Ep. 102: Emanuel Unge – All in for Bridge, Building the Premier Bridge Practice Tool

[00:00:00] It's crazy how much everything just changed, right? I never played Bridge and I was 25 years old. I just, okay, I will go to one of these lessons. And from then, everything changed. I met my wife, I created Qubits eventually, and I work with Bridge all the time. All my friends are Bridge players. I mean, if someone wants to make an ad for how good it is to start playing Bridge, I think I'm a pretty good case.

[00:00:32] Hello. I am delighted to have a conversation with Emanuel Unge. Did I say, how did I do on that last name? Good enough. How do you say it? Unge. Unge. Unge. It's a tough one for sure. So Emanuel is the founder of the hottest app in Bridge, which is called Qubits. Today is Friday, August 22nd.

[00:01:01] It's the third day of the World Championships at Bridge. And I'm sure that many of the players who are competing in the World Championships, part of their practice time has been using your app. Yeah, that's definitely the case. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of the pros are on Qubits and practicing maybe daily, maybe more than that even.

[00:01:28] So for listeners who may not know you yet, can you share a little bit about your background and how Bridge first came into your life? Absolutely, yeah. So actually I didn't start playing Bridge until I was like 25 years old or something like that. And my family plays, both my mom and my dad, they used to play, they used to have bridge games at our house when we were kids, which basically turned me off, I think.

[00:01:55] So I didn't want to dabble into that. But both my parents were math teachers at the time. So I definitely learned to love mathematics and computers and stuff like that. And so I was drawn to games, but I just played other games. I started playing poker, played a lot of poker.

[00:02:19] And yeah, eventually I tried Bridge. This one time, my dad brought me to the club to, I think we took a lesson. I don't think he actually took the lesson, just me. And hooked up with some friends at the pub afterwards, I mean, some other Bridge players. And yeah, that's how I got started, very late.

[00:02:41] So you were 25 when this happened. Yeah. What do you think was a breaking point that maybe like, you know, you said you went to this lesson, but like what, because you said at first, you weren't interested. I still, yeah, so it's very interesting. I still, after the lesson, I still didn't think it was the best game ever, like I do now.

[00:03:00] Yeah. There's a big hurdle to get over, to actually appreciate the game, I think. But I get to meet a lot of people through this first, even this first encounter with the Bridge at the club, met a lot of interesting people. And when we went to the local pub after this, they were playing some game and I was on this lesson with some other beginners. We joined them at the pub and started having conversations.

[00:03:27] And they were so enthusiastic about Bridge. They were talking nonstop, you know how it is, about different boards and everything. So it kind of triggered me a little bit. I was like, maybe it is more interesting. And for some reason, they vibe with me pretty well. So I get to join their team. Some of these people let me join their team, even as a complete beginner. And from that, it spiraled out of control pretty quickly, I would say. Was this in Stockholm? Stockholm? Yeah.

[00:03:57] Were you living in Stockholm? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Because, you know, according to one of your partners at QBIDs, Daniel Goldberg, you've won some Swedish national championships. I don't know, actually, I hate to say it, but I don't know how old you are. So I don't know how long it's been since you were 25. I am 38. So what was that, 13? 13 years? Come on, 13? That should be easy for us.

[00:04:26] Yeah. 13 is the best number, right? No, but I mean, I haven't won anything serious. We have a competition in Sweden called the Swedish Cup, which I guess is the best title that I have. I have two of those titles. But it's mainly because I have very strong friends, right? So I get to invite the Rimsstedt brothers and Stocka and Hult to my team, and we have a pretty strong team.

[00:04:52] Yeah, I reached out to actually all of those people in advance. And Ula Rimsstedt gave me a lot of questions to ask. Okay, sounds good. So you played the Swedish Cup with the Rimsstedt. Who's your partner when you've won that? I played the most boards with Stocka, Adam Stocka. But we did rotate a little bit, but most of the boards were played with him.

[00:05:19] And we had a very good session the first time we played. So it felt great. So you're talking about the Rimsstedts, you're talking about some of the best bridge players in Sweden. So you became friends with them just because you lived in Stockholm? Yeah, that's basically it. I mean, I became friends. It's a pretty tight-knit community. And we're about the same age. I guess I'm a little bit older than they are, but not that much.

[00:05:45] And yeah, we just became friends. And I feel very blessed to be so lucky to have friends like that to bring me up in my bridge game early on. Who was kind of like your first friend? You know, your first bridge-playing friend? Yeah, so when I started playing, I met Erika and Clara and Simon Beck and Frederik Alfredson.

[00:06:11] They were like the first four people that I hung around with the most. The guys are pretty good at bridge, Simon Beck and Frederik. So I played a lot of bridge with them. And Clara and I was partners for a good while. We were trying. We were both beginners at the time. Yeah. And eventually me and Erika started playing together seriously. And we played for a few years on and off because I moved to London.

[00:06:37] So I didn't even live in Stockholm anymore. But we still managed to play some Swedish events and even some abroad. Eventually Erika became my wife. So it's a little bit of a detour. But yeah. A detour. It's crazy how much everything just changed, right? I never played bridge. And I was 25 years old. I was like, okay, I will go to one of these lessons.

[00:07:00] And from then, everything changed. I met my wife. I created Qubits eventually. And I work with bridge all the time. All my friends are bridge players. I mean, if someone wants to make an ad for how good it is to start playing bridge, I think I'm a pretty good case. What were you doing before then?

[00:07:24] I'm a developer. So I've had a career in tech. I've done like tech lead stuff, development stuff, and CTO stuff even. I've done a lot of things in tech. Yeah. That's been my career for most of my life. And Daniel Goldberg said you were a very good games player before you got your bridge.

[00:07:45] Yeah. I mean, like I said, I love mathematics. I love games. I used to play a lot of games. I'm a big fan of board games. So if anyone wants to play a board game, I'm always there to do that. During COVID, I competed in Settlers of Catan. Like I played 100 games every week of Catan online. Really, really love board games.

[00:08:11] Did you win anything of significance or what was your most significant accomplishment playing Settlers of Catan? So there is this online community and that hosts a lot of very, very, very high level games. And I managed to win division one in this, which is the highest division one time.

[00:08:32] It was very nice. And then if you do win that, you get promoted so you can play in something they call Proven Competitors League, which is only the people that won that thing. And I managed to win that as well. Oh, wow. So I have a trophy at Thomas. I won the Proven Competitors League. So that's pretty cool. Very nerdy. Very nerdy. But that's how it is. Do you still play Settlers?

[00:08:59] I do. Yeah, I played a few games today. Yeah. Oops. So what did you move to London for? At the time, I was working at a consultant company in Stockholm and they had one of their guys decided to move to London because of love. And he started up like a branch in London. And then after some months, he asked me to join him. So I did that for four years or a little bit more, actually.

[00:09:30] And had you started to develop feelings for your now wife then? It's a tricky subject. I mean, we were playing bridge and we were definitely enjoying each other's company. We were very good friends. Yeah. She was actually with Eckenberg at the time. And so it's a bit of an interesting storyline. Yeah.

