Ep: 108: Luc Bellicaud on Building Lia, the Bridge Robot Beating Humans at Their Own Game

Luc Bellicaud:

And the same debate came around when we introduced the coach AI. Because I didn't really want to be the one showing up to the user. Now I have to be really focused on the same thing. Because otherwise people are going to complain directly about me. Because Luc is giving some bad advice to them. I hope it makes it feel a bit more human. If you look at bridge robots competition, which is. Really a nerd thing. You'll see that the robots really enjoy to do preempts, like bidding three hearts and then bidding five hearts and four spade. And we have no clue why. We have the second biggest club and yeah, it's going quite well.

Every week we have four or five tables. We are offering some pizzas. Yeah.

John McAllister:

That's like the international bridge. You know, fishing lure. Hello, my name is John McAllister and I am excited to introduce my guest today who is a three time junior world champion. He is the developer of the IntoBridge robot, Lia. And he is also, I forgot to ask him how to pronounce his last name, Luc Bellicaud. Bellicaud?

Luc Bellicaud:

That was almost perfect. Bellicaud.

John McAllister:

Almost perfect. And also the first French man or woman to appear on the setting trick. Luc, is a pleasure to have you.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, it's a pleasure for me to be here too.

John McAllister:

So the reason that I wanted to interview you is because I'm pretty good friends with the founder of IntoBridge, Stefan Skorchev. And you guys just released, I think it was this week. A new platform or a new, what do you call it? So there's something called coach. Yeah. New feature called Coach Luc, where you are giving

[Unclear short interjection]

John McAllister:

Coach Luc, excuse me. Isn't as in like an AI created thing and is giving a feedback on bidding.

Luc Bellicaud:

Exactly. Yeah. So basically Coach Luc is a. An AI coach that was created to help beginner and intermediate players to improve their bridge skills. And yeah, we release the beta of it on Monday, so this week. And our goal is to help bridge to grow for beginner to be able to have some. Easily available lessons and to correct some mistakes. So for now it's only for the bidding, but I'm already working on the card play and yeah, the goal is to have a fully functional AI coach.

John McAllister:

So I play pretty much every day. I play the daily celebrity challenge on IntoBridge. And sometimes if I, the only time I think I've heard from Coach Luc is if they disagree with one of my bids.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. The coach is, is, is really coming in place when he thinks you, you did a clear mistake. So he's not always there when he thinks you could have done better, but it's not so clear. Maybe it's a style issue. So we really want to focus on clear mistake. A beginner open one heart with five hearts and eight points. You say, okay, that's clearly wrong. I want to say something about this. So goal of this is not for experts to know if they should have done a grand slam try or such a thing, but it's not so easy to calibrate because the coach is based on Lia, the robot of IntoBridge.

And for a robot, it's not always easy to detect what is easy and what is difficult. We are trying to only display the coach when there are clear-cut mistakes, but that's not trivial. So yeah, we are working on it, but it's doing a decent job already, I think.

John McAllister:

So, so like you actually, it's sort of like better that I have an interface with Coach Luc, because I think I've played all five daily celebrity challenges this week and I've only seen Coach Luc a couple of times.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. So yeah, basically because you are not the target of the tool. If you are already a bridge expert, you won't see him often and when you see him, probably say, sorry, sorry about that. You probably say, okay, that's just a style issue or even maybe, okay, that's totally wrong. The coach is totally off this one. So it's not, you are not really the target, but from the feedback we got, People intermediate and beginners people are really excited about it. They really like it. And yeah, I'm very happy about it because it's a lot of work and I've been on it since a lot of time now.

John McAllister:

One of the things that I'm intrigued about is can I send it? Like I've got some friends who want to learn Bridge. Can I tell them, log into IntoBridge, find a game, is that going to teach them?

Luc Bellicaud:

There is a small gap between being a total beginner and using Coach Luc because he's already, like if you open one heart with, let's keep the same example with eight points, he's already going to tell you, you have only eight high card points and you need 12 of them. He'll display what high card points are. It's not so easy to just jump in because we are not explaining the rules. So yeah, it's better if you really had some lessons to just to explain the rules and the super basic things. And then it's perfect. Yeah, we are missing this little gap at the moment between the full beginner and the. The guy who had a few lessons already.

John McAllister:

So if I get some friends over and I teach them like the basics, you think I can send them to Coach Luc now?

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, that's perfect. That's a good time.

John McAllister:

Cause, cause I, do have a lot of people that, they want to learn bridge, know, like I'm enthusiastic. I'm a passionate, I'm passionate about bridge and it would be great to be able to just send them. You know, to some, mean, I feel like if you want to learn bridge, you need some sort of human element. There's not just some book you can give somebody. There's not just some program you can give somebody where they're going to take off at least people like that. As far as I know that have come from just that sort of, thing are, are rare.

I, and I also feel that there's like a latent curiosity about bridge that, you know, people, you know, they, don't necessarily know anybody that they just, they're, they're aware of it and they're, people that are curious about it and they're like, they want to learn. Know, sometimes maybe it's not, maybe, maybe that's not that true. You know, maybe they're, maybe it means they, they're interested, but if it's like, Push comes to shove, they're not really interested.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. I guess the social part of the social part of which is really why people are getting in a lot of time because our friends are getting in and so on. It's, it's, in my opinion, it's a lot better if they start for them to start with some friends and to get in a club and you are three or four beginners and you have a teacher. That's, that's much more easy. That's much easier. Sorry. Yeah. Coach Luc is kind of, is great for beginners or intermediate players who really want to improve their game, quickly and say, yeah, they are more interested by the technical part of it and the social aspect and meeting your friends.

