Ep. 75 - Brian Platnick - Can Tell You if You're a World Class Bridge Player

[00:00:02] Hi, my name is John McAllister. Welcome to the Setting Trick podcast where we get inside the minds of some of the world's greatest

[00:00:11] Bridge players. If you're looking for a way to engage with bridge away from the table, then the Setting Trick is here for you

[00:00:18] Today my guess is world champion

[00:00:22] two-time spin gold winner a winner of the blue ribbon pairs

[00:00:28] Brian Platnick

[00:00:30] Brian is a perfect example of what I love about this podcast because it gives me an opportunity to

[00:00:38] have conversations in greater detail

[00:00:42] I had the opportunity to spend time with him recent at the recently completed

[00:00:48] United States Bridge championships the open trials and

[00:00:54] His team eliminated my team for the second year in a row unfortunately, but

[00:01:01] He's just he's just a lot of fun to talk to and so I made it a priority to have him on the podcast

[00:01:07] When I got home

[00:01:09] One thing that if you've ever wondered if you're a world class player

[00:01:15] Brian has a formula the platnick formula for deciding if you're a world class player

[00:01:21] So that's something to

[00:01:23] pay mine to

[00:01:24] We talk at length

[00:01:26] about

[00:01:27] Edgar

[00:01:29] The anti-cheating software that he and Franco Bassezio have created that is testing a lot of

[00:01:37] Incredible number of

[00:01:40] online played deals for the acbl and I think his motivation for doing that is inspiring

[00:01:46] And finally if you're bobby levin or somebody who likes hearing me laugh

[00:01:52] The software that we record these podcasts in has a little button that I can press like if I want to mark a clip

[00:01:59] And I think I press that button possibly more

[00:02:04] than any time in the setting trick history because brian just kept cracking me up

[00:02:10] Keep an eye out on the setting trick instagram page for those highlights and please enjoy my conversation with brian platnick

[00:02:22] So today my guest is brian platnick

[00:02:26] brian is a six-time

[00:02:29] North american champion with some big ones including

[00:02:33] two spin golds. He's also won a

[00:02:39] World championship and a junior world championship

[00:02:43] And we have the distinction of being

[00:02:46] kind of

[00:02:48] Have grown up in close proximity to each other. He's from bluefield west virginia

[00:02:53] Which is about three three and a half hours away from charlotte'sville where i'm from so i've played against brian's

[00:03:00] mother

[00:03:01] decent amount and

[00:03:03] His brother david lives in charlotte'sville, so i play against david at the club fairly often

[00:03:10] Really though as far as resume

[00:03:13] brian

[00:03:14] What might be the most impressive is that your team has knocked my team out of the last two

[00:03:20] us team trials

[00:03:22] huh

[00:03:24] I guess i didn't need to notice you're on the team

[00:03:29] By the way, so two things about about my uh my resume that you mentioned one is um

[00:03:36] You know like with all the cheating scandals there were several people who sort of gotten titles

[00:03:41] either taken away officially or

[00:03:43] Whatever i had a title taken away for completely different reasons

[00:03:49] Often when i was playing on a team with uh with john diamond and greco and hamson and uh and uh brad and fred

[00:03:56] Then i'll get last name just brad and fred

[00:03:59] if if we um

[00:04:01] You know like if we lost at some point early

[00:04:05] Frequently, I would go home

[00:04:06] And some and greco sometimes would go home and hamson would play as jd and like the

[00:04:11] A two-day pair event in the swiss or sometimes I would go home and greco would stay and jd would put a hamson part and whatever

[00:04:17] So what's I left and they played five handed and won the two-day swiss

[00:04:22] And for several years, my name appeared as one of the winners of that event

[00:04:27] So I had a national championship and finally that got corrected. So it got taken away from me

[00:04:32] But I thought that was kind of uh, you know

[00:04:35] And uh and when we won so john diamond that I want or on the team that won the the juniors in 91

[00:04:43] Yeah, which included um, you know several players, you know, I got debbie zuckerberg then to not debbie rosinberg

[00:04:50] Was i mean she was already a great player back then

[00:04:53] And you know just continues being a great player to this day

[00:04:57] And she was she was playing with martha cats

[00:04:59] Who's an excellent player martha?

[00:05:02] Played played well, but her the best she played in that event was was the last 16 boards when we were in a very close match

[00:05:09] She played

[00:05:10] phenomenally and just won imp after imp for our team

[00:05:13] And we and our other pair was jeff ferro and wane steward

[00:05:18] And wane doesn't play that much anymore. He's had some success jeff. I still see around quite a bit

[00:05:22] He's a good a good friend of mine and a very good player

[00:05:25] But so after we won that

[00:05:27] I I left and just drove to law school

[00:05:30] And and I so I've missed like the orientation

[00:05:35] And some people I met they're like what were you doing? I'm like I was playing in a bridge tournament. Like how's your all we won this junior?

[00:05:39] They're like, okay, whatever who cares? Yeah, so

[00:05:42] You know, you know, nobody cared nobody it was kind of funny, but I

[00:05:47] Didn't play in another world championship until 2010 when we won

[00:05:51] Uh the rosin bloom. So would you look at wbf site? You see people's names? You'll see

[00:05:56] You know, you'll see eric rodwell, you know

[00:06:00] Like a bunch of first place is a bunch of

[00:06:03] You know other placings in this. Yeah, you see like this whole list of things and for me there was two listings

[00:06:09] Here's a 91

[00:06:10] Where's one 2010 it was like first place first place

[00:06:14] I thought that was then I like an idiot I played in some additional events and kind of

[00:06:20] Had the usual sosa results that people have

[00:06:23] You know so you kind of ruined that record. I thought I should retire at that point

[00:06:27] Did you become a world grand master just when you won the uh rosin bloom or did it take I think it was when we won the rosin bloom

[00:06:34] Yeah, you need so many, um, they call them like placing points or something and

[00:06:38] You can get some in the trial and I think the trials

[00:06:41] are considered

[00:06:43] Um some kind of event where you can get small amounts of placing points and you can get some for other things and

[00:06:48] Like um wbf master points decay

[00:06:50] Yeah, and the placing points don't uh decay

[00:06:55] Oh, okay, which is a problem for seeding of our of at one point we use placing points for seeding

[00:07:01] Yeah, and so there were players like uh, like bob hamman had like 200 seeding points for life

[00:07:06] Yeah, you know what's that?

[00:07:09] When I was on the seeding committee, uh, we made some changes to that and put a cap on it

[00:07:13] Since it doesn't decay, you know, we kind of had to put a cap on it

[00:07:16] And so, you know, bob someone was wondering how how did bob hamman lose?

[00:07:20] You know, I go from like 230 seeding points to you know, 35 or something

[00:07:25] And I respond i'm on the seeding committee and this is there for sale for 500 a pop

[00:07:32] So so you're not on the seeding committee anymore

[00:07:35] I'm actually not sure. I'm I have it

[00:07:38] David berkowitz runs a seeding committee, which means

[00:07:41] That nobody really knows who's on it or wouldn't be me or what happens

[00:07:45] So

[00:07:47] But by the way, if I if I call anyone a cheater

[00:07:49] Yeah

[00:07:50] um

[00:07:51] Or um other than other than uh, ron anderson an asshole

[00:07:56] Edit edit it out, please. Okay

[00:07:58] If I call ron anderson an asshole, you know

[00:08:01] That you can leave in but other than that, please edit it out

[00:08:08] Um

[00:08:09] so

[00:08:11] Seeding committee, but let's let's let's go to that

[00:08:14] When did you start being on it?

[00:08:16] so I

[00:08:18] essentially um arrogantly told

[00:08:21] Berkowitz and others in the seeding committee that they were

[00:08:24] Um, they were kind of fucking things up. Yeah, and that um

[00:08:28] I was I would like to join the committee and fix them got it which

[00:08:32] You know, it's kind of an arrogant attitude to take and not always helpful, but

[00:08:36] You know, I don't know how many committees you've been on it for different things

[00:08:39] There are people who serve on committees who show up for a meeting

[00:08:43] Throughout ideas and vote on things and don't do shit

[00:08:46] There are other people who do a lot of work. Yeah, you know gathering information doing it

[00:08:50] Etc who do a lot of work when they're on a committee and you need people to actually do some work

[00:08:55] Right. The fact that I was actually doing work who I was on the committee

[00:08:59] Now other people like at events will help seed like national paribets things like this which takes some effort

[00:09:05] I don't do any of that because

[00:09:07] um

[00:09:08] You know, like like someone like like Barry Riggle plays a lot and knows a lot of the foreign players

[00:09:13] Like he knows a lot, you know, he has a knows the lay of the land better

[00:09:16] So he would be better doing that than I would be

[00:09:18] Which is certainly one reason what excuse I use for not not helping that capacity, but um, what?

[00:09:26] What after so going back to the juniors after our team won the juniors

[00:09:30] We beat canada in the finals. Yeah that had a team with fred goodlman and jeff hamson and our current asiel president

[00:09:36] bronya, you know that team right among others and it was a great team. It was a very very tough match

[00:09:43] And they then we go play

[00:09:46] You know a few months later

[00:09:47] A lot of us are playing in some spin gold or whatever and fred gillibond was also

[00:09:51] On the canadian team that came in second in the remutable

[00:09:55] I think it was like probably just after the juniors or in close

[00:09:58] Conference so so we go there and I have like four or five seeding points just from master points

[00:10:04] You know john diamond has a couple fred gilliman has like three

[00:10:08] And then we see some of the junior players. We just beat

[00:10:12] That you know, they didn't even make you know the

[00:10:15] You know like to knock out stage right and they have like 15 or 20 seeding points. I'm thinking like what the fuck

[00:10:19] Like what did these guys win? They must have won something and it's just like oh well

[00:10:24] Well, there are like really good players. They were on their national junior team

[00:10:27] And they're very good players and they some of them are going to be on their national team

[00:10:30] So we gave them like 15 or 20 seeding points to make things fair

[00:10:34] I'm like well, what about fred gilliman?