[00:09:58] We didn't, I mean, we didn't have sparks flying or anything like that. We grew to love each other. Yeah. So it's, it is very, it is very interesting. I think. Do you still play with her as your partner? No, but we have decided to pick up a little bit again now that we've like settled a little bit because I don't know if you've ever tried to play with your loved one or anything like that, but it can be, it can be interesting for sure.

[00:10:28] Create some dinner discussions. Who's worse about it? You or her? I think I'm harsher. Like I give more direct feedback and, and she cannot handle that. So it doesn't, it doesn't work out very well. I wish I could stop saying anything, but it's just an itch. You know, you can't, you can't help yourself. I have to ask, why did you, why did you do that? You know, and yeah, so I'm, I'm the worst, I guess. Yeah.

[00:10:58] Yeah. And I know exactly what you're talking about. I think a lot of people relate. I think it's very, very common, unfortunately, but it is what it is. Qubids. When did it start exactly? So the, I mean, it depends on where you draw the line. Just when I started playing bridge, I immediately as a, like I'm a developer. So immediately I started dabbling in like simulating results.

[00:11:26] People would ask questions if this like three, no, is this good? Or should you bid three, no, when partner invites, if you have this hand? And I made scripts to simulate the results and stuff like that. That was very early on. And it was maybe a fair bit later, maybe a one or two years later that I like, okay, maybe there is something that I should create here. Or I want to create because me and Eric, we were practicing on BBO and I would create scripts to generate the boards on BBO.

[00:11:54] And it was just a mess to get anything solid out of the bidding practice. I created a proof of concept pretty early that it was like, it worked, but it wasn't really a finished product by any means. And then like most hobby projects, it just died. I let it slide and started on working on other things, playing bridge, working normally.

[00:12:22] And then also during COVID, I think, or maybe just before I had this feeling that, okay, I really want to complete this project. I really liked it. Yeah. And that's when I called Daniel, who had become a friend of mine. And he's also a good bridge player or yeah, very good bridge player. And also a software developer.

[00:12:47] And I asked him if he wanted to join me and create or finish the project, or at least like take some steps towards a finished product. And he was interested. I showed him what I've done and he joined and we did it together for a few months. And then we had something that you could share. So we started sharing it with friends, took some feedback. And that was so maybe that was 2019, 2020, somewhere around there where we first actually launched it. Yeah.

[00:13:17] It was only on the web. It wasn't like it is now where you can have it on your phone. It was only on cubits.com. And we shared it with the Swedish crew first. So on the Swedish website, people really started liking it. We shared it with bridge winners and I haven't really done much marketing. It just kind of grew slowly on the side.

[00:13:42] When you said you would create scripts for was Serena Trump a good bid, what would that look like exactly? So you have a hand, you just think, okay, this is my hand and partner is inviting over that. Let's define his invitation as like eight to nine points, reasonably balanced, maybe no

[00:14:07] four card major or at least, or if he has one, maybe four triple three or something like that. You make a pretty solid definition of what you think your partner has for his invitation. And then you would simulate maybe a thousand or 10,000 versions of his hand and then use double dummy to figure out if three no is making enough of the time to make the bid. I mean, that's kind of the essence of how cubits works, right? Yeah. Okay.

[00:14:37] So you would simulate a thousand to 10,000 hands and then double dummy would like go through all 10,000 of those combinations? Yeah, exactly. Go through every single one and put down the result, compare it to not accepting the invitation and like, yeah, join it with a normal imp table or if you're playing for teams and see if it's the right call in the long run.

[00:15:07] How long does it take the computer to do all that math? If the script is good, it doesn't take that long, a second or a couple of seconds. How does it know the double dummy component? Like how does it... Right. So double dummy, there are multiple already finished double dummy solvers that you can use. They are open source or some of them are open source. So I'll credit Bo Hoglund's software here because he created a double dummy that I've been

[00:15:35] using for the majority of my software. And it's just super efficient, very fast and works great. Because I use cubits a lot and the reason that I reached out to you to do this interview is because you just created this new feature, which is called Leak Finder. Yeah. And basically the way Leak Finder works is it compares your scores in a couple of different

[00:16:05] areas like slam bidding, game bidding. And I think defense is the third. Yeah. And it compares your average scores with a specific partner to kind of the cubits average. Yeah. To the team, to everyone else basically. And so it gives you a score and then I guess you can drill down further. But I just thought, you know, I saw it on the app the other day.

[00:16:30] I was doing some practicing for the world championships coming up and I thought, oh, wow, this seems really interesting. And I bid a lot of deals on there with my partner for the mixed Europeans, Marion Harding. And so that was the most data that I had. And our slam bidding was well below par. But the other two areas were above the average. Yeah. That's good.

[00:17:00] But, you know, it wasn't surprising because we'd recently done a set and it's been, you know, however long since the mix. So we weren't really in practice. We just kind of did it for fun. And we stopped in a part score on one deal where I messed up because I thought we were in a game for us. So now I bid at four diamonds, which I thought was key card. Yeah. And she thought it was non-forcing. Yeah. So I wasn't surprised to see, but what's been the feedback so far on that?

[00:17:31] Pretty good. I've heard some good things. People like it. People like the idea. Maybe it's lacking a bit in the amount of data that you can get because it's very new and we only launched with these four categories. We want to do much more. But this is like the, this is, yeah, just an early version. But the feedback has been pretty solid. People seem to like it. I don't think everyone has found it yet because we haven't pushed it too hard, but it's something

[00:17:59] that I wanted to create for maybe one and a half years or something like that. I've been thinking about how it should work and yeah, it was a tough nut to crack and exactly how it should work and how to implement it. But I think it's a very good opportunity for Qubits to create something like this. We have so much data on bidding specifically. And we already know, like we can figure out what are you doing wrong? Like maybe it's not perfect.

[00:18:26] Maybe it's not accurate like everywhere, but you can definitely find some nuggets of very useful information and you can find the boards where you messed up very easily because you just click on the slam bidding and then you say, okay, we didn't do too well on slams this week. Let's go through them and see if there's anything that we should discuss. So then you don't have to like be so active when you're actually practicing. You can just practice and then let leak finder find your flaws for you after the fact.

[00:18:56] So yeah, I think it's one of my favorite features that we have launched so far, even though it is early and we want to do a lot more with that. Yeah. It's interesting because Marianne will, uh, she'll often when we're bidding something, uh, she'll look up what other pairs are doing and, uh, I don't even use that aspect that much. Um, frankly, I probably should use it more, you know, because you've got literally like

[00:19:26] the best pairs in the world bidding these deals. Yeah. Uh, I remember there was one hand where I think we got to the right slam and, uh, Perola Kulin and, uh, Marianne Mikkelsen, uh, they're on the Swedish open team. Yeah. Marianne's originally from the Netherlands, but, uh, where they missed it and they play like this, uh, relay, uh, you know, precision relay where they can, you know, find out a lot

[00:19:55] more information about their hands seemingly than, uh, you know, just this natural bidding, which Marianne and I used. And so she was, you know, she was excited that we had, we had gotten to the better contract than them in that instance. Um, I really use it for just getting on the same page with my partner for the tournament. Like I, it does seem like, you know, like as you're saying that there's a wealth of information available in there.

