's just It gets increasingly harder when you when you build like ⁓ the bidding architect. It's it's a it's a tool where people are not playing or they're not live and ⁓ if there's a bug, it's not critical. But when people are playing, ⁓ if there's a problem, you have to be there though they get mad that maybe ⁓ there's a bug, then they cannot do a survival anymore, which happened once. And it adds a lot of stress to to build to maintain a playing platform where people can yeah, actively play live. So now I have a bit of a trade off between what do I want to keep build keep building? Do I want to increase ⁓ do I want to add more playing stuff to it? Which ⁓ increases the maintenance and ⁓ the scalability a bit of the whole thing? Or do I want to go for easier stuff that can still add a lot of value? So yeah, there's always a trade off in this sense. But I have a lot of ideas about what we could add. And Simon is helping a lot too. He also gives me ideas sometimes. Do you like it? Yeah. He is one of the greatest guys I've he was so op like, you know, I I have ⁓ shared bridge tricks from the beginning with other Italian friends and ⁓ many of them they never cared. ⁓ which I don't blame them, you know. They they are interest they don't care, you know, people don't care about your things. ⁓ they are going on on their life and I think this also a bit of a problem with Italian culture where you sometimes your people are a bit too envious or they don't like other people's success in a way. I think yeah, this is a bit of a bad part of the Italian culture. But apart from that, I had ⁓ with Simon iText. I I just ⁓ saw that he was using my tool and he got into it and ⁓ He stopped using it so I sent him an email and I was like, ⁓ Simon I I didn't know him. ⁓ would you be so kind to tell me why you left and what what's ⁓ the pri I was so excited when I saw him the first time on the platform. And then he he stopped and ⁓ shit. It that that was ⁓ when it was just a bidding argument Yeah, so I I I wrote him an email and he was so open and he helped me so much and ⁓ He really gave me such a huge motivation to keep he even bought a subscription for himself ⁓ or for ⁓ one of his daughters and ⁓ he has this whole system in there. So yeah, I I think ⁓ it was big part of what ⁓ motivated me to keep going with ⁓ What what did he say what was what did he say was the reason he stopped using it? He said it back then it was the bidding architect only, yeah. And he said He thought it was gonna take him too long to build his whole system in there. Yeah. And I told him, ⁓ look, I have ⁓ an AI train to convert a full written system into building architect system. So you don't ⁓ need to rewrite everything. So he didn't know that. And he also said ⁓ that ⁓ he he had an issue with saving a piece of his system that disappeared and we fixed a bug. There was a bug in a s very s specific situation. And I and then I fixed it too. So that started everything. And now we chat almost every day on bridge streaks and yeah, we're he got obsessed with ⁓ Sue trainer, so yeah. And he is also promoting it and sharing. So it means a lot, obviously, to have ⁓ such kind of players who are interacting and the other people can see that they they are using it. He's a world champion, he's definitely one of the world championships he's ⁓ yeah, maybe maybe not maybe mold. Maybe yeah. He's probably the best Dutch ⁓ player on the planet, ⁓ something like that. Well what about Short and Voss? Well, they are they are the best pair. But no, yeah, I I think yeah, he's considered at least one of the best in the world. And and I and he with is he's yes, ⁓ he also has a crazy good partnership with ⁓ Mueller and ⁓ they were They were ⁓ playing in the same team with Giovanni and Peccario with ⁓ Andy Gutman for a long time in in the US. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. But they switched. ⁓ but so the bidding architect, just so people better understand, ⁓ you've got this thing on your on Bridge Tricks where like ⁓ I created a PDF of my my bidding system and I uploaded it into Bridgetricks and now I have like basically my system ⁓ in this format where ⁓ I can do flashcards, for example. And so it'll give me an auction and it'll say, you know, what does this bid mean? And then it'll b based on the system, it'll it'll know, you know, so it's a good way to like quiz to to learn your system to make sure, you know, you've got everything ⁓ covered. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great way to practice on your own. Because normally y you when you study a system, what do you do? I mean, when you have it written on your PDF. You go through it and you try to s ⁓ you assume that by reading it you will remember it. But you didn't really you can't really test yourself on that. And if you write it in the bidding architect, that I mean I have the data, right? I have every ⁓ every bit in there. So I can I can be on the flashcards and and ⁓ ask you what does it mean? And you have to think about it. And ⁓ once you're ready you you can click and reveal the flashcard and then you see if you were wrong or not. And if you were wrong, you you store the flashcard in your missed deck and you can just ⁓ keep going and retrain the one you missed because you know that you have a problem there. So it's really something ⁓ that adds a lot of ⁓ training ⁓ capabilities. You don't need a partner basically to to train your si to learn your system. That's when you have 15 minutes of free time, you just open it and train. And there's people who are doing ⁓ yeah, hundreds of them per day already. And you can drill like specific things, like for example. Yeah, exactly. I haven't done that, but you could drill like two openings and stuff like that. Yeah. You can choose any any kind of your any part of your system. You can choose what you want to train on. And ⁓ if you know you have a problem with ⁓ Godzilli, you can You can drill your Godzilla or as you said, to know, anything. And and Fred Gittemann recommended me a new feature that from the builder itself you can click on a bit and you can say, I want to pract I want to drill from here. From he from this bit onwards, everything that comes after it. Directly from the builder, you just with a click. Is there any way to give you a hand ⁓ in that to use as like part of the drilling? ⁓ not yet, but ⁓ yeah there's there's obviously now opportunities to build ⁓ yeah, real bidding or playing around it and ⁓ have it ⁓ for example with robots convert any bid into what your system would do. So there's a lot of stuff that can be added. It's just ⁓ as I said before now I have to really understand in in which direction I want to expand it. And I've seen now which makes me a bit sad that ⁓ this Funbridge has copied ⁓ Qubids completely and released it ⁓ s ⁓ yesterday I got the email basically that they released a new app which is working exactly the same with the three stars. Yeah, a copy of Cupid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So If they're doing that, ⁓ and I got already guys from fifty two Entertainment, which is their mother company on my website, so they are gonna for sure now start copying also the things I do. So it's ⁓ also something to think about when you want to decide in in which direction you want to grow your website. Because if they ju just come up and ⁓ decide now with AI it's so much easy to cop so much easier to copy stuff. ⁓ when you already have a product that's working, you can tell AI make it make it back. You don't even have to think about ⁓ yeah the whole thinking process of to do it. It's already out there. So it copying it is ⁓ takes ten times less ⁓ ten times less time to to copy than to build it from scratch. Which is ⁓ very unfair advantage of ⁓ s of ⁓ companies which have a strong user base already, right? They can just copy what you do and and add it to their but ⁓ yeah, these are all considerations. One needs to take ⁓ when comes to developing stuff and maybe yeah maybe it's the time now to collaborate with these smaller people, ⁓ smaller teams and go against them because if they start to to just ⁓ copy what we small guys are doing ⁓ and ⁓ they're only focused on profits ⁓ so yeah this is not good for bridge overall I think. Does your ⁓ does your wife play bridge? No, no she well it's let's say she's not against Bridge obviously, but ⁓ since I start since I started this website, I spent a lot of time on the website ⁓ because I have a regular job and ⁓ so I had to build this ⁓ power from my job. And ⁓ I built a lot of stuff in six months and ⁓ so yeah we had arguments about it. So she sees it as something that she's happy for me obviously. She's And ⁓ she's supportive ⁓ if I have success, but she also sees it as something that's taking a lot of time away from her and we had a kid now four months ago. so there's also the kid to take care of and ⁓ yeah, so but she's not into bridge. She mm yeah, was never so interested in learning bridge. And I know some people tell me you're