These are not opposite of course, but yeah. I really agree with you. On the fact that it's not easy to start bridge and having some friends to do so is the best you can to start. I'm also teaching in real life to some beginners in my youth club in Lille. It's a city in the north of France. I'm doing both so I kind of know what are their needs and what they understand, what they do not understand. This is really helpful as a developer to know about all the bridge levels when I'm coding Lia and Coach Luc, which are kind of the same thing.

John McAllister:

Yeah. So I understand that you and your girlfriend who amusingly works for. A different bridge company, Funbridge, which apparently is a hundred meters from your apartment, the office. I heard you guys have like a, you have like a club for people under 40 who you're teaching them and everything's completely free there.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, that's specific to all city is the thing that was created by the French Federation. And my girlfriend is in charge of it. So there are about 10 clubs like this in France, mostly in the biggest city in France. The biggest one is in Paris. We have the second biggest club and there some in Lyon, Nantes, basically the big city in France. And yeah, it's going quite well. Every week we have four or five tables. We are offering some pizzas. Yeah. That's like the

John McAllister:

International fishing lure.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. People are free to come if they, if they like it. Some are coming every week. Some are coming like once every, every month. And, yeah, people are enjoying.

John McAllister:

When do you do the, when did they, when you have like a set time, like a Wednesday night or something? Does it, when does it happen?

Luc Bellicaud:

From seven to 10 basically every Wednesday.

John McAllister:

Oh, wow. So I got it. I guess the right day. So what's the format?

Luc Bellicaud:

So yeah, it depends. We are three teachers. So my girlfriend's another friend who works at Funbridge too, and me and. And yeah, we have three groups, three groups, a beginner, intermediate and advanced. Usually I take the advanced class and I'm giving a lesson, but we switch regularly. So we can do whatever we want with the group. Have either we give a lesson or we play some boards that we played on the weekends that were interesting or we just play some random boards. Sometimes we even do some board games instead of bridge. Yeah, that's, it's really, we can do whatever we want. And people like it and they come back.

And so this is the second year that this club exists. And for the first time this year, we send some total beginners into the inter-club. This is a French competition where clubs are playing against each other. And yeah, we, some, some beginners were able to play this for the first year and they actually qualified for the next one. We were, we were happy about it. And yeah, that's, we, we hope it will keep going like this.

John McAllister:

You get the actual space for free?

Luc Bellicaud:

Yes, because, we are. We are using the bridge club of Lille. So right now, the way we have the money for it is half of the funds are coming from the French Federation and half of the funds are coming from our local bridge organization. So in France, it's split between like 20 or 30 things of this kind. So it's kind of a budget for them, but I think it's worth it. So yeah, they are paying for this job to work.

John McAllister:

What's it like having your girlfriend work for like a rival bridge website?

Luc Bellicaud:

That's quite weird. So for a long time, I had quite a weird status because I. I also worked for Funbridge at the same time that I was working for IntoBridge. But I worked for Funbridge. So for IntoBridge, I was working as a developer, as the developer of the robots. And for Funbridge, I was working to create content for them, like videos, article, and so on. But this stopped lately because Funbridge was quite mad that I. I said on the Bridge Winners post that the robots used to be cheating a few years ago.

I didn't really understand why they were so mad about it, but they were very mad and they told me they were very mad and they didn't want to work with me anymore. I'm fine with it. I didn't do much for them anyway. It's quite peculiar because we can't really openly talk to each other about what's going on in our company. But yeah, it's fine. We can live with it definitely.

John McAllister:

Noticed you had a, so the Bridge Winners post that you're referring to, posted about, I think it was like AI in Bridge was the topic. And you were writing about how the IntoBridge robot, Lia, Like how she learns and how you're training her to play. And I did notice that both Jerome Rumbaud, who was I think maybe the founder of Funbridge.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, founder, co-founder. Yeah.

John McAllister:

Co-founder. And then also you got Uday Ivaturi, who was the CEO of BBO for a long time, I think. Both of them commented on this robot thing.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, I realized later that I was probably a little bit too aggressive with BBO and Funbridge. For FunBridge, I wasn't even trying to, it was basically a misunderstanding. I didn't expect them to get angry. But what I said, because it was something that they were doing before and not even now. This is, so I'm referring to. Helping the robot by giving the robot a real deal so they play a little bit better just to improve their speed and level in the card play. Yes, were not, Funbridge was not happy about it. And basically about Gib, I was just saying that it was really bad right now in the world of the robot, which is full.

Like if you play on IntoBridge and you play on BBO. You will definitely notice that there is a big gap between the two robots.

John McAllister:

Yeah, think that's definitely clear that there's a big gap. Now, will you please say the word again? Because you said, I didn't understand it. I knew what you were talking about, but I'm familiar with it. I didn't understand the word you said for. Basically, here, I'll say it and then you can comment. So basically, among. I think maybe you give. The robot on IntoBridge, maybe 10 deals that it uses as a possible layout and in it is the actual full deal. Included as the full deal. Then the rationale for this is that if Lia didn't have access to that information, It would be unplayably slow in terms of like decision making.

It wouldn't be a good experience for users, I think is kind of how I understood it.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, there are two things. So first of all, this is only for the card play. Okay. The bidding is just no extra information. And for the card play, we use the full deal. For two reason, one, it plays faster because we can reduce the number of samples because it's less likely to do a mistake when she has access to the real deal. And the second reason is that, what did I say for the first reason? It's faster.

John McAllister:

Speed.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. And it's better. So it's a better experience for the user. So my goal is that On IntoBridge, feel like Lia is playing like an expert. I, my goal is that she's doing the same mistakes that an expert could do. And, but she doesn't blow away tricks in position where it doesn't make any sense to, to, to blow tricks. So, I don't want her to blow tricks when she's overruffing, when she's playing a weird card in second position, like, so yeah, I'm trying to. Copy humans is the way Lia is coded.

