My guest today is Stefan Scorchev, a bridge player, friend, and the creator of IntoBridge. For those who are unaware, IntoBridge is a free platform for online bridge games. In his childhood, Stefan learned the value of online bridge as he spent hours playing bridge every day, and found that playing bridge online encouraged him compete at in-person tournaments.
Stefan is the first Bulgarian guest I've had on the show, and I fist met him in 2012 when he played on the Bulgarian team in the Junior Nationals. We talk about in-person and virtual bridge, the unique features of IntoBridge that borrow from modern gaming, and what it's like to run a bridge startup.
You can learn more about IntoBridge on its website: https://intobridge.com/
Subscribers to The Setting Trick email list check your email or to subscribe click here: https://www.thesettingtrick.com/
Episode Highlights:
4:58 – Stefan played bridge online constantly in his childhood, and moved into in-person tournaments at seventeen. He says he played bridge as much as fifteen hours a day.
12:05 – Stefan says he is the strangest looking person at tournaments because he always wears his IntoBridge merchandise.
16:05 – "We focused on inventing something that has the potential that you close it immediately and continue whenever you can."
17:35 0:54 – Ranked matchups on IntoBridge
24:17 – The Daily exists to give people a reason to return to IntoBridge every day.
28:47 – Stefan has a lot of ideas for new bridge formats unique to IntoBridge
32:45 – Some unfortunate mis-clicks
40:12 – Bridge marketing is difficult, so word of mouth has been the best marketing channel for IntoBridge
48:22 – Running a startup is difficult as investors and employees rely on the performance of the business
56:46 – Having access to a free bridge platform as a kid was game-changing for Stefan.
57:59 – One great aspect of online bridge is that it naturally leads people into in-person bridge, encouraging them to meet more people.
1:02:41 – Stefan's Fiance, Desi, is coming to the US Nationals for the first time.
[00:00:00] We still had some money to spend and we thought, okay, we need to have one shot. We need to make something great, to invent something great and hopefully it works out. So basically we dissected bridge and bridge competitions to create something different. And also it was now well post-COVID so people were getting back to normal life. And that's why maybe our better stuff didn't succeed at all because when people are stuck at home,
[00:00:29] they can dedicate the time. But the new realities were that people were having more dynamic lives and also online was second thing now for playing bridge. And more importantly, they have some duties. They need to go somewhere or their husband or wife calls them and they need to terminate the game immediately. So we focused on inventing something that has the potential that you close it immediately and you continue whenever you want.
[00:00:59] So this was the first successful thing we got there with the run games. That you are totally flexible. You can play three seconds, 30 seconds, 30 minutes, whatever. And actually that is funny because when you think, oh, I'll play run games, maybe I need to close them in five minutes, but I won't be harmed in any way.
[00:01:20] So people start and actually in our lives, they're more boring than we think. In five minutes, nothing happens. In one hour, nothing happens. And people just keep playing, play next, play next, play next. So they'll spend a lot more time. And after actually we introduced the subscription to play unlimited run games, some people subscribed and then unsubscribed because they couldn't do their normal working duties.
[00:01:44] They said, I want half subscription. I want a limitation of 30 hands a day. I cannot, I'll lose my job if I continue like this. I'm excited to welcome my very first Bulgarian onto the setting trick. His name is Stefan Skorchev.
[00:02:07] And you might know him as the guy, if you go to the North, if you go to the nationals, you might know him as the guy walking around in the big funny hat. He, I have known him since 2012 when he was playing on the Bulgarian junior team in the 14th world youth team championships.
[00:02:31] And I used to hire some Bulgarian pros to come, uh, play the nationals with me in the U S including Kalen Karad Ivanov. May he rest in peace. And Kalen is the guy who told me about Stefan when I was heading to those junior championships. And then I played in the, uh, I can't remember the name of the tournament in Bulgaria. And, uh, gosh, how can I forget that?