crazy that you didn't marry your your your How can you be with somebody who doesn't play bridge? But I have to say I I see it also as an advantage because ⁓ I I notice with bridge couples they always they that's their whole life is also revolving around bridge and they d they never have ⁓ time for their own where they have their own hobbies and their own independent life. And so there's ⁓ a trade off here as well. If you have a bridge partner, yeah, you your your whole life basically you will be with a bridge but with your partner even in your hobbies. So how much bridge are you able to play then? I don't play much bridge since ⁓ I left ⁓ Italy. I play maybe yeah, here the Cup in Switzerland, the Swiss Cup. There's a Switzerland has also this problem that a lot of players have stopped playing after COVID. The competition At least at the highest level, it's almost non existent. And it's not fun to play at the club. ⁓ there's maybe six tables with old people. So yeah, it's it's not and it's maybe even worse than Italy. I ⁓ yeah, we could say Bridge is really dying in Switzerland. And that that's also something I starting, I spoke with Piedra, you know, Fernando Piedra, he's also in the Swiss ⁓ national team and ⁓ His wife is also very involved in the bridge scene here, Irene she's called, and I I'm trying now to start in November a bridge class for younger people here in Zurich. I want to try to ⁓ get involved also i in the teaching and trying to yeah give new new life to to the bridge scene here too with younger people. That's my goal. We need I think to I will try to build a website and need a different one that's purely focused on marketing bridge in a cool way. I think bridge is not just the cards, it's the whole life that revolves around it. Like I think everybody has this experience when you go to a bridge ⁓ championship and you spend ⁓ five days there, somehow you are in another you feel like you're living in in another life or another universe. All your day to day problems suddenly are maybe they don't disappear, but you don't think about them as much. And ⁓ you're surrounded by people who love the same thing. And ⁓ yeah, it feels like you're kind of detach and ⁓ you can build such really strong relationship with ⁓ people who think like you and love the same thing. And I think this is not just something about bridge. Many probably also magic players have the same ⁓ they have the same feeling or Yu-Gi-Oh or what poker, I don't know. It's or chess. You know, it's about sharing something you deeply love with other people and and having fun together and My best memories in Bridge are not about the squeeze I made or the championship I won. ⁓ it's ⁓ when we went for dinner with ⁓ amazing people. Some of them unfortunately died because yeah, they they were older. But I I these are the real the memories that stick with me and ⁓ I think that's what we need to ⁓ show as Bridge and your videos or your your video production also shows how much ⁓ enjoyment one can get from competing all together. You really made a good effort into that, showing how the teams collect and make their their groups be before the match and scream and then they are happy when you win. So that's that's the best part of Rich is the relationships and the joy together, losing together. It's not just a game and we we need to put an effort into showing this. How did you find out? You said it took you a long time after the movie before you s but how did you find out you were featured in the movie ⁓ there in that briefs? I I saw the movie was shared maybe on Bridge Winners at some point. Yeah. And I was like ⁓ I was like ⁓ yeah, let's let's ⁓ what is this? Let's have a look. And I was younger. I I was much younger than now. So ⁓ I started to ⁓ to play it and I was like shit. I think I've played this event. And I was like, maybe I am the movie. I don't know. So let's let's watch it. And I started to watch it and ⁓ yeah, it was me and and it was such a funny part. And I shared it ⁓ obviously with ⁓ my pla my family and ⁓ my bridge friends and ⁓ yeah I I never forget this scene because it was there. And when we texted on Bridge Street and we and you asked me, Did you play in Taekwondo? And I I didn't know you made the the the movie and I was like, Yeah, wow, why how how do you know? Yeah. And you said, ⁓ yeah, I I was there in Taekwond, I made the movie and and I said, ⁓ and how do you remember that I was even part of it? And you told me that ⁓ you you were playing with that scene many times and then you remember. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you gotta watch this. Gotta watch these things fifty thousand times before you know it's like finished. But ⁓ yeah, I just re I think I just recognized did we spell your name correctly in the in the movie? I don't remember that. If you do Maybe I don't know ⁓ did you even spell it? Yeah, for sure. No, we it it's called a lower third and ⁓ yeah, ⁓ 'cause I you know, I I was the one tracking down all those names and stuff. I forget who who maybe Georgia gave me ⁓ Georgia Botta. ⁓ she's ⁓ Georgia, yeah. But ⁓ the who who sponsored the video? Like ⁓ why are they adding you t on your own? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And ⁓ for which kind of ⁓ return? Negative. Yeah, right. Wha what was the co the business model behind that? Well, I had ⁓ so I used to work for a hedge fund and ⁓ I did marketing for this fund. And ⁓ So longtime listeners ⁓ to our podcast will know the story well. ⁓ but ⁓ basically I I quit my job at the hedge fund. I I was over it. And ⁓ I went to my first North American Bridge Championship, the nationals as we call them, and ⁓ I went to I went to a brain my partner invited me to like a there was like a free buffet dinner one night and it was a brainstorming session about how do we get more young people interested in in playing bridge. And so I basically went because it was free and I didn't know anybody. And ⁓ you know, the people were talking about kind of the plight of bridge, and this was in twenty twelve, ⁓ you know, that it was a dying game, then it was played mostly by older people, and that was what I'd done. I had done marketing, and so I thought, ⁓ wow, you know, I could be a part. And I had just left my job, so I literally wasn't I didn't have anything to do. I wanted to focus more on bridge. I realized that if I just played bridge. that I wasn't good enough of a bridge player that I was going to be really frustrated by, you know, the people that were so much better than I was. And, you know, I just I had played you know, I'd played some days with my partner, was a was an expert, and he would talk through bridge hands and I would just be kind of kind of like, wow, that's just beyond my scope. And so this was kind of a the movie ended up being a perfect way to kind of ⁓ give me a chance to immerse myself into the game. And ⁓ did you edit it yours like ⁓ did you have a team behind it who was editing and mounting the seat or how did it work? So ⁓ so one of my best childhood friends ⁓ was ⁓ was a filmmaker and ⁓ I came home and ⁓ I went to dinner with him and his ⁓ writing partner and ⁓ I was telling them about this they said we think you're the only person we know that plays bridge and I was telling them about ⁓ this This brainstorming session and and h his writing partner said and said that sounds like a documentary movie. And ⁓ that was like really all I needed to hear. And ⁓ kind of just it just just just went from there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think federations need to invest more money in in this and share it across ⁓ social media and ⁓ YouTube and different platforms. This is the only I think I've seen it ⁓ now with the French British Federation. They really changed a bit ⁓ their ⁓ yeah their appearance to the public, right? They made a new logo, they are ⁓ doing new s ⁓ new videos that are really feeling f they have a modern feel, social feel to it to them. And I think ⁓ if we want to save the game and grow it, that's that's what we need to do. And ⁓ I really hope to see more ⁓ involvement from ⁓ yeah, our ⁓ federations and organizations to to spend more money on people like what that are doing what you did. It's not just the organizing tournaments because yeah, who who joins the tournaments is just pick players who are people who are already playing. We need to gain we need to mm engage new people, we need to show them that Bridge is fantastic game. And the only way we we have now this amazing opportunities to share content everywhere with People can just crawl and the algorithm shows it to them. You don't even need to be in front of them. You just need to do good content that the algorithm thinks it might be worth to show to people. So we need to use this opportunity. And ⁓ yeah, I if I think I would also love to get involved into marketing bridge at some point, ⁓ maybe with bridge tricks. ⁓ it's still very early phases of the of bridge tricks and I have ⁓ yeah, relatively little revenue so