This is why it was quite easy to develop Coach Luc on top of it because I think of Lia like a human that has the same set of rules and I'm trying to explain to her what competitive bidding is, what playing high in third is, low in second is. And, uh, and yeah, I think it's, it's doing quite a decent job, even if there are a lot of things to improve. Uh, I am quite happy about the road that Lia has taken. And, uh, I think it's, it's pleasant to play with her, even if there are some, some big mistakes from time to time, which looks very weird for, for human. Uh, it's overall very decent.

John McAllister:

Yeah. You said that. In the Bridgewinners, in the comments, you said that maybe she guesses Queens too often because of this situation.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. Since then, I've tried to improve this specific matter. I work on this kind of subject, but I've improved it a bit lately, so she knows a bit less when she's declarer. She has more help when she's playing with a human than when she's playing against a human. So the goal is that it's less frustrating when you are in defense. And when Lia is doing a mistake and you are partnering her in defense, it's much more frustrating than when she's declarer and she blows the trick away. Yeah, this is my goal is to make a pleasant bridge experience. So, yes, this, yeah, this is, this is not how I thought about it at the beginning.

Was just trying to make a really the best I could, but I realized that I had to take some technical decision because otherwise it was a bridge robot is too bad right now. So, for make a pleasant card play experience, I had to make some little twists like this one. I think it's worth it. Some people disagree, but I think most of the people do not even realize it and they are happy about it.

John McAllister:

It does seem a little like It's surprising if you don't know about it. I really like playing with it against Lia. I don't think you guys hide it either.

Luc Bellicaud:

We try to display it every time someone asks a question. We clearly redirect to some article where it's And yeah, we are trying to be transparent about it. But people do not always understand why we are doing this. I get why it's, some people think it's just like cheating, I don't agree with that, but I understand the point of view.

John McAllister:

So let's go, starting with the name. Like how do you develop? Like what's the starting point for developing a robot?

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, that's that's a tough question. So I started working on IntoBridge as an internship and my mission was to create a bridge robot, was this antenna to play on the platform. And clearly I was alone on the subject. So IntoBridge is a really small company right now. Are only four, four persons working there. And I was alone on the subject, like nobody was there to help me. I just went out of engineering school and they tried to do robots and I was quite clueless at the time. And I was really lucky because, at the same time, Laurent Dali, who is a guy working on robots now for BBO.

He wasn't working at the time for BBO and he released Ben, an open source robot. And I was a bit lost and I, I started implementing, Ben, on IntoBridge. So at the very beginning of IntoBridge, had Ben on the clear and, and what I did, yeah. Yeah. And what I did was first working on the bidding system. So Lia would do the bidding and Ben would do the card play. And then Lia took over the card play too. And for the card play, was really inspired by what was done by Ben. So I'm all the robot basically, which are, we went over this a bit quickly earlier, but the way a bridge robot work.

It's creating samples based on the bidding and the previous card played and it's solving them double dummy to find the best card. So it's the best average number of tricks on all the best score in him. Whatever. So this is how the card play works. And on top of this, which is the basic of a bridge robots, are a ton of extra layers to fix it a little bit because It's not, it's, it's work well. Well, it's, it's stable and it works decently, but it can get really messy quite quickly. So, so you have to, to do a lot of small fixes on top of it.

And for the bidding, Lia is really different from the other robots because she doesn't choose any sampling. So when she always. Has some rules to choose between different bids. While other robots, when they do not know what's going on, they just sample it. They create sample and they try to guess what is the best contract. Well, Lia doesn't do that at all. For example, when she's guessing if she should bid five hearts or five diamonds in competitive bidding, she will just evaluate the voids, how many defensive tricks she has and stuff, how many partner.

Many tricks partners should have in this bidding sequence and based on this to get some decision going. It's very different from the other robots and I think, I hope it make it feel a bit more human. If you look at which robot competition, which is really a nerd thing, you'll see that Uh, the robots really enjoy to do preempts like bidding three hearts and then bidding five hearts and fours. Wait, and we have no clue why. Well, we know technically, but humans do not do that. Uh, and Lia do not do that either for the same reason as a human do not do it.

We say, okay, if you choose to preempt at this level, you should not bid again at two rounds later. So, uh, so yeah. This is how I built a robot. Had no clue what I was doing and I, for some reason it ended up working.

John McAllister:

What was the first thing you coded into it?

Luc Bellicaud:

I started with two players bidding. Just trying to find the major fit. So first bidding the game in NoTrump when you had 25 points and finding the major fit. But usually when I find a piece of code that I did a bit more than two years ago is when I started, I throw it to the trash because I think it's really bad and I would never have done this this way now. And yeah, I started with two players bidding and then I created-

John McAllister:

Like how do you explain to the robot what bridge is?

Luc Bellicaud:

So- So the bidding sequence is in three steps. So, so first she's looking at the sequence and the previous explanation and she's, she's saying exactly what each bid means. So one club, heart, one spade is four spades, five spades, one no-trump is eight, 10 with a heart stopper and whatever. And she does that for all the bid. And then she. Check for each bid if the hand she has fits the bid. So if there is only one bid which fits perfectly, it's perfect. If she has four spades and six points, she does a negative double, for example.

And the part where it gets complicated is when she has multiple valid bids and when she doesn't find any valid bid. And then that's the panic part. I don't know what to do because I don't know. I have eight club and four hearts and 12 points and it doesn't fit exactly my one club bid and it doesn't fit exactly my five club bit. Need to find something. And then I have some extra rules on top of that to pick the less worse of the option. And that's really where Lia is doing some. We are [unclear words] most of the time when she doesn't know. Yeah.