[00:20:22] And, uh, yeah, I mean, you can use Qubits in many different ways. You can just practice your system to like, make sure that you're ironing out all the, like missing pieces that you have, or maybe finding new flaws in your system that you want to change. Um, you can practice your conventions or you can compare, you can play the daily event or the weekly event where like all the pros are playing that. So you get a lot of, uh, good comparisons with them.

[00:20:49] So you can pick up some good tips from the way they are evaluating things. Or you can use now leak finder where you get the, like the raw statistics of it. If you're, if you're looking for, for something. So yeah, I mean lots of different ways how you can use Qubits. I think the way you score contracts is interesting because sometimes, uh, so you give a numerical value, uh, for how many points a contract is worth. Yeah.

[00:21:19] And, uh, it's based on double dummy, but so I played the platinum pairs with Joe grew, uh, who's an avid Qubit user. And, uh, we did a lot of bidding on Qubits and we were together during a part of it. And if you had like an eight card fit in a slam, you didn't care about the Trump queen because you knew you were going to guess it. Yeah. Because of the double dummy. That's tricky, right? That is super tricky.

[00:21:48] But that used to be the case. We actually fixed that. Specifically that thing. Um, because it was so common. In, like basically you can always be grand if you're missing a couple of Queens, which is, that's not great. Right. So I put in a ton, a ton of work just to fix that issue. It's still not perfect, but it's much better now than it used to be. It used to be exactly like you're saying. It used to be like, you can ignore the Trump queen.

[00:22:15] You can bid some with three Queens missing or four Queens missing even because you can always find those. But now it's much more accurate. So we are not fully using double dummy anymore. We have some, we have some nice tweaks that make it more realistic. Still not perfect, but now I feel it's, it's definitely good enough. So basically for anybody that hasn't used the software before, you know, like you'll bid

[00:22:38] to five clubs, let's say, and then you get like a score and it'll say, you know, best contract to six clubs. But the number of points on average you get for six clubs might be just, you know, not vulnerable, might be just like 550 or something. But it's kind of hard because you get that. It shows you six clubs, but sometimes I take the results.

[00:23:03] The Q bid high score is a grain of salt because you're looking at the hand, you're like, wait a second. I don't want to be playing six clubs on these cars. No, definitely true. Definitely true. Like you have to take the results with a grain of salt. But I think that's true in real life bridge as well. Like people bid random six clubs and it happens to make, and your opponents did that and you lost the game because of it. Yeah. Did you make a mistake? Maybe not.

[00:23:32] So yeah, when the scores are very close, like if five clubs gives you 400 and six clubs gives you 500, maybe five clubs was the better realistic contract. But still on Qubits, we just give you the pure data and you can use the data in any fashion that you see fit. How does it score that then? How does it decide between 500 and 400? It just does these evaluations, simulates everything. Like I said earlier, gives you the average score and then just sorts them by the best score

[00:24:02] possible all the way down. And then we convert these scores to stars, right? So if you're close enough to the best contract, you're still getting three stars, which basically means that this is on par with the best contract. It's just maybe slightly below. And then like the further down you go, there's more stars that you're going to drop. You're going to lose more and more stars the further away you are from the optimal contract. So what's the cutoff between like five clubs and six clubs?

[00:24:32] Like how many points not vulnerable, for example? What number of points would it take for it to say six clubs is the right contract? As long as it scores more than five clubs. So on average, let's say you make six clubs half of the time and you go down half of the time. Then you're maybe scoring somewhere around 430, something like that. I don't know exactly, but something like that. And then five clubs is making, let's say that makes all of the times you score. And sometimes with an overtrick.

[00:25:01] So you're scoring like 410 on average. Uh-huh. So then now they are extremely close, right? Now they are like, it doesn't really matter if you play five clubs or six clubs. They are basically the same. But push six clubs to 60%. Now you're definitely one in theory, in theory land, one to be in six clubs because you're making like an imp on average playing six clubs. So then maybe you're losing a star or half a star if you're in five.

[00:25:29] Do you think you're able to be sort of completely numbers oriented when you're playing yourself? Like when you're playing bridge, not on qubits. No, I wouldn't say. No, I play more on field than numbers, which is very weird. I should probably like use my mathematics when I'm playing bridge. But I don't know. I used to play poker. Like I said, I played a lot of poker.

[00:25:56] And it's also a very mathematical game and a very theoretical heavy game. Yeah. But on the poker table as well, like kind of have to push some of the math aside just to play with some feel and enjoy it more. So I do the same thing with bridge. Like you spend less energy thinking about odds and numbers and just more energy on trying to not make a mistake.

[00:26:22] I think you definitely just avoiding stupid mistakes is pretty good in bridge. What do you think the best piece of feedback that you've gotten recently for qubits has been? Can you think of something specific? Me asking you to do this interview because of Leak Finder maybe? Yeah. I mean, it's actually very funny because a few people reached out to me very quickly after the Leak Finder thing.

[00:26:49] I think it's the first thing we've done in a while that is like completely new. So I think it triggered a little bit of interest again. And so yeah, that's a good one. We have a Discord server, which is like a chat platform specifically for qubits. And yeah, we get feedback there every other day, every day, both from actual issues with the site or mostly the robots doing something weird. Yeah.

[00:27:16] But sometimes we get some good feedback on what we're actually working on. I think yesterday or maybe it was the day before, that was a good one. Someone suggested that we should have events where you play against professional pairs, but they don't actually have to play. They can just draft their results from previous practice sessions that they've had. And this is something we have prepared previously, but we haven't started developing the feature.

[00:27:45] We are storing these boards on the side in the event that we do want to do this in the future. I think that would be very fun. So you have like a certain set of pairs maybe that you have a database of all their results? When a pro pair plays with another pro pair in a challenge on qubits, they get a secret option that you don't see if you're not a pro,

[00:28:13] where you can toggle on like, I approve that this is like a pro challenge, which means that it will be stored completely off the radar. And we're just doing that in the event that we want to make something happen with the challenge pros or like the monthly pro that you want to beat. And we have some fun events with that. Hopefully that will be good, I think. It's interesting. You know, you think about like intellectual property, you think about what is it worth, you know?

[00:28:42] Like what is it worth to have Mariana and Parola's, you know, auctions? And it's probably, it's not an insignificant number. Yeah, maybe not. I have never thought of it like that, but yeah, it's cool. But maybe you don't want to think about it too much because maybe they want, maybe you might have to pay them. I mean, we have a pretty solid terms of agreement. Oh, really? When they join the site.

[00:29:11] But I mean, I wouldn't do anything that they wouldn't want to do. Like I would always chat with them first. This is a business for me now, the Qubits, but it's really a passion project from the beginning. It's just grown to be a business. So I just want to make cool stuff and have, yeah, the best bidding product possible on the site. So this is your job. You don't work for another company? Not anymore, no. Yeah.