[00:03:01] And I got to meet your fiance, uh, Desi, uh, there. I think that was in 2012. Uh, but, uh, it's always a pleasure Stefan to see you at tournaments. And I love what you're doing with into bridge. And, uh, you know, we, we were just in Iceland having, uh, at the, at the Icelandic bridge festival.
[00:03:25] We had, uh, we have a friend in common, uh, a partner in common, uh, Svenni Eiriksen. So, uh, welcome to the setting trick. Thank you, John. Thank you very much. Glad to hear that you are friends with my friends and you hired almost all Bulgarians except me. And you are a friend with my fiance. But yeah, if I'm here, then you have some good opinion about me too. I hope.
[00:03:52] Uh, yes, uh, we know each other for a long time now in the, in the scope of bridge life, not so much like 10, 12 years, but, uh, yeah. And see how much of progress now in Iceland, you are winning while I was in the middle. So with hard work to all bridge players who want to get better with hard work, you get better. And without hard work, you get worse. So yeah. And now we are meeting in Memphis again and let's see what happens there.
[00:04:23] Um, speaking of, uh, you had some great results when you were just, uh, starting out when you were pretty young, like you finished. Uh, I think you got to the quarterfinals of the open world championship and you finished third and the European transnationals. I mean, this was, uh, even before the, the world juniors in 2012. Yes.
[00:04:47] One, one Bulgarian Fred said, uh, Stefan, Stefan, you used to be young and talented and you're just young now. So basically this is what happened. I was playing all the time. Uh, actually my father bought, bought us, me and my brother, a computer at the early age in order to learn coding and stuff. But I was basically 15 hours a day playing bridge without giving access to my brother, to the computer.
[00:05:14] So this is how I ended up playing bridge. And it's really about the time you spend. And everyone successful at any sport will tell you no matter how much talent you have, if you don't spend your 10,000 plus hours. So I was very fortunate to be sponsored, to go to tournaments and get this invaluable experience because online is nice. And I was playing a lot online, but when you go to a tournament, also the opponents are more focused.
[00:05:42] If you do well, you get to play stronger opponents. So I was very lucky at 17 to have a sponsor, someone to, to cover my expenses. At least I didn't, not in the American way of playing professionally, but just covering expenses at that age, it's more than enough. Uh, and yeah, we had some junior success. First, we came second in the under 21 category in Italy, European championships.
[00:06:09] Uh, 20 years after the last time Bulgaria had a team there. Uh, so this was the first good thing, uh, we did. Then in 2009, uh, we came third in the open Europeans 2010, the quarter final in Philadelphia. We lost to diamond, the team that won. So yeah, I had, I had success back then. Uh, but I haven't had any recently. Who, who did you play with on the team that lost to diamond?
[00:06:39] So, uh, uh, Kalin, who you mentioned before, uh, by the way, his daughter, uh, rest in peace. Kalin, his daughter yesterday graduated and she's a doctor now. I'm, I know that you'll be happy to hear that. She's a wonderful girl. So Kalin and Roman were on the team and me and Bobby pop off my bridge partner back then. And the sponsor, Tony Rusev. He's a sponsor in terms of paying, but, but he's expert himself.
[00:07:06] So we were five handed and Kalin will rotate playing with Truman and Tony and me and Bobby would play all the time. So it was, it was, yeah, maybe the last, no, it wasn't the last big, exciting thing. 2016, I played for Bulgaria and the last match we needed to do fine to qualify for the world championships. And we did, so that was the last more exciting thing I played. Tony Rusev, also known as a Vito. He was, uh, what was the festival I played in Bulgaria?
[00:07:36] Star as Agora. It's called Star as Agora, but I'm sure you'll forget it by tomorrow because it's not easy name. Uh, it's, it's where the biggest tournament is organized. This guy, Tony Rusev is the sponsor. I mentioned earlier, he's done so much for Bulgarian bridge. Um, and he's a great guy, not just giving money or taking people for his own benefit, but also doing good stuff for everybody. He's been amazing. And yeah, without him, I wouldn't be here for sure.