John McAllister:

There was a hand in the daily challenge this week where Lia had like four little, ace fourth, King Jack third and ace and one. They opened a bidding a diamond and it went one spade overcall and now I've bid two clubs and Lia rebid two diamonds with this hand. And I had ace and one diamond and I had six clubs and I was thinking about passing. It never, I ended up bidding three clubs. I think maybe, or maybe I've been to Spain. Don't remember anyway, I ended up getting to a contract of three clubs and I was very happy when I saw the dummy that I hadn't passed.

Luc Bellicaud:

So yeah, I know this ends. In IntoBridge, as you know, you can report a bot when something got wrong. I'm trying at least to read all the feedbacks and to fix them when something is going wrong. If you feel like something is wrong about earlier bid, feel free to report it. About this one specifically, I know that this is kind of a philosophy thing between Americans and French people sometimes struggle to know what Americans will do in this specific position. In France, it's considered as normal to be two diamond by default when you don't a [unclear words]. Because it's forcing.

And I discovered recently in Gavin's intermediate lessons that two diamond is non-forcing

John McAllister:

In the US.

Luc Bellicaud:

And I actually fixed it for. One major opening, not for one diamond opening. So now I have to fix this one too. That, yeah, I learned that it was, it was non-forcing for, for Americans to, to bid two two of your suits in this position. Yeah.

John McAllister:

There was another hand too, where, where, you had like, Lia opened a bidding a club and it went heart. And I had like, maybe they bid like three hearts or something and I had a negative double.

Luc Bellicaud:

One club for heart double pass six club. It? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. This was.

John McAllister:

They had five four and clubs and spades, stiff heart, think. Yeah. And three diamonds.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, 17 or 18 points, five four three one. Yeah. And this is one specific topic where Lia struggles. When there's, and it's the same for robots, think when there's some uncertainty about the length of partner. When you do a takeout double typically, it's usually four, sometimes three, and even rarely two cards. And this is hard to process because, yeah, for just reason, because it's hard for humans too. And so. Yeah, what I did when I received this feedback on the board, actually I played this daily too, I saw it right away. I specifically, I hardcoded this bidding sequence basically one club for hard, one something for major double pass.

I coded what is the meaning of every single bit there. On next year that it's, it's, it will be all good.

John McAllister:

So you, what did you code? How did you, how do you fix it? Basically, basically for those who didn't play and are listening, uh, Lia had four spades and I had four spades. So six spades is making, but I had Jack in one club and, uh, and so, and then Lia had ace king fifth of clubs. There's like no, and they had a cashing heart. Uh, and so there's no way. There's no, it's, very, it would be very difficult for me to play. I think we make six diamonds too. Yeah. Six diamond. Six

Luc Bellicaud:

Club is basically the only non-making, the only non-making slam.

John McAllister:

Yeah. So, so how do you, how do you fix, how do you, like, what did you, what did you fix? Like, what did you, what would it have bid now?

Luc Bellicaud:

No, it would bid five now.

John McAllister:

Yeah. I thought figured.

Luc Bellicaud:

So that's fine. So, yeah, I told her that six club is six cards. That five diamond is kind of a weird bid, but should be a reverse and forcing for one round. And five spades is a slam try and with only four spades, which is sometimes something she struggled with because the double does not strictly show four cards in spades. So when she have four spades is a bit confused. I?

John McAllister:

Yeah.

Luc Bellicaud:

And yeah, so. She knows that the default slam bid when she doesn't know what to do is five no trump now in this specific situation. Five no trump is in particular is something quite difficult to code because when we panic as humans, we just bid five no trump when we are in beating sequence, but it's hard to have the same process for the art. For five-no-trump pick-a-slam, basically fixing the sequence one by one when they show up.

John McAllister:

Yeah, it might not be so easy for humans to get to six spades too, you know? I mean, because if you bid five no-trump. Yeah,

Luc Bellicaud:

Maybe you'll play six diamond,

John McAllister:

But. But let's give you an easier question. How did you come up with the name? Lia? Yeah. Yeah.

Luc Bellicaud:

So it's kind of, so in French, AI is IA.

John McAllister:

I saw when I was looking, cause I'm looking at your name and your name says Luc, which is three, I mean, L-U-C for those listening. And I was like, I bet it's your name.

Luc Bellicaud:

So the true story behind this.

John McAllister:

Figure out how it was the other way around.

Luc Bellicaud:

The true story is, so in French is that it, Lia just mean the AI. Basically that's it. And, Stefan-

John McAllister:

Wait, what did you say? Say that again, please. So

Luc Bellicaud:

Lia means the AI. So is the article and IA is AI. And at the very beginning, when we created the project, Stefan Skorchev, which is the founder of IntoBridge was pushing. So Lia actually meant Luc, artificial intelligence and this. And I was really against it because I have no clue what I was going to produce. I didn't want to show up if I did not manage to do anything good. And also I felt it was kind of. Or bragging or something, so I was really against it. And the same debate came around when we introduced the coach. I didn't really want to be the one showing up to the user and they were like, come on, you have to do this.

Okay, but now I have to be really focused on the same thing because otherwise people are going to complain directly to me because Luc is giving some bad advice to them. Yeah,

John McAllister:

Was, that was, you anticipated another one of my questions. So did you, did you send out, like you had, you you have your beginners on or your, your, your beginners. On Wednesday nights, did you tell him about Coach Luc on Wednesday?