[00:29:39] Since one year back, full time. Crazy. So I asked ChatGP, this is the first time I've done this. I asked ChatGPT. Yeah. I said, I'll give you the exact prompt. I said, what should I ask Emmanuel Unger? Yep. Literally, that's all I wrote. What should I ask Emmanuel Unger? And it says, can you give me a little context first?

[00:30:08] Podcast guest, creator of Qubits. And one of the questions it came up with, which I thought was really good, was if you had unlimited resources, what feature would you add tomorrow? Wow. And it has to be one. It's going to be extremely tough. You know, my mind and my computer is filled with ideas that I want to make.

[00:30:38] It doesn't have to be one. You could expand on it as much. One thing that I want to make is I want to have like some online courses for bidding, which would align very well with Qubits. I think Qubits is like an extremely useful tool for practicing bidding, but you can't really learn bidding from the ground up using Qubits. So it's not really the perfect platform for beginners. So I want to maybe shift a little bit into that as well.

[00:31:08] That's one thing. Obviously, I want to dabble in card play as well and see if I can do a similar experience for declaring or defending. That would be amazing. I think those would be my top two favorites, which is not even in Qubits, I guess. Maybe they would be separate projects. Yeah. If it has to be in Qubits, with unlimited resources,

[00:31:34] I would have created like a complete offline mode as well, where you can play with no internet. You can play with yourself. I would create my own robots with unlimited resources, right? If that's hypothetical, I would have gathered some great developers and create some amazing robots to have the best possible bidding experience with robots. You know, it's interesting. So I've got this web series that I'm working on,

[00:32:03] but it's been a long time. I'm calling it Bridge with Ballers. And the idea is to get primarily retired professional athletes to play Bridgemaster beginner deals. Yeah. And so there's this guy here locally who was a great college basketball player at the University of Virginia. His numbers retired. His name was Sean Singletary. And he loves the game Spades. Yeah. Which is very similar to Bridge in a lot of ways.

[00:32:33] It's a trick-taking game. It's a Trump game. So I've become friends with him recently. And I finally asked him to be on the Do It episode with me. And he agreed to it. And we were supposed to do it the other day, but it didn't work out for logistical reasons. But I did go over to his house. And I had asked him probably like a week prior. And so he told me he's been playing a lot of Bridge, you know, like on his phone. Like he downloaded some Bridge app. He'd never played before, but he downloaded some app. He said, I don't know how to bid.

[00:33:04] But the reason I bring it all up is just because we've got Tricky Bridge, which I recommend to people. But, you know, bidding and learning how to bid and not to be critical of what you're saying, because I would love for you to have the resources to do it. You know, I'd love for you to have the resources to teach bidding on Qubits. It just seems like very, it's like the opposite of what the app is right now. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I know.

[00:33:36] I agree. I completely agree. I think it would be cool to have a very good solid platform where you can learn bidding from the ground up, but it's a big project and I don't think... So this is definitely if I have unlimited resources, kind of. Yeah. What would you... Can I bounce it back to you? What would you... Sure. What would be your favorite feature for Qubits if you could create anything out of thin air or request it from me? Hmm.

[00:34:08] I mean, it would be... It probably would be something where it takes a lot of data of my data and compares my bids to, like, the best players on there and says, they did this, you did this. You know, good and bad. Yeah. Because like I said, I don't often... I mean, I really like it,

[00:34:37] but I also find that I'm sort of... Like, sometimes I won't realize that I only had five hearts. Like, I'll think I had six hearts. I'm not engaged with it necessarily in the depth to take, you know, best advantage of it. Because I play with a lot of different partners and so we're getting on the same page. It's not level of depth, but I also think that I'm not taking full advantage of the information that is in it. So you mean something similar to Leak Finder, but more specifically, like your specific choices,

[00:35:07] like trying to identify this choice seems odd. Yeah. What are you doing? Yeah, for sure. Bro, everyone is... For sure. Everyone is passing, but you're opening. For sure. So I'm playing the Transnationals with Alex Kolesnik. The Transnationals at the World Championships, they start on Monday, I think. And I had a hand yesterday where I was 7-4 in hearts and diamonds. And we're vulnerable

[00:35:34] and the opponents are not. And it goes like a spade on my right. I think my partner's a pass hand. Yeah, my partner's a pass hand. And I bid two hearts. Maybe I should bid four. I don't know. And it goes four spades on my left. Pass, pass. And now I think I had Ace-King. I think my partner had the Jack of hearts. I've got something like Ace-King 7th of hearts and Ace-King Jack 4th of diamonds. Oof.

[00:36:04] But this is just in a practice set. So I don't even know if anybody else is even bidding these deals. Yeah. Like, and I don't even look for that normally. Like, to see if other people. So I'm already. And so I just decided to double. And we got a decent score. But, I mean, I said in the chat, I said I wanted to do something, but I had no idea. Let's say that I bid 4-0 and partner bid five clubs. Am I now going to bid five diamonds?

[00:36:35] Did you have 1-1 in the blacks? Yeah, 1-1 in the blacks. I didn't know. I think he had Jack and one heart. So maybe I had a 10. I don't remember. But it's just. Yeah, it's definitely a tough situation for sure. And then there was another hand where it went two spades, I think. And I had like a 5-4-4-11 count.

[00:37:04] You had five spades or zero spades? Zero spades. Five hearts. And I doubled. I had like ace, fifth of hearts, king, fourth, king, fourth of the minors. I doubled. Now it goes four spades, all vulnerable, and my partner doubles. Yeah. And I'm like, fuck. Well, you had aces and kings. Probably this is good. But maybe it's just insanity.

[00:37:32] But I, I mean, I thought about bidding five spades. I thought about passing. I thought about. Anyway, I ultimately chose to bid 4-0. And now he bids five clubs. And we get smacked in that for like minus five plus hundred. And then, you know, he's got like. Yeah. You know, once the robot doubles you on Qubits, you're pretty much dead. They, they are pretty, what is it? Restricted, conservative with penalty doubles.

[00:38:02] So when, once they start penalty doubles, you don't have an escape path. There's nothing else. But it's interesting because I find that I'm not. Like some of the bids that I would make if I'm playing against humans, I don't make on Qubits because I, I'm not even sure if I can articulate exactly why I don't do it. I guess. I mean, it depends. If you're playing like a daily event on Qubits and you want to win,

[00:38:28] you care more about the stars and more about the results than your practice. Then it makes sense to not be as aggressive with preamps and stuff like that. Like I won't open maybe like a four, four, three, two, 11 count favorable because I'm thinking the robots are not going to misjudge it, I guess, which I don't know if that's even. Yeah. I mean, the robots don't really care about your hand. They, they will just be, try to be normally as, as normal as possible,

[00:38:56] but they are not very good at finding their games because on Qubits, you have maybe not the majority of points, but you always, your partnership always has some points. You're not going to be completely out of points. So the robots don't really care about constructive bidding. So they are more focused on being annoying and preemptive and stuff like that. So you don't have a big incentive to preempt their contracts most of the time.