far. ⁓ but ⁓ yeah, I think this is what we really need to push on. Everybody should ⁓ invest more on on marketing and getting new new people into the game. So you just ⁓ you just ⁓ you just did this started this thing, ⁓ it's like a cup on Bridge Tricks where you're gonna have ⁓ sixty four players and it's gonna be head to head suit combinations. How many how many deals it's gonna be? Are there gonna be like to advance? ⁓ it's fifteen for the qualies, I think, twenty on the quarters, twenty five on the semifinal, then thirty on the final. Yeah, that's that was the now we have only ten players left to to start it back then when I checked. So we need ten more players. We need ten more players to start it. Yeah. I think it's a cool way to to just have ⁓ something n new around suit combin but suit combinations it on its own is not enough. Like it's obviously ⁓ a n a super nice tool to play and and to train. But if I want to build a really big platform where people come play, I I don't see that it's it's an I need to add more stuff, and that should be also part of it. And it's still a g a good start. It's something completely novel that was not done before on the market. So yeah, I think people appreciate it and ⁓ But you look at you look at Wordle, for example, you know, Wordle the ⁓ the the game where you have to figure out what the five letter word is. And you have a daily suit combination now. So you know like you have three combinations to solve. You've got like people talking about the combination. Like you're created like you've definitely created something that there was we didn't know we needed, but now it's like let's see how long it takes to mm the ones on BBO to put it into their apps. Because I think yeah they will do it soon. ⁓ which is sad, but that's what's gonna happen. And ⁓ yeah, I I really I I'm trying to to build a community around it. ⁓ I think ⁓ that's also what I said before. Bridge is a very strong community, so I I want to try to replicate this kind of ⁓ feeling also inside Bridge Tricks and that's why we have also a way to chat there with the some channels. ⁓ it's something I'm trying and let's see if if it's gonna be successful. How long does it take you to play ⁓ to To take d to d to do a suit combination, how long do you think about it? Like what's the longest you think you've on your website that you've taken? Yeah. Obviously it really depends on the combination. Let's say the easy ones ⁓ are straightforward. You see that there's only one one way of playing and so those maybe five seconds, but there are some combinations that are extremely hard. And ⁓ Giovanni, for example, when he reached Giovanni Donati when he reached the fiftieth one in his straight He spent we said one hour on this one because it like all its live it's there. So on this very last fifty leg you can lo you ⁓ you lose your strike. So ⁓ in the end he missed it and ⁓ it was very tough. So there are some where it's like in chess, imagine in chess a very deep ⁓ strategic position when you have to think in advance, ⁓ maybe ⁓ s ⁓ ten steps. I think this is sort of the same kind of skills that are involved there because you have to visualize well in advance what can happen ⁓ in the next ⁓ five rounds. So I think this kind of ⁓ yeah way of computing is similar is shared across the two. And ⁓ I would say yeah for the hardest ones it can really take you ⁓ long time to to solve and ⁓ maybe you don't yeah you will often overlook things because there's such little percentages of difference that ⁓ that's why fifty it's a crazy result. Fifty in a row, it's insane. What's your what's your record? I I didn't put much effort into doing a longer survival, honestly. ⁓ but yeah maybe I actually close to me, maybe. Are you at eight? Are you at eight also? Maybe yeah. I I I think I could reach eight or ten, I think. Yeah. Well ⁓ you know, ⁓ go try out ⁓ Alessandro's website, Bridge Tricks. ⁓ it's ⁓ you know, do do the daily combination, but ⁓ the surviv we're talking about the survival run. to see how many two combinations in you could do in a run. And you can do the rush as well. The rush what's that? The rush as many as possible in five minutes. ⁓ I haven't tried that yet. Yeah, that's ⁓ yeah, also fun, but different way. You ⁓ you have you don't think there. You just do kindness. Well Al Sandro, it's ⁓ it's been a pleasure, man, getting to to know you here and ⁓ I'm excited for you know I'm excited to to be a user of to Bridge Tricks 'cause I you I wanna be the best bridge