Luc Bellicaud:

Not yet because this week I was actually having an internship to become a director in France, a tournament director. So I was a few grades of director in France and I was doing the second one. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, I'll tell them in two weeks because next week is Biarritz. It's a very famous festival in France and also Zia Mahmood's favorite festival in the world. It's a great place to be. So I'm going there and yeah, maybe next week I'll tell them about it.

John McAllister:

Well, I understand. So I looked you up in ACBL. You have no ACBL play experience and I know why. But let's tell, why don't you tell the listeners, we explain the listeners how come you haven't played in the US nationals?

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, basically I don't fly and for ecological reason, unless I'm representing France in an international event and I have no choice. And yeah, so that's why I never went to the US because I, do not feel the need to do so. I actually, I have some, a bunch of friends who are preach pros and do not like to take the plane for the same reason, but they still do so because it's our job and I don't judge them about it because it's a place where you do the most money.

I sure am bridge pro, but I'm lucky enough to, so I'm not a bridge pro or what some people would say otherwise and really enjoy to be a bridge pro, but yeah, I don't feel the need to do it. Have a great life. And so I don't fly for ecological reason when I don't have a real need for it.

John McAllister:

I think that's admirable.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. Thank you.

John McAllister:

No, I do. Mean, I think, yeah, I have, I appreciate that. Mean, it's, I don't know how long has that been the case?

Luc Bellicaud:

I think the last time I took the plane when was in 2017 for the U21 championship in China. And yeah, of course [unclear words] take the plane to go there, but since then I have played. Plenty of stuff in Europe and I've done some trips in plane. So I went to Poland, to Czech Republic, to Sweden and I've always done this in train with some friends. Like it's one day long or something to go to. I forgot the name of the city where was the Transnational Championship last year, but. Yeah. Yeah. Went there by train with three or four guys in there and Margot too, my girlfriend. And yeah, I think it's taking train is fine, especially in Europe.

You cannot do this in the U.S. Because basically there are no trains. And you, when you are in a train, can walk, you can play some board games, you can play some card. It's, it's comfortable and, and it's, it's not such a big deal. But this year I'm playing in, in Latvia for the European championship. And I think I'll go there by plane because otherwise it's a two day long trip. And that's, that's a little bit too much for me, think. But maybe I'll do. One half in train, one half is in plane. Like going in train and going back in plane or the other way around. I didn't take my decision yet.

John McAllister:

Is this for the juniors?

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. I think it's only the juniors since later. The European U31 Championship.

John McAllister:

Did you look into taking the train to China?

Luc Bellicaud:

No, no, didn't cross my mind, but I already had a quick look for Latvia and yeah, it's not easy. It's yeah, you cannot do it in one day. So I have to sleep somewhere in Poland and then it's another full day of trains. Yeah. Waited two hours of plane. So that's a big deal. I don't mind it when it's one day, but. Two days starting to get worse.

John McAllister:

Actually, I think the tournament in Poland was in Wroclaw and that was four years ago. This tournament was in Poznań.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, you're right. Definitely right.

John McAllister:

So did you start dating your girlfriend before moving to Lille or did you guys meet through Fun Bridge?

Luc Bellicaud:

I'm not sure what. Well, we met exactly, but definitely through French Bridge because we were both playing bridge before, at high level before meeting each other. And yeah, we moved to Lille because I can work wherever I want because IntoBridge doesn't have some physical building, but fun bridge has some, so we just move 100 meters next to the office. And, yeah, she, she, she has a, we are playing a lot of stuff together. Know some, some people cannot play bridge with, with their love, but, we have no issue doing that because we, we are both calm people at the table and we, we never yell at each other or anything. So, so it goes very well.

And, yeah, and, and she's, she's playing great. She should be playing in junior this year for, for the, in U26 for the second time in the world. And she is also playing in, in women. So she's, playing both in women and juniors at the same time. So, she's, yeah, she, she's playing super well and, we have lot of fun playing with each other. At least I have a lot of fun playing with her.

John McAllister:

Now, Christophe Grosset, that how do you say it? Christophe, fellow Frenchman, one of the founders of IntoBridge with Stefan. He said that it was a time when you were not the best partner, but you've improved a lot on that.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. When I was under 21. I was really mean to my partners and I learned over time that it was useless. And I also realized at the same time that not to say it was not my fault, but I feel like it's very important for youth coaches to highlight the fact that you shouldn't. Be rude at your partner, you should be nice with him. And I felt like this was not done enough in my environment. And this was considered something normal to complain at your partner when he's doing some bridge mistake. But now I'm older and I was able to take a step back and to realize that it was quite stupid to do so. So now I'm trying to be the best partner possible.

I am not perfect, but yeah. I greatly improve in that regard.

John McAllister:

Do you think really helped you understand that that was better for long-term success?

Luc Bellicaud:

I'm not sure about it. Guess it was something, I didn't go from being a mean guy with my partner to being a good partner. There was some in between. I think this was, I don't think there was anything that really got me to think, oh, I'm doing something bad. But I know some people today are still thinking of me as someone mean because of the thing. I mean, was 10 years ago with my partner. So yeah, it's really something you shouldn't do. If you are listening to this and And you are young, do not do this, it's stupid. This doesn't help anything. Your partner is already doing his best. It's not worth it shouting at him.

John McAllister:

I know what you mean. I struggle with it too sometimes. I would say I'm not as reformed as you.

Luc Bellicaud:

It's, it's when, when you're, you are playing for something and your partner does a silly mistake or you, you want to say something, but yeah, you, you shouldn't, you should keep calm. And, and also I try to, to, to be really focused on what I did wrong. I actually learned this from Gavin, listening at him in, I, maybe it was on your podcast. Actually, I don't recall, but, he was saying that when your partner is doing, did a mistake, you should, the first thing you should think at is how could I have helped him to not do this mistake?