[00:39:27] Right. Yeah. Like say I'm six, four on the minors or something. Like I like to open three in that, like. Yeah. I mean, yeah, sure. But I might not do it because I'm like the robots. Like I said, I can't make it explicit my reasons, but I just, in some way, I know that it's not. Yeah. Yeah. But your intuition is spot on. That's, that's how you should use Qubits. If you want to win, if you care about the stars, you need to be,

[00:39:56] you need to be a little bit more restrictive on your preempts, I guess. You posted something on Bridgewinners about a little over a year ago about Qubits and kind of like maybe introducing a lot of people to it that didn't know about it. At the time, it said you guys had 14,000 users. Yeah. Now it's 25, I think. So almost double since then. So yeah, it's going pretty well. There is a lot of new accounts created.

[00:40:24] I mean, some of them fizzle out into nothingness, obviously, but yeah, it's around 10 new registers every day for three or what is it? Three, almost four years. We'll have to see how many people join because of this podcast. See if there's an uptick. Yeah. So you're doing some stuff with Interbridge, like you've added their robot, which is called Leah. Yeah. So we have Leah on Qubits.

[00:40:53] We're partnered up with Interbridge. So you can bid with Leah on Qubits if you don't have a partner, if you just want to get some boards in really quickly. I also did a fair bit amount of work with Interbridge, helped them out with their website. They are a very good and very necessary, I think, competitor to BBO and Funbridge. So I think it's been a very good mutual experience. I hope that they consider the same. Yeah.

[00:41:22] I mean, as someone who uses both platforms, it's nice to see that you guys are, you know, and I like Stefan too. So it's nice to see that you guys are collaborating in that way. Yeah. I mean, it's been great. We did this pretty early on. I think it was more than maybe two years ago that we introduced Leah on the site or one and a half at least. And Luke, the guy creating Leah, has done an amazing job. I would say really splendid. He has basically done it all by himself, which is just massively impressive.

[00:41:52] Happy that we can use Leah on Qubits. How do you use Qubits? I think as a user. Yeah, I play the daily event. Not every day, but most of the days with different partners, sometimes with Leah. But I mean, usually I don't have a solid bridge partner right now. I'm playing with different people. And I would say most of the time when I actually use Qubits, I do it for testing.

[00:42:19] Most of my time is spent on testing new features and stuff. But as a user, I do play the daily event and maybe some challenges every now and then. But I'm not a bridge professional. I do compete. But I have to focus on creating the software, unfortunately. One of the pleasant surprises about being on the platform is I interviewed Tuva. I can't think of what her last name is. All of a sudden.

[00:42:49] Yeah, gosh. And that's her mom's name, which is who was the pro golfer. Anyway, so she sent me, I think it was her. I think we did a couple of those challenges, those eight board challenges. And then there's another American junior named Eric Zhao. And he sent me a bunch of challenges. We've done a bunch of, and we never even talked about it. We just sent it on the platform and there you go.

[00:43:15] So it's fun sometimes to get, well, you and I will have to do a daily or one of those eight board challenges together sometime. But I feel like you've made it easier to find people on the platform. I feel like maybe two years ago, it was harder to search by name for somebody. And it's gotten a lot easier. Yeah.

[00:43:38] I mean, we do take advantage of the fact that we don't have like a public place where you can chat with everyone. You have to kind of go through this ad friend process to reach out to people. But then we don't have to moderate too much what people are saying because they're in their own group. So they can chat whatever they want to chat about. Right. We used to have a small part of the website or the app where it was like a public chat.

[00:44:05] But we actually just removed it because we didn't feel like it was completely needed. But then, yeah, like you're saying, we need to flesh out the features to be able to find out whoever you're looking for to make it as smooth as possible. So when Joe and I were getting ready for the platinum pairs, we did a bunch of these eight board challenges where one of us would invite the other and then it would set us up against a random pair. Yeah, the ranked challenges. Like I was a jack for a long time.

[00:44:34] Now I'm a queen. Yep. So Joe's an ace. Yeah. So on Qubits, we have the ranked challenges. And there are these arbitrary ranks, jack, queen, king, ace. And when you play the ranked challenge, you're paired against someone on a similar rank as you are. Okay. And then if you win, you gain a star. And if you lose, you lose a star.

[00:44:59] And if you go up to five in a row, or not five in a row, but if you win more than you lose, you eventually reach the next rank. And then you're safety netted and you can't drop below that again. And then you can climb all the way to the ace. And once you reach the ace, then we shift over to a full ELO system where you have an miracle. So now as a queen, I can never go back to a jack? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Yeah. You're forever a queen or you can get a king if you keep going. So now you lose a star or you gain a star.

[00:45:30] So like, you start at 50. If you're on zero stars, so it works like this. You start on zero stars. If you win one, you now have one star. If you win another, you have two stars. If you lose, then you're back to one star. And then eventually you reach five, which is when you're put over to the next rank. I see. But now you have zero stars in this rank and you have to work your way up to five again. I got it. And this we just basically stole from Hearthstone, which has the exact same system.

[00:45:58] So we just took the exact system. And it's a great system. That's an online game? That is an online game by Blizzard. It's like a card game for like in a fantasy universe card game, like Magic the Gathering, similar to that. I like games. I played a lot of games like we touched on earlier. So yeah, I'm just drawing inspiration, let's say, from those games. Oh, it's so great when you can do that, you know?

[00:46:28] Like it's great. I mean, I'm sure it's like, you must have been so excited when you're like, oh, we can just use Hearthstone's ranking for this. Yeah, I mean, it's a simple solution. And it's a good one. Yeah. So then once you get to the ace, it's pure ELO? Yeah. What is that? So like if you go up or down based? Yeah. So you start on, I think you start on 1500.

[00:46:53] And then when you find an opponent, it will find someone reasonably close to your team's ELO value. And then if it's exactly the same, if you win, you gain 12 points, I think. And if you lose, you lose 12 points. But if you're facing someone challenging, if you're facing Klukovsky, if you win, you're going to get 20 points. And if you lose, you're going to lose one point or something like that. And then, so yeah, it makes it a little bit more fair, I guess.

[00:47:22] It is still arbitrary, like a little bit arbitrary on Cubist, right? Because bidding is a little bit random in nature. So you can definitely get unlucky or lucky. In chess, it's not too much luck involved. Do you think like, can you remember when, for example, like Klukovsky joined the platform or Joe joined the platform? Like, do you remember things like that? Not straight away.

[00:47:48] I know, I'm pretty sure Klukovsky joined very early or pretty early. I think Joe was a little bit later. I might be wrong. But I remember earlier in Qubit's life, I was watching every single new user. When they joined, I knew immediately.

[00:48:10] And I was like, you know, I'm always at my computer or a lot of time, a lot of my time I'm at my computer, either like doing something for fun or working on Qubit's. And I would see people join and I would like send message to Daniel or to the RimStats. And I was like, Bob Hammond, just join Qubit's. You know? See, I just joined Qubit's. That was fun stuff. I've stopped doing that now.