[00:08:05] And he, but he goes by Vito. People call him Vito, right? Vito, but yeah, when you hear Vito, you think about, uh, Vito Corleone and stuff like that, but it's a lot simpler than that. But his company is called Vito from Vili, V is his wife, Vili and Tony. So it's Vili and Tony, and that's why it's Vito. Uh, so it didn't have the, the meaning that we, we attached to it. And the guy has nothing to do with the mafia.
[00:08:31] So yes, yes, his, uh, his, his username on BBO and other platforms. He hasn't played on into bridge yet. See how bad I am at marketing, but we'll talk about this later, I guess. Uh, but yeah, he's Vito. He goes by that nickname. And so Pasha, this is a Carolyn's daughter. Uh, she went to, she went to England for school, right? Did she? No, she, she, she was in Bulgaria and Sofia, uh, in the most elite medical university.
[00:09:00] We have a few of those here and we get students worldwide. Uh, but no, she was here. We get very good education here. Did she, was she in England for something? Well, she came for a while to be my guest visiting some cultural exhibitions, but not nothing for a long time. No. So, so I, when I went to Stars Agora, so I flew into Sofia and then we went to Stars Agora. We played the bridge festival there.
[00:09:27] I played with Alex Hajev and, uh, my teammates were, uh, Jerry Stamatov and, uh, uh, uh, Dianov, what's, what's the answer? Dian Daneilov, yeah. Dian Daneilov, yeah. And, uh, Dito, Dito, they call him. And so then from there, uh, by the way, Lotan won that event. Uh, the. Like most of the events he entered.
[00:09:52] And, uh, then we went from there to the far, to the easternmost part of the country, which was Varna, which is where Alex and Kalen lived. And so I stayed with Alex. I was there for several days. Uh, played some bridge, uh, rumened, uh, trying to feel off. Kalen's partner lived there. Uh, we went to Kalen's house for dinner one night.
[00:10:16] Uh, I think it must've been in, I'm not sure if it was 2012 or 2013, but, uh, it was, uh, it was a fun trip. Uh, yeah. Until then I was spending a lot of time at Kalen's as well. They kind of adopted me as their kid because my home place was, uh, 30 kilometers for American listeners, 20 miles away from this wonderful town, Varna. And I was renting there and I was alone.
[00:10:43] So they would invite me almost every night whenever I like to go with them, play, play bridge, socialize. Um, yeah, he's been like second father to me. And Varna is one of the best cities in the world. When I used to live in England, I organized some bridge holidays there and people liked it a lot. It's an amazing city on, on the black sea. And I highly recommend visiting, visiting it. We also have some good bridge tournaments there. So you can combine beach and bridge.
[00:11:14] And I think they had a golf tournament there. Uh, that was not, we have three golf courses on the cliffs next to the seaside. So you're hitting the ball and you're looking at this wonderful panorama of the sea. And it's, it's beautiful. Just for that, it's worth starting playing golf. Uh, and yeah, there are three, three golf courses. We get a lot of tourists from Scandinavia. It's really nice area. Um, Stefan has an, uh, a shirt with an interbridge logo on it.
[00:11:43] And, uh, you wear interbridge paraphernalia at all the nationals. So if anybody wants to come up and introduce themselves in Memphis, which is next month, uh, you know, please, please, he'll be wearing a, this huge baseball hat, uh, that he says isn't very heavy and a shirt like the one he's wearing. If you're watching this on YouTube. Yeah, basically I'm the most noticeable person there because I look a bit weird. Uh, but yeah, I'm normal.