player I can be. And ⁓ you know it's really it's really cool to have like a new access and you know, a new a new access point to to improving my game and I and I'm really appreciative for ⁓ for that. So thank you. Thanks a lot for ⁓ inviting me to the to your podcast. ⁓ I think it ⁓ it was a very fun conversation. We touched ⁓ important topics at least to me and ⁓ for Bridge overall and ⁓ I think it also helps a lot ⁓ growing Bridge tricks and sharing it with more people. So really appreciate and ⁓ thanks for yeah, all your help so far. Yeah, I mean you know, like ⁓ you know, it's dear to all of us, ⁓ the survival of bridge and the thriving of bridge. And ⁓ and I've been, you know, like I've been where I've been where you are, like I feel like ⁓ you know, like where but ⁓ you know, I in a lot of ways, like I'm gonna go to Poland ⁓ next week and I I feel like the game is thriving in a lot of ways, but ⁓ but you know, maybe I'm maybe I'm glossing over some kind of ⁓ Yeah. Depending on if you only look at ⁓ at ⁓ the numbers of these biggest events probably you have a different opinion. ⁓ but when you look at some federations like the Swiss one or the Italian one, ⁓ you get different feeling and ⁓ even the situation maybe in the nationals, the numbers over the last thirty years have decreased a lot. So it always depends on the point of view. But I think yeah we we we can all try our best to not make him Yeah, I mean it's such a ta it's such a hard task and ⁓ and ⁓ you know like in the United States we do have you know, we do have a fair amount of juniors, you know, like we do have a fair amount of juniors playing and ⁓ you know we're very fortunate to have volunteers, people that have like a passion for the game like we do, you know, that are that are putting their time into you know, to training people and we've even got a guy in the United States who pays collegiate students to learn bridge. Like that he pays money. You know, like they get paid like an hourly rate. to go to bridge classes. So you know, there's all sorts of different things happening. ⁓ to get people to play. I just think I think about that, I'm like, what what do these people tell their parents? You know? Like I th I'm getting paid to learn bridge. How does that work? Yeah, I that's not the best logan to get more people into it. But ⁓ of course it helps to have somebody. Yeah, there's ⁓ very wealthy people who love bridge and ⁓ They they put a lot of money into it and ⁓ that's also what we need. We need more of them and yeah. They can really help and support growing this movement. Actually this this I have to go soon, so maybe ⁓ Alas one more thing I wanted to say. I've been trying to reach out to the guys from chess dot com. There's the CTO, I have him on LinkedIn, and I saw some months ago they came up with a new playing platform called Gambit that's about poker, and I like shit they Chess.com is expanding into different ⁓ games, into poker. So it might be that my chess tried to get them into bridge as well, because judging on what they've done with chess, they have grown exponentially since since COVID. They they are so good at that. That that that's the biggest difference between chess.com and and our ⁓ biggest in ⁓ platforms. The people at chess.com, they're all obsessed with chess. And they have a the remote team living ⁓ all over the world and I've seen the interview of of h of their CTO, is such a great guy and I've been texting him on LinkedIn ⁓ and ⁓ the first I thought I w I wanted to help them with with their playing pl ⁓ poker platform. And he replied and then when I mentioned Bridge, he started to ghost me. So but I haven't g I haven't given up yet and maybe I'm gonna share with him this ⁓ interview for the maybe it does let's see if it's gonna block me or ghost me again. But yeah I think we need to get ⁓ somebody from ⁓ yeah chess.com who really ⁓ increased the number of chess players ⁓ globally by by a lot in the n in the last years and There's a lot to learn from them and that's what we yeah. That's what I'm I will try to do as well. Well, thank you for your time and ⁓ thank you for your contributions and I'm excited to see ⁓ you know to be a part of ⁓ to be a part of Ridge Tricks and ⁓ you know, see see see what you continue to come up with 'cause ⁓ you've come up with a lot of new stuff already just in like the three weeks that I've been on there. Maybe maybe that was just coincidental like timing wise, but you know I'm really enjoying it. So so thanks. Thanks again.