And this is clearly the best way to think the, to, think about it's try to, when your partner is doing something silly, maybe you should have helped him because you. Some card you put on the table wasn't clear. Your signal wasn't perfect. You could have done a better bid or whatever. Focus on your own mistakes. That's more important than your partner mistakes. You can not do anything about them anyway.

John McAllister:

It's funny that. We'll get back to Gavin. So that's Gavin Wolpert, who's a, who's a big, contributor to IntoBridge, and, you guys have his system is in, is part of Lia. But before I ask you that question, I have to ask going back to your girlfriend. So, I recently interviewed a woman named Maya Jonas Silver and, she, played against her and her husband and there was some like, in a tournament just after Christmas and her husband made a strange lead and I could see how upset she was with the lead. Unfortunately, I didn't take advantage of it. I made the wrong play.

But all of this backstory is to say that I went on to ask her who's better between her and her husband. And I knew her better and I'd seen the dynamic at the table. So it was funnier, but I actually had three non-bridge playing friends comment. On this post on Instagram, because they thought it made them want to watch the full thing. So who would your girlfriend say is a better bridge player between the two of you?

Luc Bellicaud:

I know that she would say I'm the better bridge player. And to be fair, I think I'm actually right now a little bit better, but that's close. But I definitely Definitely think that she'll be better than me for sure in five or 10 years because I mean, I started bridge like 15 years ago and she started bridge like eight years ago or something. And yeah, I feel like she just has a better sense for the game than me. So I know more things. I I still, I'm an expert and also to still teacher or some stuff from time to time, but it's getting really rare. Yeah, I still have a little lead, I think, but not for long.

John McAllister:

Well, I think that's a very generous answer. I like that answer. I wasn't sure if I should ask because I didn't want to necessarily upset the apple cart as it were.

Luc Bellicaud:

We are really fine with that. We both do not have a. A big ego to defend.

John McAllister:

Is she your favorite partner?

Luc Bellicaud:

Yes, I have two favorite partner. My usual partner who I'm playing with in open and youth category with his name is Romaric Guth and he's also someone you never saw anywhere because he isn't a bridge pro either. Developers just like me and sometimes he's also coding some bridge stuff. But yeah, we, I play mainly with him and I'm also having a lot of fun with him.

John McAllister:

How does it work for the open team? Is there like a competition or are they selected?

Luc Bellicaud:

So right now how it works in France is that there's an open group and three people who are picking the six players that are going to play in the open teams. So there's no trials or anything. And yeah, we have been trying for a long time to be in this group, which is composed of eight pairs. And we've fallen a little bit short every time. So I hope for the next cycle, we will be part of it, but it's not a guarantee at all. I still hope one day to play in Open Team. I don't think I will get there to be fair, but I am really trying. But I feel like some youth people have more face in Bruins than I do.

Most of the people that are playing at my level and my age are pros and have more time to spend playing bridge. I'm coding bridge all day, so it's not. I also spend a lot of time on this game, but yeah, I don't know. I don't feel like I'll be there one day, but I still have some, a bit of hope.

John McAllister:

How do they pick the eight pairs?

Luc Bellicaud:

We have some, some committee, some high level committee it's called, they pick them based on age, international experience. Yeah, stuff is, what they see from the bridge from this players because this person picking are also high level players. But, yeah, kind of second, second category. I don't know if that's really an English thing, so very good players picking for the top experts, let's So, this is how this is, this is done. And yeah, for this has been on for four years, I think on every two years are thinking eight pairs. So, so the first time we were a bit, a bit too weak.

The second time that for the eight pairs had to pick between two youths maybe the other partnership, you know, them because you met them some minds, the U So one of them is a pro and the other one is, working at Nukeai. So the, the startups that worked on on Nukeai a few years ago, with Defeat Human and Sreenot Trump. I won't do the full story, but yeah, they picked this. Basically we had mostly the same level than them, but they picked them because one of them is so poor and they have more time to spend on bridge than we do. But yeah, I hope we'll be there in the next cycle and one day we'll be able to play in Open.

John McAllister:

If you make the top eight, what does that mean? Do they have like special training sessions for them?

Luc Bellicaud:

Training session and they give you some fees, some money to go into international tournaments. Yeah, yeah, it's helpful. They are discussing systems together, doing all this kind of stuff. But yeah, we don't know if this will still exist next year because they still have to validate the concept and the result of the Open Team in France. Has been a bit disappointing to be fair in the last year. So, and this model is quite expensive. So, just thinking of deleting it and getting back to the good old trials. The initial goal was to copy the way the Dutch people are working. They have the same system. Yeah, so the French Open Results were.

We qualified for the world championship finishing sixth or seventh and we were able to play the Bermuda Bowl. And in the Bermuda Bowl, we were in the. They were doing well for a long time and at the end, it went very badly and they lost everything and they finished, I don't know, 10th, 12th or whatever. Yeah, it's a bit. It's a bit disappointing because we have a lot of great players in France. You see them winning some international tournaments when they are playing with non-French people. For some reason, are six French people in the same team that do not win anything anymore. We're like, what's going on?

Maybe there are some team spirit issues or stuff like that. Am not sure. I'm not an insider, but yeah, we hope that France will have better international results in following years.

John McAllister:

Yeah. What comes to mind for me is that when the Bermuda bowl was in Lyon and they lost in the finals to the American team.

Luc Bellicaud:

That was the whole past great results. [Unclear words].