[00:10:37] You know, he just came in second the remutable. He doesn't get shit

[00:10:40] It's like well, he's an acpl player and it's like so that just made no sense to me

[00:10:46] It was the same for a lot of form. So we had one segment. They got seeding points based on

[00:10:51] um, I don't really want to say merit but based on what they earned according to a set formula. Okay

[00:10:57] And um, as I mentioned when people were discussing ideas

[00:11:01] And I and I said what you know one way to get a lot of seeding points is what I did

[00:11:04] Is have a partner who buys it hamson and greco and

[00:11:07] Brad to play on teams until you get about seeding points

[00:11:10] Anybody can do that if they want

[00:11:14] But but so you have one segment that gets seeding points based on a um, I guess you can call it an objective formula

[00:11:20] You know, I mean there's always subjectivity in creating the formula once you create it you apply it objectively

[00:11:26] right and another group who's given seeding points because

[00:11:29] um

[00:11:30] You know the see people in the seating if you go around and ask pep series z or someone who

[00:11:35] You know, how good is this pair and they tell them so they give them some bunch of seeding points

[00:11:39] Right and to me that made no sense

[00:11:41] So I thought if you're gonna count wbf for this group why not count it for the other group

[00:11:47] You know and have some idea of how well

[00:11:49] People are I guess a lot of bridge players seem to think seedings be based on the skill level of the player

[00:11:56] Yeah, but but that had he determined that right

[00:11:58] Um, you know, so at one point like I had almost as many seeding points as is like hamson and you know greck or whatever and

[00:12:06] As I've mentioned like there are people who think that I play as well as they do

[00:12:10] There's people are called my mom

[00:12:13] But but outside of that

[00:12:15] The people who think that greck go and hamson play much better than I do

[00:12:19] As most of the people including myself

[00:12:22] So, you know, I'm not going to pretend like the fact that at one point

[00:12:25] I had as many seeding points as them that I was you know as good of a player

[00:12:28] It just meant that you know their old seeding points had decayed and whatever and

[00:12:33] You know, I've been playing a team with them long enough to where we

[00:12:35] You know kind of all had I think so a little bit more but in the same ballpark

[00:12:38] But but but still, you know, it doesn't matter if it's you know

[00:12:41] It's jimmy kane hiring a team and getting seeding points

[00:12:44] Or if it's the greatest player in the world is zia getting seeding points because he wins no matter who he plays with

[00:12:49] Yeah, you know, it's

[00:12:51] You know, you have a formula you win events you win your master points whatever

[00:12:56] But we needed some way of kind of

[00:12:58] Of making sure that we were treating trying to treat every group

[00:13:02] Similar, yeah, you know nothing will be perfect and right there are always some people who fall through the cracks

[00:13:07] Sure

[00:13:08] And and so we had sort of a policy where we could have like sort of a

[00:13:11] Small number of seeding points to give people who kind of felt fall through the cracks in the system

[00:13:16] But not like 20 or 30

[00:13:18] You know, that's kind of nuts

[00:13:19] And the other thing is Pete like some you have foreign players who are coming to the nationals

[00:13:24] And play in like some regional knockout and they're in you know the fourth bracket

[00:13:29] And you have I mean players like cement or deboyed have played ever had enough master points

[00:13:35] That's not going to happen

[00:13:36] Right, but you know at one point you say like brink and driver when they were young up becoming after they've already become

[00:13:41] Established players. You know, they have some number of master points, but

[00:13:46] You know, you want to put them like the fourth bracket of some random, you know regional knockout

[00:13:51] You know, no one else in that bracket is going to be happy. They're not happy

[00:13:55] So but if you have some objective measures like you use WBF points and things like this

[00:14:01] Then you can use the same system for seeding

[00:14:03] The spin gold as you do for you know for handling these issues in in like

[00:14:08] regional knockouts or or limited events, you know somebody

[00:14:12] um

[00:14:13] And the thing used to piss me off is

[00:14:15] There are a few players who would wind up how many seeding points they had like foreign players

[00:14:20] Yeah, and sometimes they were right. I won't say they were whining but they were whining

[00:14:25] And and then I see them like like wanting to enter some zero to five thousand of that should be hired for it

[00:14:30] It's okay. You want to play a zero to five thousand whatever event

[00:14:34] Because you're getting paid and then tell me that you that you deserve all these seeding points because it's a great player

[00:14:40] Like you know what like

[00:14:42] Pick your side and stick with it

[00:14:44] So that wasn't many people there and there were some some people who would actually come and ask me to say

[00:14:48] Am I allowed to play in this event? Yeah as if

[00:14:52] Somehow on the seeding pity

[00:14:53] I was I was when we kept getting all these emails and everything but you know

[00:14:56] You know I didn't say am I and I would say I'll check with the director and

[00:14:58] And it ended up some people who asked and were told no

[00:15:01] People didn't ask the answer. They were allowed to play which they finally they finally made put a stop to it

[00:15:07] They found or tried to they um these girls had a better job with that

[00:15:11] But so when did you start being on the seeding committee then? I didn't remember it was um

[00:15:18] I like 10 or 12 years ago or so. Yeah

[00:15:21] And I feel like we sort of got a new system

[00:15:24] You know seeding system developed, but it's you know, nothing's perfect

[00:15:27] You know, but it's it's basically

[00:15:30] You know you earn seeding points as you win the major events. Yeah, and it in decays

[00:15:37] You know decays over time

[00:15:39] And there's also there was what we considered like the sadrick lorenzini problem

[00:15:43] And not not anything having to do with things that happened during the pandemic

[00:15:45] But before then would we were trying discussing before we had our formula definitely set and we were trying to

[00:15:52] You know make some adjustments to players

[00:15:55] Somebody mentioned well, cedric lorenzini has won

[00:15:58] Two of the three-day national pair events in the last year

[00:16:01] Yeah, you know with your tough events because a lot of a lot of good players

[00:16:04] And so he and my response was well

[00:16:08] I won the blue ribbon pairs a couple years ago and that gave me zero seeding points

[00:16:11] Dave berkowitz has won a shitload of these events. They give him zero seeding points. Really?

[00:16:15] Right, they're not because they're not it's only the spin gold vanderbelt reisinger that count in the system. Okay. And so

[00:16:22] You know like using that so if we're gonna give seeding points to people for winning a blue ribbon pairs

[00:16:27] Why just give them to foreign players this should be across the board right? Yeah

[00:16:31] So so actually one thing that um one of the changes I instituted which I think was actually dandy sprung's idea

[00:16:36] He gave me when we were discussing this so I'll give him credit was

[00:16:40] You know, we were talking about you know, how many seeding points for for a blue room pairs. What about a two-day swiss?

[00:16:46] What about this? What about that?

[00:16:48] So so it's just why don't they use platinum points

[00:16:51] Okay, you know, so so we so we incorporated platinum points into

[00:16:56] um the seeding system where it's like a as somebody year like uh, they decay 20% a year

[00:17:01] Yeah, max kind of maybe five seeding points for platinum or something like that

[00:17:05] I forget like one one per hundred and

[00:17:08] One of the reasons for doing it that way is it's something the acpl already keeps track up

[00:17:14] Right. So so it's do nothing has to be done to you know to track this information to use it

[00:17:19] It's something they already have and they can ease into easily incorporate. Hmm. So

[00:17:25] That explains why my seeding is is as high as it is

[00:17:30] Yeah

[00:17:32] I

[00:17:34] Didn't actually listen to a couple of your

[00:17:36] Briefly part of your coming your podcast and I heard one where you're talking about playing professionally

[00:17:41] And I thought it was gonna be about you hiring somebody

[00:17:44] And I was shocked when it said that somebody hired you and that's when everyone friends of mine

[00:17:49] I was in law school said when I told him I was playing on like making some money playing on a like bridge

[00:17:54] Yeah, like what like gamma said no, no, someone's paying me to play on a team

[00:17:58] And um, they're like, well, how do you become a professional bridge player?

[00:18:01] And I said we'll just find some idiot who'll pay you money

[00:18:04] And that's all you need to do. It has nothing with how good you are and

[00:18:08] I cast about

[00:18:10] John was call us your bridge pro

[00:18:14] People always like that is true

[00:18:17] Well, I've been hired to like evaluate hands with somebody

[00:18:19] But that's the first time I've been hired to play

[00:18:22] And it's it's just funny because people so often think that I'm a professional bridge player because it's how much bridge

[00:18:27] I play like they call me that all the time and I'm always like no, I'm not not really like

[00:18:33] Not really some people think I'm a client because I don't play that often and I play with good players

[00:18:37] Yeah, so it's kind of the so if you and I played how many people think that I was hiring you

[00:18:44] That was one of the funny things that was like that

[00:18:47] You know like there were other pros like cotton was playing in the event

[00:18:51] Ish was playing in the event and I was was like, I wonder if they

[00:18:55] You know, there was definitely some imposter syndrome. I mean you've listed the episode you

[00:19:01] You you heard it all

[00:19:03] Yeah, I know about like I always joked that like I guess with imposter syndrome when

[00:19:08] You know if somebody asked me like how good of a player I think I am

[00:19:11] Yeah, how good you think you are and how good you are that they were often too completely different things

[00:19:15] But like most people I think that I know how good I am but that that's sure it's not accurate

[00:19:19] But I the way I view things is anyone who's better than me is a world-class player

[00:19:24] Anyone who's worse than me is not a world-class player

[00:19:27] And then you know, I can go either way to what people want to argue, but that's kind of to me

[00:19:32] That's kind of dividing the dividing line. Well, so your partner for

[00:19:36] Much of your bridge career most of your bridge career. I think it's fair to say john diamond

[00:19:41] right

[00:19:42] It I and I spoke to him over email

[00:19:44] And on this topic he said when all of us were juniors in our early 20s

[00:19:50] Brian was by far the best of us better than hamson

[00:19:55] brad debbie, etc

[00:19:59] now

[00:20:00] it's

[00:20:01] Brad is several years younger than us

[00:20:04] So it's certainly possible then I was better than

[00:20:09] Debbie I was

[00:20:11] Debbie was a very polished player

[00:20:13] Long before the rest of us. I would say

[00:20:16] I mean she started playing with good partners good

[00:20:19] And I never played with with

[00:20:22] A very someone played with better players like I hadn't lived somewhere where there were a lot of

[00:20:27] Top players who would you know play with some young up becoming players?