[00:12:11] I'm just trying to get your attention guys. So don't be scared to come and say hi. So interbridge, uh, you guys, you've created some really cool things. Uh, you started out with the ranked games, um, which, uh, when I, I first, uh, discovered that, uh, pretty early on, I think. And, uh, I mean, I would, I would play, I would play on there for hours, uh, at a time
[00:12:41] trying to get my ranking up. Uh, you've sort of adjusted the format a little bit and now you have a daily celebrity challenge too. And, uh, it's become like, I really look forward to like, like last night, for example, uh, I was like, man, I I've already played the daily celebrity. Uh, I wish I could, you know, I, I've really started looking forward to that because you,
[00:13:04] you, you play five boards or to match scoring and, uh, you, the celebrity records a video like an over the shoulder video where they're discussing their thought process. And, uh, you told me, well, you told me you, we discussed this and at length in Iceland over, uh, some drinks with Sveni. And, uh, that was kind of, that was kind of like, you know, I thought about you interviewing
[00:13:33] you on this podcast, but that sort of sealed it for me, you know, like, uh, it's really interesting to kind of understand the, you know, the, you know, how the sausage is made. Uh, well, so we started developing into Breach early 21. Um, we had a plan to launch it for a few months, but it took three times more. Uh, and we launched with casual tables, team matches and pairs duplicates. Uh, we added embedded audio video connection.
[00:14:03] We added personal statistics after pairs game. We added discussion rooms for the team after a team match is done. Uh, so we enhanced all of the popular Breach games and we thought, oh, everybody will come and play into Breach now. And, uh, the result wasn't zero, but yeah, some great friends of mine who didn't want to discourage me too much were coming from time to time.
[00:14:27] Um, and I was trying to build up some tournaments and I have a list of 30, 40, 50 friends that I was exploiting to come and play. Uh, but it was, it was from a business point of view, I could say a disaster because it turned out what we learned for, for two years of hard work is that people actually don't care if you do something better.
[00:14:52] Uh, they care about something new and although we had some new things, they were just better than, than the core models that other platforms have had and still have. Um, so, so this is what we learned from that initial experience. And then we still had some money to spend and we thought, okay, we need to, we have one shot who we need to make something great to invent something great. And hopefully it works out.
[00:15:22] So basically we dissected bridge and bridge competitions to, to create something different. And also it was now well post COVID. So people were getting back to normal life. And that's why maybe our better stuff didn't succeed at all because when people are stuck at home, they can dedicate the time. But the new realities were that people were having more dynamic lives.
[00:15:48] And also the online was second thing now for playing bridge. And more importantly, they have some duties. They need to go somewhere or their husband or wife calls them and they need to terminate the game immediately. So we focused on inventing something that has, has the potential that you close it immediately and you continue whenever you can. So this was the first successful thing we got there with the run games that you are totally flexible.
[00:16:17] You can play three seconds, 30 seconds, 30 minutes, whatever. And actually that is funny because, um, when you, when you think, oh, I'll play run games, maybe I need to close them in five minutes, but I won't be harmed in any way. So people start and actually in our lives, they're more boring than we think in five minutes, nothing happens in one hour, nothing happens. And people just keep playing, play next, play next, play next. So they'll spend a lot more time.
[00:16:45] And after actually we introduced the subscription to play unlimited run games, some people subscribed and then unsubscribed because they couldn't do their normal working duties. They said, I want half subscription. I want a limitation of 30 hands a day. I cannot, I'll lose my job if I continue like this. So also run games. We thought we won't completely reinvent the wheel.
[00:17:13] So we thought what successful formats are in other games that don't exist in bridge and in virtual gaming, all these games that are very popular amongst younger people, especially, there was this format run games that was coming and more and more games were adopting it. And this whole idea that you play people of your rank and being having, having immediate matchup and immediate results.
[00:17:40] And we know from the ACBL world that people only care about having competitive environment. They don't want to be too good or too bad compared to the field. So through the run games, being able to run the players, we could match them based on their skill level after they play some hands and create a competitive environment. And then if you win, you grow.
[00:18:06] And yeah, and we first used actually the EO from chess, because again, we didn't want to reinvent the wheel. But we saw that there are some general issues with the EO for chess applied for bridge. And it wasn't working. So we copied, I think, League of Legends or some of one of those games, the idea of how the ranks move and that you have a sub rank. But after you climb a rank, you cannot go back.