John McAllister:

I wasn't even sure who I was rooting for in that. Final match because I was there in Lyon for the tournament and it was actually pretty cool, know, that the French got to the finals and it came down to the really the last segment. I mean, I remember when Brad Moss came out of the, they had gone down in seven spades on the last board, think. Yeah. And he came out and the first thing he asked was, we lose?

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. I recall this board. I was there too. Was playing in U21 at the time. And yeah, we. We were all watching this and it was heartbreaking to lose by such a tiny margin. We had to six spades to win.

John McAllister:

Did they stop and they went down in seven spades also?

Luc Bellicaud:

I think they did four plus two. They played four spades plus two and seven minus one in the other room.

John McAllister:

This is the great hand. It's been talked to David Gold on this podcast previously has talked about this board. The only making grand slam is seven diamonds on a four, three fit. She's partner Andrew Robson bid. Cause you have to like, the seven spades has play like if the club finesse is on, but it's a cool board.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. You have yet to have something. You have to ruff this. Don't know. It's a ruff heart. Yeah, you have to the heart from the three diamonds. Yeah.

John McAllister:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a sick game. Yeah. Let's see. Christophe said you invented a bidding system.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yes, that's right. And, this my, well, this was a bunch of years ago, but, yeah, we were playing transfer openings, at the one level. And to be fair, I think it's a really good system. It's not very hard. So the idea is that one spade is showing a weak no trump or 18 plus no trump. One no trump is 15 to 17. And one club, one diamond, one heart are transferred. And you can do whatever you want with the extra space you have, but basically this is the same thing. And the little backslash is that you have to use two club to show clubs, like in precision. Two diamond to show five club and four card in a major.

You don't have any natural club opening at the one level, so you have to do this kind of stuff. And it's fun to show strong clubs, like 16 plus. And this was super fun to play. And I think one of the last time I played this was in the Cavendish in Monaco tournament that doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. But I was playing with my U21 partner at the time. We were bad. We were really bad players at the time. But we finished average of this tournament. We were very happy. Yeah. This is very fun to play and we kind of stopped because some coaches in France were not happy that we were playing this and not something that we're used to.

But it was, it's super easy. We had the one page system, like we were playing the standard. But we were just, yeah, there were a few exceptions. It's very easy to play and it's a lot of fun. Especially, opening one spade with 12-14 balance. It's very hard to double you because you have to double one spade and you have to be able to double one spade and one no-trump to be able to penalize the opponent. It's not easy to know how many spades you have in your line. So it was a lot of fun. It's a problem that I stopped playing this. I could still do it. But yeah, I stopped.

John McAllister:

Well, I'm impressed that you invented your own bidding system.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yes, this started as a joke. We were playing in Lyon in 2017. And this year we won in U21 with my friends. And then we had to play the BAM after winning the event. So clearly we were not really focused on bridge at this point. We said, okay, let's play transfer opening and let's see what's going on. And it started from a joke and then we played this system for several years with a bunch of different partners actually. So yeah, it's funny. It just started as a joke because we wanted to have fun in a bum session.

John McAllister:

Okay. I remember what I was going to ask you. So I made a documentary movie called Double Dummy that features the 2012 World Youth Team Championships. Did you play in that event?

Luc Bellicaud:

2012? No, I started in 2014. When the kids category was under 16 was in produce. I I played the first U16 event.

John McAllister:

Yeah. I thought you were probably too young. But the reason I had to ask is because We've got this scene and I know it's, two French, uh, under 21 players arguing. I know one of them is Baptiste Combescure.

Luc Bellicaud:

And the other one is Julien Bernard.

John McAllister:

Oh, that's who the other one is?

Luc Bellicaud:

I probably at this time. Not 100 % sure, but they played together for a long time. Could be some other guy to be fair, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. A little bit older than me, both of them and they are still super good bridge players. And Baptiste played for the Open Team last year and Julien is going to play for the Open Team this year.

John McAllister:

Yeah. I'm sure Thomas and Cedric Lorenzini, Thomas Bessis and Cedric Lorenzini are on the Open team.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yes. They are here by default. Like you're not even as good. And then you have to find two pairs. Well, of course I'm saying this like, I'm not saying like this, if they were bad or anything, other pair, but like Cedric and Thomas are. Yeah, amongst the top four pairs and the following pairs are a bit worse than this. Course, even if they are top bridge players, no doubt about it. Yeah, Cedric and Thomas have won a bunch of events in the US already. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. When I talked bridge with Thomas, I really understand what is the difference between an expert like me and someone like Thomas.

He's thinking about like 1 million things are crossing his mind during the car play. Yeah, they don't in my mind. I'm thinking about more basic stuff and they are taking influence from everything. It's insane.

John McAllister:

Can you give me more specific about that?

Luc Bellicaud:

I know. I was playing in the winter games and I went down in a very difficult force-play contract. Like it was five years ago or something. And I felt like the line of play took place really normal and reasonable. And the first week went. My opponent led an ace and there was a singleton under me and he did a suit preference signal. And based on this, he told me that there was three small in one of the suit in dummy and he didn't do a preference in the suit. And I had ace king in my hand facing three line dummy. And at some point in the play, took the finesse in the suit and that was wrong. I had to do something else.

Some end plays, some queen. King second behind and I told Thomas about the hand because I saw that he wants the board and he told me, but that's not possible in this situation. He is not able to lay when he has a king because his partner could have the ace and blah, blah, blah. He did, and that had some inferences about the point counts in the other suit and everything. So, the quick, the conclusion was crystal clear. And at the time I thought, okay, I just did my two finesse. They didn't work and I went down. They do and yeah, I do a lot of things in fact. So, so yeah.