[00:20:31] so I kind of had to navigate things more on my own and

[00:20:35] And figure things out

[00:20:37] but

[00:20:38] That's nice of john to say

[00:20:40] It's accurate or not, but

[00:20:43] But I'm not sure I was better than hamson at that point

[00:20:48] I was certainly we were certainly closer in skill level than we are now

[00:20:53] That's clear, but I won't certainly won't say I was better than him, but I um

[00:20:56] Yeah, he was he was a pretty a pretty good player whenever in the juniors. He played pretty well

[00:21:00] Do you talk bridge with hamson like today like outside like like at the trials for example?

[00:21:05] Yes, it's more listen bridge. It's more. It's usually me asking hamson for like a question about something

[00:21:11] And hamson kind of like giving me, you know

[00:21:13] So that's kind of you like like people like chip martel don't call me up and ask me my opinion about things

[00:21:18] You know, unless you're just taking a poll just out of curiosity

[00:21:22] you know, but I asked like chip was it was the

[00:21:24] Captain of our junior team and and I still like and ever since then he's like one of my go-tos to uh

[00:21:31] You know, he I often I'd often send questions. I would have my panel three of um of chip

[00:21:38] kit woolsey

[00:21:40] and muckl Rosenberg

[00:21:42] Chip would give me a very concise

[00:21:45] um very very

[00:21:47] Workable answer to you know, how you should handle something a bidding kind of like a simple thing that

[00:21:53] Should be generally works Michael Rosenberg would give a response where he's essentially considered every nuance of every possibility

[00:22:00] and

[00:22:01] insane like he prefers this and this and this but

[00:22:04] Not liking to have sort of like too many individual rules. Maybe he's kind of landed on something

[00:22:10] a little simpler

[00:22:12] Right. So so if a weaker player is like for instance the bidding goes one no trouble all pass

[00:22:18] Um, yeah, if you have queen jack nine fifth of a suit and

[00:22:22] Sort of nothing else it kind of it looks weird not leading that suit. Yeah

[00:22:27] You know leading low from that suit. It's fine leading high from that suit

[00:22:30] Right or but another example is like it's if you see if queen jack 10 9 5th

[00:22:36] Right the bidding is one no three no, yeah, and there are players who knowing progress king and one lead low

[00:22:42] Ah, leading low from queen jack 10 9 fifth because one no three no

[00:22:46] Is it's it's either someone who's it's either like a misclick

[00:22:50] or someone who's not um

[00:22:53] Like it's a good player who was cheating

[00:22:56] Um, you know a good flight a player is cheating, you know wouldn't do something that blatant, right?

[00:23:01] They would know that that's just you know, that's just really like

[00:23:05] but then

[00:23:06] there are some players who um

[00:23:09] Who will make a play like say under lead an ace queen for no reason against a suit contract. Okay, and

[00:23:15] Partner has the king and so their opponents say okay, they're clearly cheating. It's like well actually

[00:23:21] You know we can look and say okay, they've done this 50 times over the last year

[00:23:25] And partner had the king, you know 20 of the 50 times and not the other 30

[00:23:30] So so this is one of the things that I think

[00:23:33] People don't recognize enough or speak enough about is one of the good things I like about edgar is when

[00:23:38] Somebody makes a weird play that works and then everybody just says well, they're obviously cheating

[00:23:43] Um, we can kind of go to the data and say and say well no they just are an inexperienced player

[00:23:50] Yeah, who does it makes inexperienced plays and right?

[00:23:53] This one worked against you but yeah, they it doesn't work for them any

[00:23:58] unusual number of times

[00:24:00] So I think that's one of the good things I like about it

[00:24:04] So can you literally like plug in ace queen third leads away from ace queen third in a suit now and like the

[00:24:10] Software will spit that out to you. Well, we have well we have to get it set up

[00:24:14] But that's something we already have set up under a larger category. We call weird leads

[00:24:20] You know under leading queen jack, you know under leading like honor sequences against suit contracts

[00:24:25] You know things some things and sometimes a lead is not always that weird when you do that

[00:24:29] I mean, maybe

[00:24:30] Right, you know, you're you're defending against some slam where you think, you know

[00:24:35] You have a void you want your partner or

[00:24:37] You know a five level contract you have a side ace queen and you need your partner on lead

[00:24:41] So so just because it gets it's a quote unquote hit for a detector doesn't mean that it looks

[00:24:49] It looks like someone's cheating

[00:24:51] you know, but but if

[00:24:53] You know, but the player, you know, even a low level pro like john mccallister is not going to under lead ace queen very often

[00:25:02] I mean even

[00:25:03] Any any reasonable flight a or even flight b player is not going to under lead ace queens very often and some

[00:25:09] Some experts might once in a while really days queen gets a suit contract in a situation where

[00:25:15] It where others may not do it, but would certainly consider it, right?

[00:25:19] You know, there's so it's but it doesn't happen as often as people seem to think

[00:25:23] I'm really an ace queen or an ace king to get partner on lead. It's very rare, but it does happen

[00:25:29] So I mean that's why you that's why you need enough

[00:25:32] enough data to be

[00:25:34] You know to to to make an accurate determination. It's not just a weird play here a weird play there

[00:25:41] so

[00:25:42] You're doing this you and franco besesio are doing this together

[00:25:47] like

[00:25:48] How did how did this come to pass?

[00:25:51] So there's I think it's an article in them

[00:25:54] In the on brids winners and it's like aj stafani for the acbl

[00:25:59] He contacted me about trying to develop some kind of automated cheating detection tools

[00:26:07] And and I said well, I'm not really a programmer or anything

[00:26:09] But I have a lot. I have a lot of experience

[00:26:12] You know a reasonable amount of experience in kind of cheating detection and ideas for how to go about it

[00:26:18] But as far as the actual implementing it

[00:26:21] and so so we always joke that it's like um, it's like one of his

[00:26:25] Mission impossible kind of movies. It's like all right. We need a demolition specialist. We need a driver

[00:26:29] We need a safe cracker. We needed this we needed that

[00:26:32] Yeah, so it's like okay

[00:26:33] We need someone who's

[00:26:36] Proficient statistics someone of those coding skills

[00:26:39] Someone who's all another expert brids player, you know like it's et cetera et cetera

[00:26:44] And and I knew Franco Bessigio was a bright guy and he was kind of interested in this area

[00:26:50] And you know, we worked on something previously just sort of a little one-off something

[00:26:56] And he's also I mentioned like when you're like on committees around things

[00:26:59] People are willing to put in some time and effort and he seemed like the kind of person who was actually willing to put in some time

[00:27:04] Right

[00:27:05] So I asked him and turns out aj was already thinking that maybe he'd be a good person

[00:27:10] yeah, and so

[00:27:12] So there was me the you know the I guess the

[00:27:16] expert brids player or as I mentioned the kind of level

[00:27:20] Of uh, of determining if someone's world class or not, you know

[00:27:23] The brand is better than me or worse than me kind of thing. So

[00:27:26] But certainly good enough for this purpose

[00:27:29] And then like and then franco was like like the other five guys you need on your you know on your team

[00:27:34] Right so

[00:27:37] And when was this?

[00:27:39] Uh, it's like a couple years like two years ago. What's the other day? Yeah, it's like over two years ago

[00:27:44] And aj is not on the acml board anymore. I think so is he did you sort of lose your

[00:27:49] Lose your so he was still what he was still um working with us, but he's now involved in the iba

[00:27:56] The uh, it's a bridge arbitration and it's not you know, he didn't really once we started moving forward at the acbl

[00:28:03] he really didn't want to

[00:28:05] You know sort of

[00:28:07] You know being involved in both it didn't seem like he should really be involved in both sides. He thought so he

[00:28:12] He um

[00:28:13] He kind of you know, I think his heart was staying with edgar, but he thought he was more be more viable with the iba

[00:28:19] Right. So so he went that route. He's um

[00:28:23] like aj aj's like uh

[00:28:25] You know, he's another hard worker

[00:28:29] So can like give me some give me like a store an edgar story like

[00:28:33] Can you give me an example? I mean you came up with some

[00:28:37] Great idea for cheating detection when we were playing in the trials, but you said that was not for public

[00:28:43] That was not that was just some that was something that actually I was kind of

[00:28:46] Like playing with a bit and as usual like when I told it to franco, he's like

[00:28:51] You know, like that seems good, but

[00:28:53] No, no, no, he's no so he's always thinking about things with an eye toward if we're going to use this

[00:28:59] We have to define things carefully

[00:29:01] And then so that we can

[00:29:04] Have be able to you to statistically analyze and put some kind of

[00:29:09] um, you know

[00:29:10] quantitative

[00:29:11] You know, I have some kind of quantitative result not just a qualitative result

[00:29:15] And so that's why like the when we come up with it with something

[00:29:19] Like if you look at something in terms of percentages

[00:29:22] Like so franko likes to look at things in terms of a hit or a miss

[00:29:25] Like you have one of two outcomes or there's a neutral like a non outcome. So like

[00:29:30] One example might be okay. Say you have like underleading ace queens

[00:29:35] You call it part as the king. That's a hit. I guess or avoid you can call it a hit

[00:29:39] Um, otherwise it's a miss

[00:29:42] Now what if what if you underlead a king?

[00:29:45] So the bidding is one spade four spades and you're on lead and you have and

[00:29:50] You know, you don't really have a good lead. So underleading, you know king fourth of this suit or what a fifth is

[00:29:56] You know a little risky, but it's certainly

[00:29:59] You know, nothing cheating about making that lead, right if partner always has the ace

[00:30:03] When you're leading a king that that starts to tell you something but right but then so

[00:30:08] Okay, so here you underlead a king. How do you define a hit?

[00:30:12] Well, if partner has the ace, it's certainly a hit. Yeah, if part has the queen, is that necessarily a hit?