[00:48:37] Mainly because I think we have most of the top players, but still, it is interesting. I'm still waiting for Bill Gates to join. That would be cool. Oh, man. That would be the one. Yeah. How do you find out? Like, how does it notify you that a person can join? No, I don't. I have to just look at every single new and I hope that I can recognize them from like their username or email address or something like that. Yeah. And yeah, so maybe Bill Gates is already on Qubit. I have no idea.

[00:49:07] I haven't seen it yet. It was recently. It was a headline. I think it was this week that he said he's going to give away most of his fortune, which could be huge for Bridge. You know, like you talk about doing a beginner bidding app. I mean, not that he's going to give, you know, a big percentage of his fortune to it.

[00:49:27] But man, that's a huge opportunity for Bridge to just even a sliver of his wealth could be, you know, amazing what it could do. So, yeah, it's what we could do with it. It is crazy. Okay. So we'll do some of the more amusing questions. Sure. So I texted Ola and Michael together.

[00:49:59] And Michael said, been thinking, can't come up with any funny ones. Who's the best golfing bridge player is what he came up with. I mean, of course, when I read that, I'm like, he wants you to say it's him. Yeah, for sure. The worst part is I can't think of anyone better just because I need to find someone. Let me think about that. I will try to find someone that I know that is better than him.

[00:50:29] It's a tough one. He plays very well. Yeah. But Ola gave me a ton of questions. Who's the better skier between Simon Eckenberg and Ola Rimsstedt? They are both very bad. I'm going to give it to Ola for now, but I think Eckenberg would learn quicker if he tried. Who can eat the most meat between you and Simon Holt?

[00:50:59] I think I can beat him. Really? Not on every day. He's a pretty strong eater. I can eat a ton of meat. I think he might beat me 50%. We might be very tight. You and Simon. So I played with Simon in the fall NABC in 2024. And he'd lost a fair amount of weight. And he said you guys were working out together. Yeah, sometimes. We live for Stockholm.

[00:51:29] We live very far away from each other. So it's very tricky to find time to work out together. But yeah, we have done a few sessions. And he has been working out a lot and really tried to focus on his health. And I think it's very good. He's doing some good progress. Now it's been summer, so I definitely gained a few pounds back. But he was actually here yesterday.

[00:51:54] And we were using these apps to check on calorie intake and have some strategy going forward. I know he has a bet. So he has to win. He has to lose some weight. Oh, does he? Yeah. Are you going to be playing in the Transnationals? No. I don't. That's too bad. It's hard, right? I have a kid, three-year-old. Yeah. I have Cubans that I need to work on.

[00:52:21] And it is very tricky to squeeze in all the events for Bridge. I would love to go to more stuff. But I have San Francisco planned in December or November. And I think that there might be some Swedish events that I need to attend as well. Yeah, there is a lot. I would love to go, but I have to prioritize the family as well. What are you working on right now on Cubans? You have to work on it.

[00:52:49] It seems like to me, I mean, you're probably going to laugh when I say this. It seems like it works pretty well. I love it. I think that's what I want to hear. I mean, I do think it's on a very good level right now. I have very few harsh criticisms. And most of the things are positive or suggestions for new features. So yeah, I'm mainly working on new features.

[00:53:14] I have some very simple stuff that I really should have done a long time ago that I need to accomplish. One of those is a high contrast mode for people with worse or less bad vision of some sort. Yeah. Or maybe you're in an environment where your lighting is bad. So there's going to be a new contrast mode, which is super bright. And it's going to be easier to see everything. Stuff like that.

[00:53:42] Like, you know, health check stuff that every app should have. But you put it away until it never is done, right? How many languages are there in the app? There's four. We have English, Swedish, French, and Polish. And that's one of the other things that we could do. We could expand on that. It's extremely boring. But now with AI, we can definitely expedite how fast you translate. Even though it's not perfect, you get a lot for free.

[00:54:12] And then you can just ship that to someone native who can adjust it. How does it work? Like, now that you've been doing it, like, this is your job. What's your workflow like when you're working as Qubits as your job versus when you're working for whatever company you did software development for? Do you mean, like, professionally or, like, how my life is put together? Yeah.

[00:54:39] Like, how do you set the times that you're going to work? Like, for example, I used to work for a hedge fund and I had to be at the office from 9 to 4 o'clock most days. So I would get there and, you know, I would do my work. But I would also do some at home. But, yeah, like, it must be, you know, it's a lot different because you don't have anybody looking over your shoulders or you don't have the deadlines are all self-imposed is essentially what I would think is. It's a very good question. And it's a very tricky one because it's very multifaceted.

[00:55:09] And there is a lot that goes into it. You have, like, how the self-discipline part where you're like, I should be working. I should actually sit down at my computer as soon as possible and do a lot of work. And you have the other aspect where you have to work because you get support questions. You get someone, the app is crashing or something happens, right, that you have to respond to.

[00:55:34] So now that it is my full-time job and it's my project and I have to take care of it, life is completely different. So I used to, when I was working with my companies, I would obviously work in the office most of the time, maybe sometimes from home. I would go there like every normal person.

[00:55:55] And then I come back and maybe I work on Qubits for an hour or a couple of hours or maybe I play video games, you know, hang with the family, do things like that. And now it is, you have to find some kind of weird balance. But it's extremely, extremely tough because I've created this like massive dragon.

[00:56:20] That is my, it is my company and it's, I have to slay this dragon or every day. So I can't play video games to kill pigs in a forest or something like that. It's not interesting to me anymore. So it's, everything has definitely changed. I have to work uncomfortable hours, but I also have full flexibility of when I want to work, when things are going smoothly, right, today. So today I can go to the gym, I can have a conversation with you and I don't have to be stressed.

[00:56:49] It is life-changing for sure. Everything has changed, but I enjoy it even though it is tough some days. I mean, I think the testimony that, you know, like the user that you'd be the most excited to join for Bill Gates, I think that's the fact that you, you know, mentioned him just after Bob Hammond, you know, or Zia joining or whoever. Like, I think that's quite a testimony. Like, let's say, for example, you met Bill Gates at, like, would you go up to him at the tournament if he's there?

[00:57:19] Or if you had the opportunity to speak to him, let's say you, like, had dinner, you know, like, what would you, what do you think you would talk to him about? Wow. I think I would be more interested in hearing his, like, his journey, what he's been doing for his entire life. It's extremely inspiring, obviously. I don't really know how good he is at bridge.

[00:57:46] Maybe I would ask some bridge questions as well and see, like, gauge out how strong he is. And obviously, if I could introduce Qubits on the side, that would be very cool. But, you know, like I said before, I'm not really a business person. I don't put my mind, like, I have to do the analysis here to make this the best, most profitable company ever. I just want to ship cool features and then this happens to work out, I think.

[00:58:13] So I don't know if I would even approach, you know. Maybe I wouldn't. I don't know. Maybe I get a chance in San Francisco. That was another one of the questions that Ola asked is, you could work for Amazon, Google, Facebook, all these companies. How come we're choosing to? I don't know. I didn't, it feels like I didn't choose. I feel like I made this hobby project, this passion that I wanted to do. And it grows and grows.