[00:18:35] So because otherwise it's like the good players will always be on the top and the bad players from the bottom. So we wanted to make it that if you make one push and you climb that step, then there is no way back. So it gives you the sense of feeling happy about it. And that's the most important thing. For me, online bridge is to bring you happiness and to keep you entertained. I don't take it that seriously.
[00:19:01] Although I'm running an online platform, I think it's just a compliment to the real game. And there is nothing wrong in that. Instead of playing Sudoku or some other games that take time, we can play bridge on our phones, for example. I think you guys have created a robot called Leah. And I think it's a great way to sharpen my own declare skills for sure. Well, why do you say that?
[00:19:30] What part of your skills are sharpened? I mean, that's seriously because a world class player told me that he became better by playing with Leah. And he mentioned something specific. But what does it bring for you, Leah? How does it make you better? Well, for example, if I play on Bridge Base online with the robots there, I just feel like it's not as... I don't even want to do that because I just feel like it's not a challenging... It's not a strong enough game.
[00:20:00] You get kind of good results randomly. I mean, not that Leah's... I just think Leah's a lot stronger. And then you also have the ability to see the double dummy, to see what the other person did. And you've got this new thing now. I just started paying. I just became a paid subscriber again. And you can now see how Leah would bid. So that's interesting. I just think the feedback is stronger.
[00:20:29] And yeah, the game's just tougher. And I don't even want to play. And it doesn't occur to me to play robot games on Bridge Base. Yeah, I hear you. So yeah, indeed, Leah is... What I like about Leah, it's like a kid playing Bridge. And you can see it every next time we play with her, she gets slightly better and slightly better. And this is kind of rewarding.
[00:20:57] And also big thanks to the guys who send feedbacks and say, oh, Leah did badly here. Can you fix that? So Luc Bellicou from France, he is the guy working full-time on the robot. And he's put a lot of work on her. And he's working even harder now. So Leah, we developed us... In the beginning, we didn't have a robot on IntoBridge.
[00:21:24] And because we realized that human games won't run, we needed a quick solution for a robot. So we started working with the robot Ben, which was an open source robot. And this was a great start for us because for free, we could launch the run games because the run games depend on having robots. So you play with three robots and you compare your score to one other person, for those of you who don't know run games. And based on if you win, lose, or draw this one board, you go up or down in the ranks.
[00:21:54] But you need a robot to play. So this robot Ben got us started. It was phenomenal. We got very lucky with it. However, we quickly noticed that the robot will always be that good and it can never be improved. And we thought from a business perspective, we need to focus on things that make us better all the time and always evolve unless we have a complete solution, which we didn't believe we had at all.
[00:22:20] So then we started working with Luke and started development of Leah. But what happened until last summer, we've been solely working on the bidding of Leah. And now she plays more than 10 different systems, many conventions. But the card play is still run by Ben. We were able to make some small improvements, like the opening lead, like signaling standard count, and a few others.
[00:22:47] But generally, the engine running the card play is Ben. And since last summer, it's been now seven, eight, nine months. Luke is working on our card play, which is almost ready, actually, the first version of it. So Leah will be playing on her own, both bidding and playing. And actually, there was some robot championship two months ago or something like that. It was informal.
[00:23:14] And Leah did amazingly well having such bad carding back then. So yeah, I hope and I actually believe that in one, two years from now, Leah will be the best bridge robot for sure if she's not yet the best bridge robot. And also, we are thinking about modifying her in a way that you can modify her, pick your conventions, make your system. And there is so much more to be done.