[00:30:17] Well, if you have it's like you have like king fourth important as queen third

[00:30:21] Um, well

[00:30:23] That may set up a trick now

[00:30:24] But that may not be that may be a trick you're getting anyway and maybe that helps them

[00:30:28] It's you have to know more about the hand

[00:30:31] to know if that's

[00:30:33] If if part of the queen makes it attractive to lead under the king or not

[00:30:38] But we can't have it's too complicated to analyze the whole hand. We just have to look at the suit in isolation

[00:30:43] Right. So if part has the queen jack, we'll call that a hit

[00:30:47] Okay, if part has the queen 10 9

[00:30:49] Well, that's a hit or if between us we have the king queen 10 9

[00:30:53] Okay, as long as the opening leader doesn't have the king queen

[00:30:55] so so you have the basically a hit you could look at as

[00:31:00] um

[00:31:01] This rates to be good for for the for us

[00:31:04] And it's hard. It doesn't seem like a normal scenario where it's bad for us

[00:31:08] I mean, maybe some other lead is better for some reason but just looking at this suit

[00:31:12] You know, it doesn't look bad

[00:31:15] um

[00:31:16] Now if part has like four small and under the king sometimes it doesn't matter. Maybe dummy has the ace

[00:31:22] Maybe you're tricking him into going up the ace thinking you're you have a king third. Maybe they're short

[00:31:27] Maybe I think you have a singleton

[00:31:29] There are times you might even if you're cheating under league king third

[00:31:32] With part is like too small

[00:31:34] Because you're hoping to full declare if you know their hands also. Yeah, but but again that gets that's too complicated to deal with so

[00:31:42] So a miss is where it doesn't look like we're gaining anything from the lead

[00:31:47] Uh, and we could very well be losing from this lead

[00:31:51] Okay

[00:31:52] You know underleading a king jack to nothing is certainly not good if part has a jack

[00:31:56] maybe they miss guests

[00:31:57] And you can set up a trick you wouldn't set up otherwise or maybe you know who knows but

[00:32:01] So so for for that we have hits neutral and this

[00:32:06] Um

[00:32:08] You know and for a lot of leads there's like hit neutral and miss for some things it's it's easier to have hit and miss

[00:32:14] So how many pairs have you prosecuted through edgar?

[00:32:18] So we I don't look at it as us prosecuting through edgar. I look at it as us

[00:32:23] um

[00:32:24] giving feedback to the acbl

[00:32:27] And that's I don't really they I think they have numbers on their website about what been done

[00:32:32] So I don't really want to speak for the acbl. Yeah

[00:32:36] but we

[00:32:37] essentially they you know, they'll tell us who they would like us, you know, they

[00:32:42] Whether it's maybe like just like they look at random groups. They want to go through everybody

[00:32:46] You know, they give us a random group of players or they might look at sort of um,

[00:32:50] You know like acbl employees or people or directors or some some group like this or people who are in business authority

[00:32:58] or or whatever

[00:32:59] and

[00:33:00] pros like me

[00:33:03] Exactly

[00:33:04] We're you know before giving someone, um, you know volunteer of the year or some other award they might want to

[00:33:10] Really check so when see what you know when I got volunteer of the year award franco and I it's like, yeah, okay. We're fine

[00:33:16] check ourselves

[00:33:18] No, that's a little difficult to uh

[00:33:21] But yeah, so so that's

[00:33:23] But you know the idea is for them to come up. You know, they sort of come up with a method that is fair and

[00:33:28] you'll take care of

[00:33:30] and

[00:33:31] How many hands do you think you've analyzed through the software?

[00:33:37] A lot but it's it's um

[00:33:41] I mean, you know for for me for some individual players

[00:33:44] It's been who have many different partners

[00:33:46] It's you know tens of thousands of hands or over a hundred thousand probably for some players but not that many

[00:33:52] And I don't know if franco could probably have a better idea, but he's because you know, he's the one who does all the

[00:33:58] actual computer work

[00:33:59] Yeah, you know, I'm kind of the one who come like I sort of come up with the the cheating detection ideas and do

[00:34:04] a lot of the analysis and

[00:34:07] And so it's also like when we have an idea

[00:34:09] So so we have an idea for some for way to detect cheating. Yeah, you know

[00:34:13] We want something that's not going to capture your expert play

[00:34:16] We're not trying to distinguish good players from weaker players. We're trying to just distinguish cheaters from non-cheaters, right? So

[00:34:24] You know, we want something where it's not

[00:34:28] You know, we're not capturing the wrong group of players

[00:34:31] So often so we'll when we test things we have to you know be mindful of this

[00:34:37] So often like whoever is so we're developing a

[00:34:40] Detector will have a group of pairs we run kind of a for test for testing

[00:34:45] Anyone that comes back is cheating

[00:34:47] Then I'll kind of just take an old-fashioned kind of look at their hands

[00:34:51] And see does it look obvious to me they're cheating? Yeah, you know for for other reasons or whatever

[00:34:56] Right and we're not as concerned with letting the okay

[00:34:59] It was cheaters look through the cracks because we're not sensitive enough to capturing catching everybody

[00:35:05] We just want we don't want to catch any

[00:35:07] You know like anyone who's not cheating

[00:35:10] And and say they are you know, we're very careful. So we kind of tune things to a level

[00:35:16] Where we're pretty confident that's not going to happen

[00:35:19] And oh, yeah, I can't say never but we're pretty confident and

[00:35:24] So so that's kind of and then we run do we get other data and run other tests?

[00:35:28] You know, we don't want to use the same data to run every test for every player

[00:35:32] Sure, that's problems that so

[00:35:34] Or then we'll get fresh data from bbo and players we haven't

[00:35:38] Looked at you know, like franco may just wouldn't add

[00:35:40] You know, like can you give me you get data for you know 500 pairs who've played about this many hands

[00:35:47] You know or whatever so we just have a bunch of random pairs

[00:35:50] BBO is hugely helpful. We're like developing and testing things providing it's like anonymous data or things or

[00:35:58] you know

[00:36:00] So

[00:36:01] So we really appreciate that

[00:36:04] Got it. Thanks bbo

[00:36:07] Yeah, well, I'm not I'm not going to get into the wars of this platform or that platform

[00:36:11] But bbo has been very helpful with us for you know, we were developing edgars

[00:36:15] So, I mean, it's not that other platforms wouldn't have been they just didn't have the data available

[00:36:21] So how often do you talk to to franco?

[00:36:24] Uh, probably too often

[00:36:28] No, I mean it's we talk in the fun every now and then it's more like if I you know

[00:36:31] If i'm driving somewhere and have 15 or 20 minutes to kill, you know, it's a good time to go over things but

[00:36:37] Our conversations end up going on too long and covering too many topics

[00:36:41] But so we often handle things by email

[00:36:43] Which go on too long and cover too many topics also, but

[00:36:47] Is it fun?

[00:36:48] Some yeah, so for me like trying to developing new detectors testing and trying is kind of fun

[00:36:54] Um, some of the administrative things we have to do because we're helping the acpl

[00:36:58] It can be a little tedious, but it's not it's not like

[00:37:02] Dreadery or anything, but it can be a little tedious

[00:37:04] Yeah, but it's kind of um, but now that we're working with the acpl

[00:37:07] It's been a lot of time with that it's takes away from times

[00:37:11] That we kind of basically had to stop tweaking

[00:37:14] Have everything set for how what we're going to include and not include with edgar and then

[00:37:19] You know go from there and then any changes we have to be very careful

[00:37:24] To the any changes we make to our you know, to our detection tools that we thoroughly test them before we implement them

[00:37:31] Who's the person at the acpl you're working with?

[00:37:35] So we work so a lot so we've worked with brogne to quite a bit. Yeah

[00:37:39] There's sabrina in you know, one of the administrators who is

[00:37:43] You know, she's like our point person for data flow back and forth

[00:37:48] We've worked with people on the board like joanne glassson was was very helpful when she was on the board

[00:37:53] Board and now like margo. We haven't things are sort of

[00:37:57] mostly

[00:37:59] Done before margo took over so so we haven't really worked with her that much but a few times we have she's been

[00:38:06] Very helpful and very you know anytime it's an issue. I feel like the day

[00:38:10] you know the board

[00:38:13] so

[00:38:14] The I don't always agree with everywhere how the board comes down on everything in this area

[00:38:19] But I certainly would not pretend like my view is correct and theirs is incorrect

[00:38:23] Like I think among, you know, they there's several different rational or reasonable choices

[00:38:28] And they sometimes they pick a different reasonable choice that I would have picked but that's you know

[00:38:35] They often have different considerations than I do so, right?

[00:38:38] That's sort of like my view in bridge, you know, disagreeing with me doesn't make you wrong. Disagreeing with me doesn't

[00:38:44] Mean you're stupid. It just means we disagree on something right so but for them, but for the most part

[00:38:51] um, I think

[00:38:53] The we see pretty we kind of see eye to eye with the board on how to and how things should be handled and what they've implemented

[00:38:59] It's just kind of around the margins, you know, in a few situations till they should be handled. So, you know, whatever

[00:39:05] But is Sabrina is she a bridge player like uh, no, she's just the administrator who she's the one who um

[00:39:13] You know who sends it who gives us the information like who we're supposed to run

[00:39:18] We can send her then it goes from her to the recorder's office

[00:39:21] God it's sort of good to have one point person at the ac bl because

[00:39:26] We don't want to get in a situation where

[00:39:28] There's like some there's one of the direct board of someone on the board

[00:39:31] Or someone else is thinking like I think these players might be cheating

[00:39:35] Like can you run these players this area? And

[00:39:38] Even if there's nothing untoward going on, you don't want the appearance of anyone like

[00:39:43] Anyone they spell targeting any groups of players or things like that

[00:39:47] so

[00:39:48] So it's sort of you know, so it's sort of best. I mean nothing like that's happened or whatever. It's more

[00:39:53] um

[00:39:55] It's you know these the board members in my experience are very hardworking and diligent

[00:40:01] You know, that's the ones I've dealt with anyway

[00:40:04] so like right now Larry Sealy on the board is kind of the person we interact with the most

[00:40:09] and

[00:40:11] He's he's a smart guy

[00:40:14] You know, it's very technically oriented and a very good bridge player

[00:40:18] and

[00:40:19] He's

[00:40:20] You know, I think he's a bit more

[00:40:23] Of a hanging judge that I am when it comes to people who cheated

[00:40:27] But you know, I understand people have different

[00:40:30] Different opinions, you know, he's I think I think all of us kind of feel like if people were beginners

[00:40:35] And they were sort of cheating at home with their spouse

[00:40:37] You know, you have to be a little more lenient. It doesn't mean they don't get some kind of suspension

[00:40:41] but maybe but but being more lenient with inexperienced players but

[00:40:45] You know, but if some but if like a bridge professional like yourself was caught

[00:40:50] you know, that's

[00:40:52] How closely do you follow like a prosecution?