John McAllister:

Oh, you had ace queen in the, the, in the suit that.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. Didn't encourage in the suit. I had ace king. So I clearly had to deduce that the king was on the other side because it was not a position where he could not encourage with the king. It's it was just. Not possible and I And like this thing I I think at that point I could have thought about it because it was not so difficult but It was like a one second thought for him. So like okay like we have a I have to to think ten times more than him to to go to the same conclusion. So so it's hard and I so it's obvious that I just cannot play at the same level as him in the card play because he has too much experience.

He knows so much things and it's overall very impressive.

John McAllister:

But I still don't understand. So you had three small on the dummy, opposite ace queen in your suit or ace king? Ace queen, ace queen. Oh, ace queen. Okay. I thought you said ace king. That's why I was confused. Yeah, ace queen. Got it. Got it. Now I want to interview Thomas.

Luc Bellicaud:

I don't recall the board exactly and I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember it either. I could find it.

John McAllister:

He might know. He might know. Might know. Yeah, he might. Okay. One thing we forgot. So Gavin Wolpert is a pretty well-known player and more recently he's become pretty well-known teacher of bridge. He's won a world championship. He's won a bunch of the big events in the US. And the question I had about Gavin was how do you like, you have his system as an option for Lia for your IntoBridge robot. You can play Gavin's system. Like, how do you, how do you code in a system?

Luc Bellicaud:

So I am, well, there is no general rule, but, what I did with Gavin is that he did give me free access to all his lessons. And I use all his example inside his lesson. So all his lessons are just power points with, with slides with one hand on one on each slide, explaining some concept or something. And I took all the hands inside, I copied them in, well, I coded the system saying, okay, one spade should be there, two clubs should be there, blah, blah, blah. And then I tested that it was working well using the example from Gavin Lesson. So I don't know, saw a hundred or maybe, maybe a thousand of example like this.

And I made sure that Lia was respectful in that regard. So. Uh, well, she, did the same that, uh, Gavin was teaching his, his lesson because in his lesson, she is showing some clear cuts. So it's not showing some, some hand where, where you could do some, some action or the other. So it's, uh, it's really nice to test for, to, use them as tests for, for robots and, uh, and yeah.

John McAllister:

So you have to manually copy the. You have to manually enter the individual auctions?

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, this is what I did at the time. Maybe nowadays with the AI and the ChatGPT and so on, I could automate this process. But for now, I have a clear edge on the AI. I don't know for how long, but AI are really stupid. LLM are large language model, which is. Which are ChatGPT, Claude whatsoever, they are really stupid at bridge. So I still have some edge on them. I don't know how long it will be. I think it's mainly because there is not a lot of bridge data on the internet. So the LLM do not understand the game of bridge very well. But at one point they will.

John McAllister:

I understand you actually have like the, one of the bigger, YouTube channels in France.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, I do. Do. I think the biggest one actually, or maybe Funbridge is the biggest one, but if you exclude Funbridge. Yeah. I, I do some daily, some weekly video on my channel in French. On, yeah, it's, it's, it's has been a fun side activity. And that's. Actually how I met Christophe at the time and during the COVID time, we used to organize some tournaments online, which were called the Eopen. I don't know if you ever heard about it. It was mainly French, but we had some international events and yeah, it went really well. It was successful. We had a lot of teams and we had to organize tournaments on BBO.

And I coded something to start the team match automatically with a little software. They just had to click a button and it was starting all the matches at the same time. And we were compiling the result in some Excel files. It was quite artisanal. Is that the word? No, I'm looking for the right word. I don't know how to say this. It was quite messy. Were trying to do unprofessional. I'm looking for the right word. Don't know how to say it exactly. We did this while Christophe was starting IntoBridge at the same time. I was finishing my studies, so was quite difficult to organize.

John McAllister:

Yeah, I started trying to watch one of your videos and I studied French in school. So I know a little bit of French and I was thinking maybe it would be a good way to practice my French.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, actually. Learn some bridge stuff. Actually, I've started, I was not good in English a few years ago and now I'm feeling better even if it's not perfect at all. I feel like I can talk about anything if I'd like to talk about it in English. And this came only from speaking 10 minutes of English every day because we have a daily meeting every day at IntoBridge and just talking about some stuff I did yesterday and listening to the other. It helped me a lot.

John McAllister:

Yeah, that was your concern when we were introduced over email. You were worried about your English, but I think you've done a great job.

Luc Bellicaud:

Thank you very much. I'm really happy about it.

John McAllister:

And we never introduced those watching, he's got his cat, Potato, in his lap here.

Luc Bellicaud:

That's the other one. We have two cats.

John McAllister:

You have two cats. This isn't Potato, sorry.

Luc Bellicaud:

That's Rodrigo.

John McAllister:

Rodrigo. All right. Well, it's been a real pleasure, Luc. Thank you very much. And I'm excited for what you guys are doing with, with, with Coach Luc and Lia at, at IntoBridge. So. You know, happy, you know, hope, hope some people will try it out if they haven't already.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah. Give it a try. There are some, there is some free access. I don't recall exactly how it works, but you can, you can have some. You can have some interaction with Coach Luc for free. And if you are a total beginner, actually, I know that the first bit, you will always have Coach Luc on your back when you are doing some wrong stuff, even if you have no subscription to IntoBridge because we really want to help beginners, total beginners. So yeah.

John McAllister:

All right, last question. So any. Game that I play on IntoBridge, Coach Luc will show up if they have an opinion about what I've done.

Luc Bellicaud:

Yeah, any game. All right. If you don't see him a lot, it's probably because I've done a decent job at it because, yeah, it's not supposed to yell at experts. That's fine. Yeah.

John McAllister:

All right. Thank you, Luc. Thank you very much.