[00:58:42] And then eventually, it's something I have to take care of or it will drop off. And now it's my baby, right? I have to take care of it. I love it too much to let it go. So I would decline any offers from Google, any offers from Amazon. I would just, I have to do this. It's my life, it's my life work, I think. Like, yeah. Do you get headhunted ever by, you know, software?

[00:59:09] I used to get headhunted every day, five times a day, maybe. Wow. Not anymore. Since I changed my LinkedIn profile to be like, I am running my own company. It doesn't even say I'm a developer anymore. The headhunting has definitely slowed down a lot. So that's very nice. How has AI changed your workflow? Actually, quite a bit.

[00:59:35] I started integrating AI not in the app itself, but when I work. I have shut GPT open a lot of the time. I have these other developer-focused AIs that helps me write code. If I think the task that I'm working on is easy enough for an AI to understand, if it's not that complex or if it's not that much bridge-specific things, because it does not understand bridge at all.

[01:00:04] So I can get some help, like churning out many rows of code, and then I can inspect what it's doing instead of actually typing everything myself. That works beautifully. So I'm saving lots of time using AI. I think most developers that are not working in high-security jobs, if it hasn't already, it's going to change the landscape of how you do development.

[01:00:32] Eventually, it's going to take over for sure. It's a massive impact for me. Using ChatGTP, it just is amazing how intuitive it is. For me, I don't use it for anything nearly as technical as what you're doing, but I put some investment returns for a fund in it the other day, and it just completely calculated everything. And then it would be like, do you want me to tell you this?

[01:01:00] And I was like, wow, this is so powerful. It's mind-boggling how insanely fast this is growing. It's only been a few years since we had these applications online. Is it two years? I don't know. It's not that long. And it's already crazy powerful. So, yeah, we are heading for a very interesting future.

[01:01:30] I am a little bit afraid of that, but let's not get too into it. I mean, it's so intuitive. That's the thing that is so intuitive. I could ask that question, what should I ask Emmanuel? And I just said a follow-up, like one follow-up, and it knew exactly. And it gave me these great questions that I hadn't really... Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I use ChatGPT for a lot of things, but...

[01:01:58] Like, if you want to have a presentation or if you're... Like, basically anything. If you're going to type a complex email or a newsletter, or you need to just bounce questions. Like I said, I'm a big nerd and I love games. So, obviously I play Dungeons & Dragons as well. And being like this... Obviously, I'm also the Dungeon Master, so I have to create these worlds.

[01:02:22] I want to create these worlds and have them as rich as possible with NPCs or non-playing characters and goals, events, everything. And I use ChatGPT a lot for help when it comes to world creation. It's like super good. And I also have this massive document where I save everything from these sessions.

[01:02:47] So, I re-upload this entire document for everything that ever happened in our sessions to ChatGPT every time I ask it questions. Because then it knows everything about our games, even though it spanned three years. We played the same campaign for three years, and it knows everything that happened. And so, I can ask you, what should this character be doing right now? Do you have any ideas? And it instantly responds like,

[01:03:13] yeah, maybe the last time you saw her, it was in this mountain. You know, it's very, very, very useful. I have to just... So, for people that are watching or listening to this, I have to just give some props to Emmanuel. So, one of the things that I learned, I did this class during COVID. So, this was a woman who is a casting director for actors, who is in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I live.

[01:03:42] That's where she... And I got to know her just through being both living here. It's a smallish city. And she did this class about being on Zoom. And one of the things that she taught us, which I've really taken to heart as a podcast host, is you want to position your camera so that it is kind of right where you're looking. So, I started now putting my browser right underneath.

[01:04:13] So, my camera's sitting on top of my screen. And then I put the browser with you in it right underneath the camera so I can look at the camera. And then that provides, for the people that are watching this on YouTube, it looks like we're looking at each other. Yeah, exactly. And so, I'm telling people all of this because at the start of our conversation, Emmanuel was looking sort of to the side at his screen because his camera is on the side of his monitor.

[01:04:42] And just like a champ, this entire conversation, this hour and 15 minutes, you have looked directly at the camera. So, you can't really see what my reaction is to what you're saying strictly to make it, you know, for the best viewing experience for people watching. And so, I just want to say that I've admired this. I admire you.

[01:05:11] And I appreciate, you know, that you're doing this. Yeah, and I see, you know, steal a glance occasionally over there. But I just have to say, you know, like it's a small thing, but it's, I really appreciate it. And I think it speaks to why Qubids is such a success and why, you know, I'm excited to share this conversation and, you know, grateful to have it as part of my, you know, British life. Well, thank you so much. And now that you've brought it

[01:05:40] to my attention again, now it's even worse. Now I'm like, I have to look straight into the... And I have you in my, like, peripheral view a little bit on the side. It is a little bit weird, but, you know, I made a few YouTube videos for Qubid as well, like explaining some concepts or, like, sharing new features and stuff like that. And it's kind of the same thing. I have to look into the camera. I can't see myself.

[01:06:09] And it is a bit challenging. Maybe I should have done this on my laptop where I obviously could use my regular webcam, but this is a bit higher quality and I don't know. Thank you for appreciating the work. Now I see you've got some... I didn't realize what that was, but now I see you've got, like, looks like you've got two microphones with your setup here. Yeah. This is something that blocks... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:06:39] That's the screen. This is the microphone itself. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you've got a pro setup. Love that. Now everybody has the pro audio setup, you know, for this. This is actually thanks to my wife, Erica. She's, like, a pretty good singer. She competes in singing. Oh, wow. She's a great singer. Let's not say pretty good. I was going to say almost professional, but then that felt, like, too much. So I'm back to pretty good. But she's a great singer

[01:07:07] and she does these, like, recordings at home. So, like, most of the microphone technical stuff is from her. I've added the camera, but yeah. Yeah. Thanks to Erica. So you two share this computer, then? Yeah, we... At least sometimes. She doesn't work at the computer too much, but she's welcome to use it anytime. She works in a school as, like, vice principal.

[01:07:35] So she's not at home during the day. So she probably is about to start that up here. I mean, school's starting here, at least to where I live is starting. Yeah, first week. It started this week. First week, yeah. Since she's the vice principal, she also works during the summer. It's not like she has a summer-long vacation like she used to when she was a teacher. But yeah, now school is starting up, so everything is more stressful than usually. So probably not going to just, you know,

[01:08:04] on a... What's the word I'm looking for? Whim? On a whim. Probably not just going to, on a whim, go down to the... You know, it's probably not that far, though, to play in the Transnationals. Oh, yeah. When is it exactly? I think it starts on Monday. I think you can sign up. I don't know if you can sign up the day of, but maybe you can sign up the day of. I mean, I wish we could go and have some fun, but it's not going to happen this time.

[01:08:32] But we have some plans to do some bridge event in the future together. Together, I mean, we don't know which one yet. Perhaps just Swedish mixed championship. That could be something. And so San Francisco, you'll be there? I will be in San Francisco. I have everything booked, at least hotel and flight. And yeah, hopefully that will be good. I don't have any plans.