[00:40:56] It's kind of like we so we just do like we have like the acbl numbers

[00:41:00] And then we do it so so often like I don't even know who a lot of the play most of the players are

[00:41:04] But then I see when the reports hit

[00:41:07] The acbl site, you know, I I sort of just had to kind of check and see but

[00:41:12] I mean, I could you could look up their ways on the acbl site to try to find max names to numbers if you kind of dig around a bit

[00:41:18] But I'm not, you know, why I'm not really right

[00:41:23] And the

[00:41:25] Everybody makes mistakes people

[00:41:27] things but, you know

[00:41:30] Kind of pay for your mistake and move on with your life and I try to

[00:41:33] Clean up your act. But

[00:41:36] Did your wife play bridge anymore?

[00:41:38] Not very often

[00:41:41] No, she's she has much better things to do

[00:41:47] But the um, but actually what one um

[00:41:50] When discussing some this sort of area online at one point

[00:41:55] um, somebody

[00:41:57] Made a point to me and I think they actually had an email exchange

[00:42:01] Saying like basically you don't play club games. You said really which I don't really not that I

[00:42:07] Wouldn't but I don't and said like

[00:42:10] You know even looking at sort of like when you play in some regional event where there's a lot of weak players

[00:42:15] It's not the same

[00:42:17] Like you really need to remember what these club games are like and explain like there are people when they're taking lessons

[00:42:23] So maybe have two couples or four or whatever and often, you know, they're discussing while they're learning to play

[00:42:29] They're taught. They're discussing that they're showing you they'll show the hand and then

[00:42:32] Okay, this is a no one no-trap opening. You see this this is and

[00:42:36] And this is how they learn to play and he said even at the bridge club sometimes

[00:42:41] That they're talking when they're not supposed to where they're playing it have to be reminded because that's kind of how they learn to play

[00:42:45] Right and now they're playing online at home

[00:42:48] Yeah, and they learn to play just before the pandemic or even whatever

[00:42:51] And they're sort of talking to each other, you know people in the same house the same way when they took lessons

[00:42:56] right and they're sometimes

[00:42:59] You know retiree retirees

[00:43:01] Just learning to play and they're and this is just sort of how they learn to play. Yeah, and

[00:43:07] Like and there are other people I'm sure just kind of talk back and forth who don't even think they're cheating

[00:43:11] They don't realize how much they're cheating

[00:43:14] And so there some people claim who argue that they're definitely not cheating when they obviously are

[00:43:20] They may believe it at first

[00:43:23] Sometimes or sometimes I certainly could bid themselves over them sure but yeah, there are others who are just

[00:43:28] You know

[00:43:29] It's it's hard to admit

[00:43:31] We did something wrong. So I don't sure so people deny they're cheating when they're cheating. It's you know human nature

[00:43:37] I don't really know but the one thing I do feel strongly about when it comes to penalties is if somebody confesses

[00:43:44] immediately

[00:43:46] That's one thing. Yeah, if they require you to go through a lot of work

[00:43:51] I don't mean just adger running them but go through a lot of work presenting with a lot of information

[00:43:56] Right to demonstrate so they so that they can't really defend themselves that they know that they know they're cheating. They know they're caught

[00:44:04] And then they confess

[00:44:05] That's another level. Yeah, if somebody like actually goes to a hearing and then once they realize they're they're whatever they decide to confess

[00:44:12] That's the more work. Yeah, you make people like me

[00:44:16] Or jeff edelstein and his crew in their quarters office that said of the more work you make people do

[00:44:22] Before you confess the longer your suspensions should be after you confess

[00:44:26] You know, but it's just kind of what I

[00:44:29] You know one thing that kind of feels strongly about but certainly

[00:44:32] Giving people a break for confessing or else you just the system has become unwieldy. You know, that's

[00:44:38] But not everyone agrees with that other some people were just expelled everybody, you know, who cheated. Yeah

[00:44:44] No, that makes that makes total sense to me

[00:44:49] Um, I have a question for you now. Okay. Have you played much online? Yeah

[00:44:55] Um, how often do you feel like you're cheated when you play online?

[00:44:58] I mean if you play a set game against someone it's one thing because playing in some acb all of that

[00:45:02] It's yeah players. How often do you think you're cheated? Maybe

[00:45:06] twice a week

[00:45:08] So, I mean like how many times you play like say how many how many board times per session

[00:45:12] Do you think you play get someone who cheated every like almost every session every other session? No, no, definitely not

[00:45:16] And I play a fair amount online

[00:45:19] um probably like uh one out of every

[00:45:26] Five or six sessions. I'll and I I'll report like there was something last night that I played

[00:45:32] Something happened. I don't remember what it was, but I didn't end up reporting it

[00:45:35] But I remember being like maybe that's maybe I'm exaggerating. I mean I've recorded I've filed probably

[00:45:42] Yeah, I think that's I think that's an exaggerated number. I've filed

[00:45:48] A couple recorder forms in the last so so you know like you can look after the game at

[00:45:53] The pair who you think was cheating. Yeah and look at how they played

[00:45:56] So do you like look and see how they played other hands that

[00:46:00] That sometimes sometimes yeah

[00:46:03] Sometimes I mean, maybe maybe I was like maybe sometimes I'll think like wait

[00:46:07] That's a little this is a little strange that they did they did x

[00:46:11] I actually did file a quarter form against a pair a husband and wife

[00:46:16] Uh that were convicted of cheating

[00:46:19] Uh the anderson's

[00:46:21] Uh Sharon anderson. I was very surprised

[00:46:24] That like playing against them in some like speedball

[00:46:28] And they did something and I was like I cannot believe that I'm filing a recorder form on this person based on her resume

[00:46:35] and then

[00:46:36] It came to pass, you know that she

[00:46:39] That they were convicted and uh that was surprising

[00:46:42] But it was also validating, you know because like I don't remember what they did

[00:46:47] But it definitely like

[00:46:50] Caught me because I think so I haven't run numbers on this

[00:46:54] But from what experience I have so so let's say that we assume that maybe

[00:46:59] 3% or 4% of the players were cheating

[00:47:03] So if that's the case, you know, then you're going to play against them

[00:47:06] you know, it's occasionally and

[00:47:09] You know, sometimes there's hands where there's nothing to do

[00:47:11] So there's no reason to suspect someone's cheating right anyway, but

[00:47:17] Pairs who cheat I think play more often than other pairs. Yeah, you know, they kind of get addicted to this

[00:47:24] They play a lot more

[00:47:24] So if even if it's only three or four percent of the pairs that are cheating

[00:47:28] It may be seven or eight percent of the of the boards that you play you play against them with cheating

[00:47:32] No, don't take these as numbers that are yeah, actually this is just just an example just yeah point

[00:47:37] So I don't I don't want to

[00:47:39] But I think and how can people how could people email you?

[00:47:45] Don't what's your cell phone? Yeah, right

[00:47:50] No, we've got a couple things. Well, luckily, you know, I guess our the edgar email and website is not that

[00:47:56] That well known but if anyone does go to the to the edgar website

[00:48:00] We're happy to take donations through a 501 c3. Okay, and we are

[00:48:05] You know, we work based off of donations sure and

[00:48:09] We have a policy that other than our annual trip to hawaii

[00:48:12] Not i'm kidding. No that we we don't um

[00:48:15] You know, we don't pay ourselves

[00:48:17] We've you know, we've used money to like buy upgraded computer hardware because

[00:48:23] To keep up with all the oh we have to run

[00:48:25] Yeah, and that wasn't me. I don't do anything. I used to joke that fraco was running everything on his iphone

[00:48:32] I

[00:48:34] Didn't make a joke like when we were we got the volunteer the year award

[00:48:38] I mentioned how fraco, you know how he does everything and whatever

[00:48:41] And he said yeah, and brian's pretty handy with the spreadsheet

[00:48:45] Like just just joking and that appeared in the acpl article

[00:48:52] Again, it's kind of funny that if someone someone who's looking at like if someone in the with the acpl

[00:48:56] Or someone a volunteer someone who's like trying to like we'll send them a spreadsheet with a lot of information

[00:49:02] And i'll say like are you good with excel?

[00:49:04] And some people are like well, i'm okay, but i'm not like an expert

[00:49:07] I'm like well, do you know how to like filter data and sort of like oh, of course like yeah

[00:49:12] But i mean like i've only written macros for this like

[00:49:15] Okay, so what you mean is you're like um, I say like i'm a flight b excel user

[00:49:20] Like i don't know how to do a lot of basic things

[00:49:22] And i can look up if there's something i want to do and i don't know how i can look it up

[00:49:26] And kind of figure out if it's something that i think should be easy to do

[00:49:29] Yeah, but but i don't you know so when people tell me i'm sort of you know

[00:49:33] I'm okay with excel that means that there are levels beyond me and

[00:49:36] I'm gonna tell them they either go or catch on in two seconds

[00:49:40] In any of the other end but but so uh, I feel like i'm so i'm kind of handy with it with its spreadsheet

[00:49:49] Freckles he's like you know, so he joke about that all the time who wrote the article

[00:49:53] Oh

[00:49:56] Someone at the asia

[00:49:58] Was kind of funny so i don't want to call her out for that it was was an amy cast it over because she helped me with

[00:50:03] those show notes

[00:50:05] I'm not like a friend of her

[00:50:13] Good job, amy

[00:50:15] Frank Frank is is is very is

[00:50:17] Very smart. He's very very good. You know, he's

[00:50:21] He's one of these people where if he says he knows about something he knows about it

[00:50:24] He doesn't you know, he doesn't talk out of his ass like a lot of us do

[00:50:28] That's why when there was one one detector i was working on or I mentioned who I thought

[00:50:32] Um, I said, I think this is a better way of doing like looking at defense

[00:50:36] And his response was well, but that's throwing away most of the data and throwing away data

[00:50:41] Is not usually a good thing. I said, but but it's throwing away the noisy data and honing in on the signal part

[00:50:46] Yeah, you know is what I is what I think and so I got so then he coded it up and like I got a response like like holy

[00:50:53] shit

[00:50:55] And there was um another thing with opening leads that

[00:51:00] This sort of approach instead of using double dummy

[00:51:03] It's it's sort of like taking an approach of

[00:51:06] There like if if partner has an ace queen of a side seat and you have a king

[00:51:11] Okay, that's like something that you would want want to lead

[00:51:13] Yeah, if if you have an ace in part as a singleton that's something you'd want to lead

[00:51:17] Kind of not taking the whole hand just just a suit in a vacuum

[00:51:21] What suits look attractive to lead?