[00:23:42] With everything we do, we get one, two things right, but then we think about 10 more. So we just need more development power and time, but we have many ideas. And we've got really an A team of bridge players. It's a small team, but everybody knows what they're doing. So things are progressing slowly, but surely. And I'm happy with the direction we're heading to. You asked me about the daily earlier,
[00:24:11] because you asked about the rank, and I explained how we came up with the rank games. But the daily was different. So the rank games were great, and some people will get out of bed and play until they get back to bed. But some others may forget about it and not come for a long time. So we were thinking about inventing a format which will incentivize people to return every day. And that is obviously a daily tournament. But if we just did a daily tournament
[00:24:40] like at other platforms, based on our previous experience, we didn't believe anybody will take it. So we started thinking, we have the rank games. They're a success. We want to create a daily. So let's create a mixture of those and also make it in a way that cheating is not incentivized. Because the way we did it is that one celebrity is playing the hands. And you play those five hands. You compare to them,
[00:25:08] but your score is limited. And anybody else can achieve that same score. And there is a leaderboard, but it's not at all about who's going to win the leaderboard. It's more about playing and comparing to the celebrity. And where is the real value? There is the video, as you mentioned, after you finish the game, you can watch a video of the celebrity playing the hands. And what is unique and what is amazing about it, actually,
[00:25:37] is that when weaker players get access to better players, it's always in kind of a control environment where either the weak player is asking, oh, I played this hand, how would you play it? Or the expert is prepared through a lesson or some other format. And the experts always sound smart. But we always try to tell people why we get things wrong all the time. But they don't see it. And on the daily celebrity challenge,
[00:26:07] you see what it is. There are no recordings or anything like that. If things go south, they go south. One of the last times I played, I lost 1,400. I went, I think, down six in four spades doubled. And it happens every day. So people love this. What people like more than learning something is beating the celebrity. So, yeah. And also the celebrities are giving their arguments and people learn a lot from that.
[00:26:36] Why they are doing that? I never thought about this. And they can see the depth of the game. Otherwise, you know you're worse, but you kind of feel, oh, I'm just more stupid or something like that. But it's not like that. It's just the things you're considering during each hand. And listening to that thought process is amazing. And even for me, although I'm rather a good player, there is always something to learn from others. And I like it a lot. So that's how the daily
[00:27:06] is so successful. But as you told me in Iceland, I unsubscribed because it felt like a donation. I was getting everything I needed without paying. So why should I pay? And you are completely right because we were offering so much for free. But yeah, now we added some features to stimulate people to subscribe. And there we got you back. So thank you very much for your support. But really,
[00:27:36] Christophe and I, Christophe is my co-founder, a great guy, French guy who lives in London. We don't want people to donate to us. We want people to use the product and pay because they like what they get for paying. Can we want to build a real business or not? We don't want people to support us for the sake of that you see me wearing the big hat and let's give some donation to this guy because he feels desperate or something like that. So yeah, we are planning
[00:28:06] of course more things to come and to make it more interesting. We have idea level plans about a few new formats that we think will be super amazing and they don't exist in Breach. Like, especially about one of them, I'm super excited. Obviously, I cannot share more than that because other companies have more development power. But yeah, if we have time,
[00:28:36] amazing things are coming up and what we have is just like 10-20% of all we have in our minds for now and more we work, more ideas come up and yeah, it's amazing journey actually working for a Breach company and what you love. It doesn't feel like work. Like, you get some money every month and that's like a bonus. You felt like, but I didn't work at all. I'm just doing what I love and yeah,
[00:29:05] it's super amazing and if there are younger people who love Breach, try to find work in Breach, you won't become very rich but you have a happy life and that's way more important. What was I going to say? Oh yeah, so daily celebrity. So, like, I've told a fair number of people who are kind of less experienced than me
[00:29:34] like for example my psychiatrist retired from psychiatry and he's gotten really into Bridge which is super exciting. So, I see him at the local Bridge Club, I see him at tournaments and I told him, I said, you know, this daily celebrity is a great way for you to learn because you can play these five deals. You've got the double dummy analysis of your play. You can see what the celebrity did and then you can watch the video and so I think,