[01:08:59] I just go there and set up shop and see what happens. That's how I normally do it. I feel like I stole your partner a little bit at the summer NABC last year with Daniel. I ended up playing with him. Oh, yeah, you played with him. Yeah. How did you like that? Did you enjoy it? Yeah, let's see. We won... You won two days or three? Oh, yeah. We played with the Israelis. And we lost to Rosenthal.

[01:09:29] I've played Rosenthal... That's a tough one. I think three or four times now. I've played them once in the US trials, but I have not come close to beating them yet. You know, actually, this Monday, I actually played with Aaron in our Swedish bridge club. We were part guys. Aaron Silverstein? Yeah. Very round. Oh, really? Yeah. He and his daughter, Averin, they were visiting before going to Denmark. And we have this QBITS team

[01:09:58] in our top division in our bridge club. Yeah. And Castor, one of our team members, he invited them to play with us. So I actually got to sit with Aaron for 24 boards. Oh, that's cool. How did you guys do? I think we lost by nine or something like that. It was a tough game. We didn't have any systems. We missed... Me and Aaron missed a grand where he jumped to six hearts, not asking for key cards.

[01:10:26] If he knew I had all the key cards, I think we would have played seven. But yeah, it's tough when you don't know what you're doing, right? Was Avery your teammate in the... Yes. Did Avery play... She played with Castor. Got it. So Avery and Castor played and I played with Aaron. Yeah, it's great to see. I've known Avery since the previous time in Toronto when she was like eight years old. And it's great to see her get into bridge,

[01:10:56] which I think you've got a story about, actually, that Toronto, based on some of my research. I do. I was going to say, should I bring that up? No, hit me with it. That is probably my best bridge memory or definitely my best bridge memory ever. Me and my non... It was not my wife at the time. It was me and my friend Erica. We went to Toronto with, again, no plans. We didn't have any set plans. And when we get to Toronto, we were like,

[01:11:26] maybe we can find someone to play with in the... Is it Spingold? I don't even remember the name. Spingold, yeah. Spingold. And we were paired up with these guys. I lost their names for a blank moment here, but they were like previous junior champions in Canada or something like that. And they had had a long break from bridge, but they were just returning. They didn't have anyone to play with, so we played with them.

[01:11:55] We were seeded like the worst seed possible. I think 104 or like 110 or something like that. Because I don't have any master points in the US. I do now. I have a few now, but I had zero master points. Erica had like one master point or something like that. And these guys also had like not too much, so we were seeded like the worst. And then we're going to play our first round against Stroul. Yeah. Stroul. And I don't remember exactly

[01:12:24] who was on that team anymore, but it was... I remember there was the Egyptian pair. Like, I don't remember. Anyway, the Egyptians... They were seeded fourth, I think. So we were fourth from the bottom and they were... Or maybe the top three had a bye and we were actually the worst ones. Yeah. And we played 60 boards against these guys and somehow we came out victorious. So we actually knocked them out in the very first round, which is... I mean, I can't even begin to describe

[01:12:54] the feeling when you're like comparing outside the playing hall. And we had all of the Swedish pros lined up because they were like super interested in what was going on. Wow. Maybe for our sake, but also for their own sake. Like this massive setup. What is it called? Not setup. Upset. Upset, obviously. Yeah. So we were comparing. We had maybe 50 people

[01:13:23] hanging over our shoulder doing the final comparison and we didn't even get to do the imps. You know, someone took the scorecard from me. I think it was like Sandra Rims that was doing it or maybe it was Cecilia or someone like that. So we were not even part of the scoring and then we won with like four imps. Wow. I mean, we have so many good memories from that match. I don't know if I should get into them or not, but I can bring up one that was very fun.

[01:13:53] We had had a very like rough first 30 minutes of play because the Egyptian pair was, in my opinion, not very professional. They were pushing very hard to make Erika uncomfortable. Maybe not intentionally. Maybe this is just their act, but they were pushing very hard on her like self-esteem and stuff like that. So we had like almost a breakdown in the beginning where we're like, can we even continue playing?

[01:14:22] Because it was very rough. Yeah, it was bad. We got our shit together and then we had a couple of lucky breaks where we were like, we played a pretty bad slam and made that slam, which made them extremely upset. Yeah. And then there was this one hand where I didn't open an 11 count or maybe a 10 count, 10 or 11 count. I passed it firsthand. It went past and Eric opened one club. We played transfer clubs and we were non-vulnerable

[01:14:51] against vulnerable and they didn't over call. I bid one speed transfer to no Trump and she bid one no. And I decided I'm just going to pass this out. I'm not even going to make an invitation. She's third hand. She could be weak. We had previously discussed that we should open light in third. We should do some swingy things against these guys. So I decided to pass. One no.

[01:15:22] But now this guy on my left, he couldn't really like let this go. Right. So they are vulnerable and we are trying to steal the contract in one no. And that's usually not great. So he reopens the bidding with double, right? My right, he has no bid. So he has passes. I could opt for a redouble here, but maybe that was too aggressive. I was happy playing one no doubled. So as I just passed it out and when they led and I done with my 11 count,

[01:15:52] you know, that's a good feeling. They called the director on me now. They were like, they called the director and the director was like, what are you even calling me for? There was nothing to be said, but they were very upset. So this was like the beginning of the comeback from this breakdown that we had earlier on. And we kept going. We had a very nice attitude

[01:16:22] like trying to push this thing back. Yeah. We won the first set. Second set was tied. We lost the third set a little bit or maybe we pushed that as well. And the funny thing is that when they had seating rights, they chose us. And when we had seating rights, we chose them back. Like we really tried to play the mental game. And it worked. It worked. Yeah. That was amazing. Can you think of what the name of the Canadian guys were?

[01:16:53] Mark and David, I would say. But I'm not 100% sure. And I know one of them passed away. I think David passed away a couple of years ago. I remember Kevin Rosenberg actually at the same tournament. They beat Monaco in the first round. No, it wasn't. It was at the same time. I didn't pay attention to anything. So I had to be with our results. We were in like this little bulletin newspaper,

[01:17:23] the first front page on that. Not the entire front page, just the side column, which was... I've still saved that piece of newspaper. You have it framed? No. I should. I should. Yeah, you should. I should get to that. You should. If anyone who's listening to this or watching this podcast, there is like a full breakdown of this set against Struhl on Bridge Winners. There's like an article somewhere. It's called Kaplan Upset Struhl.

[01:17:53] A Tale from an Underdog. And it's a very good article that my wife wrote. And I translate it. We will put that in the show notes for people. Sounds good. All right, Emmanuel. It has been a pleasure. Like I said, I'm really grateful for what you're doing with Qubits and excited to share this conversation with our audience. Likewise.

[01:18:23] It's been wonderful talking to you. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. See you in San Francisco. Indeed. We'll hit up Bill Gates together there. Let's do that. Yeah. Let's see if he's there.