[00:51:24] Because a lot of players who are cheating will do things based on partner's hand

[00:51:29] But an expert player would look at it and say well, that's not really what you want to do knowing partner's hand

[00:51:34] Right, but that doesn't mean they're not cheating right, you know

[00:51:37] Yeah, like yeah if I saw a hand I'd leave trumps because they can only take trump tricks or a few ruffs

[00:51:42] Like yes, but why are they leading? You know partner over called a heart

[00:51:47] They have king third of hearts and king third of diamonds. Why are they even from king third of diamonds?

[00:51:51] They're like well, what does it matter trumps a better lead?

[00:51:54] But their lead is because they see partners hands

[00:51:56] Right, so so I was joking about it's being like like it's like eye candy

[00:52:01] You know like seeing this holding in a suit is like eye candy

[00:52:04] And you want to so so we came up with this approach if we defined

[00:52:08] Situations that are eye candy and situations that that were the opposite

[00:52:12] In honor of the first bush preser called eye broccoli because he made some comment not like broccoli

[00:52:18] So so like eye candy or eye broccoli

[00:52:21] And then kind of the in between the ones where who knows and so instead of looking at double dummy, you looked at how often

[00:52:26] Like you get suit contracts

[00:52:28] there was um an eye candy situation

[00:52:31] in what percentage of the person lead it and

[00:52:34] When we compared a group of convicted cheaters

[00:52:37] To a group of people who we had sort of already had we vetted who were good players

[00:52:42] You know like um like good fly-dye players

[00:52:45] Um, so we expected to do better the difference was striking and and I remember like I

[00:52:52] Franco was that was like I got a holy shit from Franco like holy shit. That was a great idea

[00:52:56] And and I said like do you think this is better? It doesn't work better than double dummy

[00:53:01] He said like maybe 10,000 times more sensitive

[00:53:05] You know like the probability of someone saying something from this versus double dummy

[00:53:08] It's it's like or is the magnitude more sensitive

[00:53:11] And from that we developed

[00:53:13] What we call the kid automatic opening lead detector

[00:53:17] They have named after kit a method of his yeah, and this is like Franco was sort of pushing for this an idea like this for a while

[00:53:25] and I was kind of

[00:53:27] Not really on board and then after the this the eye candy approach

[00:53:32] That's you know and Franco is like okay. Well, why don't we take this and we can you know make this better

[00:53:38] um doing like and the and that was improved it tremendously

[00:53:43] so I'll back up a bit so the way

[00:53:46] One idea kits had many different ideas for cheating detection. Yeah, and most of his ideas. I think he was full of kit

[00:53:55] Like I think they were not very they were good in some ways. Yeah, but not

[00:54:00] and others and

[00:54:02] A lot of times what I could play was

[00:54:04] Kits idea is good if exceeded by someone other than kit

[00:54:07] Because as I mentioned earlier his sort of view of mainstream and non mainstream is not the same as other experts. Yeah, so

[00:54:15] So I feel like he's looking at things through the the kit

[00:54:20] Kind of skewed lens of what's normal or not as opposed to

[00:54:24] You know say the chip martel lens of what's normal or not, right? So I mean, I don't know

[00:54:28] It would be unfair to kit kits

[00:54:30] It's very good at this a lot of other things but wait, but the one idea he had that I think is phenomenal

[00:54:36] was the

[00:54:38] So when people look to see if someone's cheating

[00:54:41] They people often fall in the trap of looking at all four hands

[00:54:44] Yeah, if you think that person's pair is colluding, right? You don't look at all four hands

[00:54:48] Just that those two hands. Yeah, and you know, they bid to a slam that's hard to get to in trump'sburg 5o

[00:54:55] What was that's nothing with anything, you know? Yeah

[00:54:58] so

[00:55:00] So this idea of kits was

[00:55:02] Just look at the hands say through like give everybody 200 john mcallister leads or give someone 200 john mcallister leads in the auction

[00:55:10] so

[00:55:10] So somebody somebody gets um, let's say we give franco 200 lead problems. Yeah

[00:55:16] You know, you want you want someone who is you think?

[00:55:20] Like the same love or better as the player. Yeah, so

[00:55:24] So we'll say, you know, we'll take franco

[00:55:27] I don't know if he's a bridge pro like you are but

[00:55:29] It's probably probably probably drafted a few rounds ahead of you on the uh

[00:55:33] on the bridge team

[00:55:35] So so so uh, we have franco 200 open lead problems that you that you faced

[00:55:41] And he picked his opening lead. Yeah now we give um an independent judge

[00:55:46] Here's 200 hands now anytime you and franco chose the same lead

[00:55:50] Or the same like like spot card don't really matter or you could look if one of you led like the king from king queen other low

[00:55:57] You know that we could include but just any so we take out say out of the 200 hands that were like um

[00:56:03] 110 where you chose different leads or something whatever then we have someone else

[00:56:08] Um is given the auction in the hand

[00:56:12] and also can see partners hand

[00:56:15] And you basically say okay, here are your two choices

[00:56:19] Which lead do you think rates to work out better?

[00:56:22] And you kind of like to apply the 15 second test if after 15 seconds

[00:56:27] It's you're not sure stop thinking about it call it a tie

[00:56:30] Okay, and if it's something where you think okay, this one that may be a little better, but uh, then it's a tie

[00:56:37] If you think okay, they're the same

[00:56:39] Except there's maybe a 10 chance to Claire is six five in which case this lead is better

[00:56:44] But it's never worse than it's a win

[00:56:46] So it's you know, you kind of have these sort of parameters for women

[00:56:50] You know loss and and sometimes people disagree on what what won or what lost where there's a tie

[00:56:55] Because somebody missed something or looks at it, but

[00:56:58] There's general agreement, you know if you give the same you just

[00:57:02] Say like you do group of experts they'll come down pretty much

[00:57:06] Fairly aligned on

[00:57:08] You know how they look at the how they judge these and they don't know who led what they don't know what you led

[00:57:12] And what frank are led right so

[00:57:15] So there's so say there's 110 or whatever there were hands

[00:57:19] That weren't the same and say maybe like 30 of them are doesn't matter. So we're left with 80 hands

[00:57:25] Yeah, so you expect each person went about 40

[00:57:27] Okay, it's like 45 35 for you know, you don't really

[00:57:31] But if you if you assume that it's equal

[00:57:35] Then you could just use you know calculate the probability of one of the odds that is happening

[00:57:40] by chance

[00:57:41] so what happens in one of the cases that I

[00:57:44] I

[00:57:45] Helped the recorder with before edgar was

[00:57:48] Completely up and running. There was someone who won who beat like people like chris will link it and

[00:57:53] Dave berkowitz like 60 to six or something

[00:57:56] Wow, and and it was you know, and what does that tell you that tells you the person's cheating

[00:58:01] But so that's so that's sort of the kit method and you could do this for bidding and for defense and for whatever

[00:58:07] But it's easier for opening leads. That's more cut and dried

[00:58:11] But like sometimes in the auction, okay

[00:58:13] Yeah, like if partner is also colluding like so you didn't bid game

[00:58:16] You only invited but partners now going to bid the game

[00:58:19] You know it's sort of you get into that kind of thing where do you assume both?

[00:58:23] You know, it's so so it's it works better with opening leads. It's cleaner

[00:58:27] So the kinematic is trying to automate this process

[00:58:31] So here's a bridge hand

[00:58:34] Here's an auction

[00:58:36] What what is

[00:58:38] You know, what what would what would a person lead like let's say you put like assume you pulled it on bridge winners or something

[00:58:45] So the bidder goes 103 known. You have king queen jack 10 9 of hearts and an ace

[00:58:50] Okay, so a heart lead

[00:58:53] Is in the top tier lead

[00:58:55] So if a person leads a heart, we don't care if part had a void or fan ace third or whatever. We don't care what partner had

[00:59:02] That you know that's that's basically we assume that our imaginary

[00:59:07] Um an expert who's also trying you know competing

[00:59:11] Chooses the same lead. Yeah, it's kind of thing. So it's like having automated other person making leads

[00:59:17] Um, let's say you have king fourth king fourth

[00:59:21] It's 103 no

[00:59:23] well

[00:59:25] Half, you know, like half of the people would lead one half will be the other

[00:59:29] So, uh it matters what partner has now right and so you have to have a definition for how well it hits

[00:59:37] So we have sort of definitions for

[00:59:40] You like the tier this like this hit great. This hit decent this hit average this hit poorly

[00:59:45] This was a disaster or something like that

[00:59:47] So you have, you know, so if somebody makes a lead

[00:59:51] You know, I mean

[00:59:53] You know, if you have

[00:59:54] You know the bidding goes to like one spade four spades and you have you know

[00:59:58] King queen jack king queen jack of two suits or something and three little of another suit

[01:00:02] And they lead the three little

[01:00:04] Even if it doesn't really matter if you if you leave the king and part, you know, not got an ace

[01:00:08] It's probably not gonna cost you a trick. But who in the hell would lead from three little instead?

[01:00:13] You know, cat hitting partners on ace king jack unless they miscollector they cheated

[01:00:18] You know, who would do that? Yeah, so so picking a lead that is um

[01:00:23] That would be a very like a low minority choice a very unattractive lead based on our definitions

[01:00:29] And hitting something

[01:00:31] That's a hugely attractive like a hugely attractive result. Yeah, um, you know, that looks a bit more cheaty than just

[01:00:39] Guessing which king to underlead

[01:00:41] And kit and his method didn't like to look at levels of cheating this because he thought that's

[01:00:46] Sort of, you know, that gets to the too much subjectivity

[01:00:50] It's just winner lose

[01:00:52] But he I think he agrees with that when you have when you've defined

[01:00:56] These levels now you're not falling into the trap of using your own judgment for each individual case and maybe getting swayed

[01:01:03] I mean there is judgment in how you create these levels, but again, they're objectively

[01:01:08] instituted once you come up with them

[01:01:10] So kit kit is a big fan of the kino medic

[01:01:13] So we named it after him because it's automating this this is really great

[01:01:17] And it's his way works well, but it's time consuming

[01:01:21] Yeah, I mean getting 200 getting somebody to be lead make 200 opening leads is going to take a long time

[01:01:27] Right and we do things like there's some we improved on it a few months ago

[01:01:31] um, uh, some of the definitions for like some some things are easy to define

[01:01:36] But some they're a little more difficult, you know, like is is it better leading from three little or from queen fifth?

[01:01:41] Is it which is so we just kind of call all all these random things just kind of go in the middle of just a random guess

[01:01:46] We don't really we don't try to put our own

[01:01:49] ideas or other people's ideas on

[01:01:52] passive aggressive this that whatever

[01:01:54] On things you're just you know part of a bit of suit. That's more attractive

[01:01:58] The opponent the right opponent bit of suit. That's less attractive, you know just some basic rules

[01:02:02] But then defining um, like what's a hit and what's not it's also kind of difficult

[01:02:07] But we didn't look we looked at like how often do people lead would somebody to double them

[01:02:11] There's no really attractive lead

[01:02:13] How often are people choosing a over b?

[01:02:16] And we look at a group of experts who or fly day players who were pretty sure aren't cheating from

[01:02:22] um, you know vetting them previously

[01:02:25] You know when we find okay 90% of the time they're choosing their small doubled and over there for small or they're this or that

[01:02:31] Then we can tweak what the witch group to put certain leads in

[01:02:36] And you know or like it gets no trouble how often the people there's one on bid suit

[01:02:41] The opponent's been you know diamond hardest bade 3-0

[01:02:44] I mean you automatically did a club. Well, no, you're not if you have king in one club

[01:02:48] That's probably not what you're gonna lead

[01:02:49] But there are times you do the club that you wouldn't when it went 1-0 3-0

[01:02:54] So you have to change how you view that

[01:02:57] And so we looked a lot at

[01:02:59] How do good players what do they lead in these situations?

[01:03:02] How often do they lead double tins in the one on bid suit? How often do you this how often do that?

[01:03:07] To try to get an idea of what's

[01:03:09] What's kind of you know, what's more common? How do people think how do they approach it?

[01:03:13] and

[01:03:15] as you know Franco being smart points out things such as

[01:03:18] what's so

[01:03:20] On our rules like players have most players have a miss rate

[01:03:24] in like

[01:03:25] I think for like our no-troubly detector in the mid to upper 40 percent level most good players

[01:03:31] And it's not a huge difference between experts

[01:03:34] and others because

[01:03:36] You know lead a lot of them lead roles lead partners suitly top of the sequence lead longest

[01:03:41] Is stronger?

[01:03:42] Yes, there are sort of basic rules that everybody follows. So there's only some edge cases

[01:03:48] The distinguished experts from non-experts

[01:03:52] But but if so once if we have all right definitions

[01:03:56] Perfectly matching when an expert looks at the world then we would expect experts to have a 50% mystery

[01:04:01] We'd expect our methods to

[01:04:04] To do as well as the expert and when we disagree we would be right half the time

[01:04:07] They'd be right half the time kind of thing

[01:04:09] Um, and the fact that

[01:04:12] The level is up to the high 40s

[01:04:15] Kind of tells us that you know for for good players that we've vetted

[01:04:19] tells us that our

[01:04:20] You know our bucketing system of how we define

[01:04:23] The single dummy lead and then how we define

[01:04:26] Partner how it hits partners we call it partner dummy looking at your hand and dummy and partner's hand

[01:04:30] But not the opponents that our definitions are reasonably good. Yeah, because we're kind of approaching this 50% level

[01:04:38] That actually hit now for

[01:04:41] cheating detection

[01:04:42] We use it, you know, we give a lot more leeway

[01:04:46] In how we're measuring things

[01:04:48] You know, we sort of we have things set to give the benefit of the doubt to players

[01:04:53] Because again if we miss the occasional cheater here in there, you know, whatever

[01:04:57] We'll still sleep at night

[01:04:58] But if we start catching john mccalister because he led well for a while for no, you know some lucky streak

[01:05:05] You know that's a problem. So

[01:05:07] We're very sensitive to that

[01:05:10] It's interesting to me that you don't even really play online

[01:05:14] And like in these acpl games

[01:05:17] And yet you're dedicated to

[01:05:20] To like doing this

[01:05:22] well, it's so

[01:05:24] At one point I was working with the credential credentials advisory team

[01:05:28] Like earlier pandemic which we were advising

[01:05:31] Like independent games were a lot of top experts were playing. Yeah

[01:05:35] And and they you know, they would just disinvite players

[01:05:38] Yeah who who were cheating and some you know, some nbo's would would

[01:05:44] Would prosecute players

[01:05:46] Others say well, they're cheating on a private game. That's nothing to do with us

[01:05:49] We can't really do anything about that and which you know, it's a bit of a problem kind of but

[01:05:55] You know, whatever and there are all these complaints. What about these games we play in

[01:05:59] I'm thinking, okay, there's some people it's like there are people who donate money to charity

[01:06:04] There people go and help build houses or help do this or go to soup kitchens. Whatever. Yeah, if you're donating money

[01:06:10] My view is always I'll write up a check. I'm a statement. What's the ball game?

[01:06:14] Yeah

[01:06:14] If somebody else doesn't give any money if they show up and actually help and do stuff

[01:06:18] I'm not gonna say you're a cheapskate. I'm gonna say good for you

[01:06:20] Yeah, you know different people have different ways of volunteering if people are volunteering

[01:06:24] Giving their time or money or whatever to any good cause

[01:06:28] You know

[01:06:29] Then I feel my cause my way of doing it good for you

[01:06:31] Right

[01:06:31] So the fact that we were a group who were helping

[01:06:35] Doing this like cleaning up the these expert games and trying to do with that

[01:06:40] Like I don't really think people should criticize that because we're not looking at these other games

[01:06:43] Other people can do that if they want. Yeah, you know, it takes a lot of time

[01:06:47] And by the same token now that we're working on freq without working on these pbo games

[01:06:51] There's a lot of well, these are much a low level whatever players who cares

[01:06:55] And the answer is that people play in those games care

[01:06:57] Yeah, you know, nobody wants to be cheated to people want to play on a fair game and

[01:07:01] You know, do I care if someone's cheating in some bbo game that I never play in?

[01:07:05] I mean in some level I don't really care

[01:07:06] But I know but what I do care about is the people playing the game care

[01:07:11] And for brids to survive we need more players

[01:07:15] And if people who are playing, you know beginners

[01:07:19] Even not not even just beginners, but people who like playing online

[01:07:22] If they're having a bad experience because there's people cheating

[01:07:26] You know, how is that really going to drive people to the game?

[01:07:28] I mean, yeah, if you let it'll drive cheaters to the game if they can cheat and not get caught

[01:07:32] But that's what we want

[01:07:33] So, you know, I think

[01:07:36] It's like a lot maybe a lot more could be done for the brids community as a whole

[01:07:39] trying to help

[01:07:41] Clean up these like, you know games that

[01:07:45] Like non expert games just making it sort of a

[01:07:48] You know cleaning up the playground for everybody for everybody, you know, it's not going to be perfectly clean but trying to do the best

[01:07:55] Yeah, and

[01:07:57] So I guess someone had to do it and Franco and I had the time and

[01:08:00] Hopefully the the knowledge to to figure out how to do it

[01:08:04] Do you feel like equally good about like are you are you generating people?

[01:08:09] it's so

[01:08:10] Would certainly sometimes if there's people where there's recorders filed on some people

[01:08:14] We've given responses and say like no this person is if they're cheating, they're the worst cheater in the world

[01:08:20] But it's it's all it's impossible to say someone's not cheating. Yeah, you know you cheat on one hand and you cheated

[01:08:26] Yeah, right there was a there was a like there was a case written up with somebody

[01:08:31] at a club game a face-to-face club game got

[01:08:34] The hand records came out

[01:08:36] And they were late I guess late starting the last session goes to the bathroom grabs a hand record

[01:08:41] And I guess I caught on video and he has a hand record and then did something did somebody use you in the last round

[01:08:47] Okay, so did he cheat on any of the first ever rounds presumably not did he cheat to the last month?

[01:08:54] Probably not but he cheated on that hand

[01:08:56] and but for online

[01:08:59] We're just inferring from the result that someone cheated

[01:09:02] So it's not like so it's not on camera. There's no one at the table

[01:09:05] There's no way to really prove

[01:09:08] That somebody cheated on one hand

[01:09:10] Now there's hands that single hands that have convinced me someone has cheated

[01:09:14] Yeah, one I've seen but that's kind of rare and for those players

[01:09:17] You don't need to just rely on the one hand because they have a whole resume of cheating

[01:09:24] But and if not then you just have to write it off as just some random aberration and not

[01:09:28] You know and let it go but so there's no way you could exonerate someone and say they're not cheating

[01:09:34] I mean, it's just impossible. You never know us but but we can certainly say that

[01:09:38] There's no that there's no

[01:09:40] No evidence or cheat. I mean the the evidence is consistent with not cheating. It's not consistent with cheating

[01:09:45] But you know whatever I mean, I'm sure it's thinking about it

[01:09:48] I'm sure you've had a hand here or there where it's like

[01:09:50] All right if partner has the jack or spades. I want to bid seven no trump

[01:09:54] Whatever and if you bid seven no trump or not no one's going to think either way about it

[01:09:59] And if you just ask your partner and they said yeah, I have the jack you bid seven no trump

[01:10:04] even if someone thought well that was

[01:10:06] Seemed against the odds, but whatever and you never cheated again. You still cheated on that hand. Yeah, you know, but

[01:10:14] Who's gonna catch you nobody so

[01:10:17] Just like in face-to-face there are pairs who have their little band of resumes to do things and yeah some more intensely than others and

[01:10:24] but it's it's

[01:10:26] You know

[01:10:27] It's not quite the same. I mean doing things that are out in the open for all to see is one thing

[01:10:33] If you're not trying to like, you know partner thinks for a long time and then you bid everybody sees that

[01:10:38] That's not doing anything sneaky. Right, you know like little signals are one thing, but

[01:10:43] So that's that's I don't really like that cheating like you said that you know

[01:10:47] That's just kind of

[01:10:48] You know if somebody in football somebody's called for holding do they cheat? No, they got called for holding

[01:10:54] It's kind of a different thing. Yeah, I got I got my wrist slept the other day

[01:10:58] I was playing online and my partner

[01:11:02] Established her side suit

[01:11:04] And now she you know, she played the hand well and so I typed in the the chat

[01:11:09] I said well played but she hadn't

[01:11:12] Claimed, you know, like I mean I knew that she knew what was going on and I

[01:11:16] You typed it too early. Yeah. I typed it in. I wasn't gonna press return and somehow now I pressed return

[01:11:22] And so the guy one of the opponents goes

[01:11:25] You know nothing, you know

[01:11:27] Base. Oh god, it pissed me off

[01:11:30] like

[01:11:31] Well, okay before you get pissed off at that even if they said something obnoxious

[01:11:34] You're you're the one who did something inappropriate first. I know. So that's kind of my role

[01:11:38] It's like when somebody complains that they call the director for whatever

[01:11:41] It's like we didn't explain your bid properly

[01:11:43] So even if you think it didn't matter don't blame the guy for calling the director

[01:11:47] It's fine. You call the director just so you you shouldn't have done that

[01:11:50] Not a big deal. Maybe the guy reacted worse than he should here. She should have whatever

[01:11:55] But I think you should you know, that's somewhere you should give the person

[01:11:59] A bit of slack and then just say I apologize

[01:12:01] I know I should have said that

[01:12:04] I couldn't bring myself to do that Michael Rosenberg called me out at the table

[01:12:08] a couple of times ago for

[01:12:10] Not for playing too slowly on defense when I was like like falling suit to something like signaling

[01:12:16] And he gave me some shit. He was 100 correct. It was like, you know, it's it's you try to

[01:12:22] Play in tempo, especially in the signaling situation to play in tempo

[01:12:25] If you just follow with a low card and I I didn't I kind of fumbled a bit before I played whatever

[01:12:31] It kind of made it obvious that I was giving it whatever signal and he was right to call me out on it. It was like it was like

[01:12:38] You know, it's just sort of like one of these things where you just

[01:12:41] you know

[01:12:42] You don't mean to do it but you do it sometimes right and I try not to

[01:12:46] And he's right and I'm glad he called me out because he's 100 right and that was not a good thing

[01:12:50] Not good. So, you know, we're all

[01:12:55] Everyone other than Michael and Kevin

[01:12:58] Kevin it's very good tempo

[01:13:00] on defense, you know, fun things he's very very good

[01:13:04] Very good tempo

[01:13:06] I want to share I said, Kevin, do you have any uh, I reached out to him

[01:13:12] Kevin, do you have any anecdotes or something you could tell me about your partnership with brian?

[01:13:16] And he said this is this is the entirety of what he his response

[01:13:23] He brought some nice breakfast during the summer nabc in chicago like fresh fruit and pastries

[01:13:34] That's true, I was driving in from home and I went to the farmers market here in august and beforehand and brought in a bunch of stuff

[01:13:42] for uh

[01:13:43] For him and his peeps and whoever

[01:13:49] Um, hamson asked the same I asked hamson the same question

[01:13:52] he said

[01:13:54] You're gonna like this

[01:13:56] Only that he is one of the best teammates that i've ever had

[01:13:59] Wow

[01:14:00] Yeah

[01:14:02] That's uh nice to hear from hamson

[01:14:06] Because I mean I was too intimidated to ever give him shit for anything

[01:14:09] No, but I think part of it is sort of the attitude of never of just

[01:14:15] Just because I wouldn't have made this bid doesn't mean it's a mistake. You know, like not not picking on everything people

[01:14:23] You know, you're there to win you're there to win playing fairly of course

[01:14:26] Why give people a hard time a jd you would always

[01:14:30] We got into it a few times but

[01:14:33] Your brother your brother david who I talked to he said, uh

[01:14:39] I you know asked him is you know any particular questions I should ask brian

[01:14:44] uh

[01:14:46] He said

[01:14:47] You could ask him about how his ideas on bridge have evolved over the years

[01:14:52] And then he said he also loves talking about edgar his bridge cheating exactly

[01:15:03] And then I spoke to your mom on the phone yesterday

[01:15:06] She was very clear like this is about brian. This is not about me

[01:15:11] But she she she uh, yeah, she had a bunch of stuff

[01:15:15] That she shared

[01:15:16] Yeah, my sister always joked that my mom everything is is always in the frame

[01:15:20] You know just puts everything in the within the frame room like her she she kind of puts herself in the situation

[01:15:26] You know, it's it's a I kind of a joke about that that I said to my kids once but i'm not

[01:15:32] I'm not gonna say it on here

[01:15:34] She often uh, yeah, but she kind of looked at things through

[01:15:37] You know

[01:15:39] Like how she would do things or she puts she puts herself in everything I guess your mother. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of funny

[01:15:45] So that's what she said. I know this is about him and not about me. So she was like try to remind herself

[01:15:49] She was very clear. Yeah, she was very clear. It's kind of funny

[01:15:54] Yeah, she told me about how you had some guy who was like a 70 year old when you first got your driver's license

[01:16:00] Oh, yeah, you would go pick him up and drive like 40 minutes to play the club

[01:16:05] You're growing up in bluedford, west virginia. There were some games

[01:16:08] You know in town, but they I was going, you know, I was in high school

[01:16:12] So I couldn't really play, you know that but there were like some evening games in a few places that were like 40 45 minutes away

[01:16:20] so often there's like the neighboring town of princeton

[01:16:23] And so people would sort of meet in the parking lot there

[01:16:26] He had arranged ahead of time and all sitting drive together and then come back

[01:16:30] And so the like one of the first times like when I got my driver's license

[01:16:34] And so I drove so this guy who I played with he was like a grandfather to me. He was this

[01:16:38] Hold on. He was like funny guy here

[01:16:40] And uh, he just moved over he said he said I don't see too good at night and I was like

[01:16:45] So I drove his car. There's one woman who had a Mercedes. She had me drive her car and I was driving our

[01:16:50] Chevrolet piece of shit, you know, we didn't have

[01:16:52] My dad wouldn't let me drive the new

[01:16:54] Cite Chevy Chevy Citation

[01:16:57] And I'm like, I'm like so and so let's me drive

[01:17:00] Her Mercedes and and I drive so and so his brand new sob

[01:17:08] So it was always kind of nervous, but this guy I remember once this guy Doug

[01:17:11] He was like a seven year old guy very pretty good player for you know

[01:17:15] I learned a lot from him when I was like a young

[01:17:18] Upcoming player

[01:17:19] And we're playing against someone

[01:17:22] His husband wife pair and this woman's like started giving the guy hell for something stupid

[01:17:26] And she was right. He was she was a businessman and she was like kind like you're a fucking idiot

[01:17:31] I think just said

[01:17:32] You know, ma'am, I've only heard language like that in two places

[01:17:36] One was in a whorehouse and the other was when I was in the navy

[01:17:40] You never in the military were you?

[01:17:50] And another thing he did that I guess only funny when you're like a 16 year old high school kid

[01:17:55] Is we were playing in the locals a sectional like, you know, like an hour away or something with

[01:18:02] Probably had to do with my mom. I don't remember and

[01:18:05] someone had had

[01:18:07] You know, had been to a regional and had one of the plastic invention card holders

[01:18:09] you know looking all cool which most of the club players didn't and they had a

[01:18:14] The convention card multicolored, you know, that was it's a fan. It was like, you know, five different colors of things like really done

[01:18:22] Like he picked up the convention card and so it's looking at he says, oh two cheeseburgers. It's a prize

[01:18:32] And I'm no I bet like to the 60 or me that was like the funniest comment

[01:18:40] This is the guy uh, Doug

[01:18:44] He was

[01:18:47] Oh

[01:18:49] He was my first like good bridge partner. Um other than my mom or my brother, right?

[01:18:55] but yeah

[01:18:57] I asked david when he when uh, when you got when you were better than him. He said, uh

[01:19:02] When he went to college

[01:19:05] Is that right? Is that what he said?

[01:19:07] I don't know anyway

[01:19:09] Uh

[01:19:11] Well, this has been super fun, man. I've really enjoyed it

[01:19:14] Thanks. Good luck with your professional career. It's a player. Thanks. Maybe I'll hire you sometime with

[01:19:20] Yeah, I've got a ton of availability as it turns out

[01:19:28] All right, this is a lot of fun, man, I appreciate it. I'll I'll be in touch when we're ready to uh when it's published

[01:19:34] All right, thanks. All right, man. Thank you. All right. Bye. Bye

[01:19:39] This is probably the most preparation I've ever done for an episode and I want to thank all of those people who

[01:19:45] generously responded to my questions to help me

[01:19:49] better understand

[01:19:51] Just who brian is

[01:19:53] It feels really good to

[01:19:55] go into the interview

[01:19:57] with as much preparation as I had

[01:20:00] And makes me wonder why I haven't been better about doing that

[01:20:04] in the past

[01:20:06] Thanks to everyone for listening

[01:20:09] and uh, we encourage you to subscribe to our youtube channel where you can uh watch

[01:20:15] the conversations that take place and of course

[01:20:18] Please subscribe to the setting trick wherever you get your podcast