[00:30:04] I'm not sure though. I do wonder if maybe it's over somebody's head like that who's got maybe less than like 50 ACBL master points but still I'm telling people you know, this is something that I think you should play in terms of starting to learn more how an expert thinks and so I just want to just share with you so I've gotten to be the celebrity twice recently and that was post, you invited me
[00:30:33] to do that post Iceland and so I was on a group chat with you and Svenny and so I was texting, you know, if I had a good day on the Daily Celebrity, the scores range from 0 to 50 so if you win the board, you get 10 points, if you tie, you get 5, if you lose, you get 0 and so I had a good day and I would text you and I want to be vulnerable with you here so I had thought
[00:31:03] about reaching out to you before you invited me to be the celebrity and being like, hey, I'd love to do this but I did not, I wanted the invitation to come from you and so I was thrilled with the opportunity to do it and I've got a friend who had never played bridge, so I, you know, like the first time for sure I sent it out to my family, like I've got some bridge players in my family they sort of know how to play,
[00:31:33] I sent out to friends, non-bridge players so I had one friend who had never played bridge before and so I walked her through, you know, how to do it and she played all five deals, I don't think she's gonna, you know, I don't think she's gonna turn into one of us, but, you know, it's cool and one of the things that you told me, because like when we recorded it, so you actually were like online
[00:32:03] with me when we recorded my two challenges and one of the things you told me was that, you know, like you said here, that the customers like to beat the celebrity and so I misclicked on something so I ended up doubling them in one no, I think and Pete Hollins actually, who's another one of the celebrities, he's an Australian what is it, streamer, bridge, bridge, yeah,
[00:32:33] and he did it the other day and he misclicked, I think, so, yeah, well that's the best for us when you guys misclick because then you don't embarrass yourself by losing 1400 like I did, but people are winning, so it's a win-win for everybody, but yeah, from the beginning, first of all, maybe I haven't invited you because you had a few North American championship titles,
[00:33:03] but you never had won Iceland and now you did, so now you're becoming a real international celebrity, no, I should have invited you earlier, but I'm a bit worried that people will think, this guy is bothering me now, taking my time and because many people don't, if you are playing on into bridge and people are really into it and they love it and they'll spend time, we invite people to calls to give us advice to do this and everybody is like 100% on,
[00:33:32] but on the other hand, those who don't know, they're always suspicious because we bridge players are very smart and we can smell the danger coming from everywhere, so I'm very worried to invite people and yeah, but actually we called it daily celebrity and not daily world champion or something because we thought, okay, who are we going to invite? Is it just because you're
[00:34:01] a great player? We thought, no, there are people who are great teachers and can teach you a lot more than a world class player can teach you and this is happening. You can see that some people have experience with teaching and their explanations are much better. so yeah, this is what we thought about the naming of it and then about people's happiness,
[00:34:31] it's a bit weird because when the celebrities make a mistake, especially if it's their first time or they get a bad board, they'll worry at all, now these people will think that I'm not a real expert, they'll discover me that I make mistakes and I'm not so bad, I just did it this time. This is what I'm thinking that they're thinking. And now what the customers are thinking, because we've called it daily celebrity, but most of the players don't really know the celebrities in person or exactly how good they
[00:35:01] are, but because we've claimed that they're celebrities, the customer assumes, the normal player assumes that they're great players. So no matter how badly you play, they would always think you're a great player. And then when they win against great players, this is like winning the world championship for them. And it's very rewarding because that's the beauty of bridge. We play so many hands and you always have some chance to win at least one, two boards. You sit against Zia and you beat him sometimes. Yeah, the guy's great,
[00:35:30] it's amazing when you watch him you think, oh, I'll never be that good. But when you sit against him occasionally you beat him and that's the beauty of bridge as well. So I think that's how it works for both sides to make them happy. although the celebrities sometimes don't realize it. But inspired by your misclicks, John and Pete, we are now just because of celebrities like you who cannot click the mouse properly have to spend development time to
[00:36:00] develop an undo option so you don't embarrass yourself in front of the customers. We don't want that. So yeah, it's coming soon after we have it on our invite you again because we don't want you to misclick again. And yeah. So you just launched the app, what you're talking about, and you have, like when you play a suit, you press the suit and now you get
[00:36:29] to choose which card you have to play. Is that what you're talking about? Yes, exactly. That's the confirmation of the card place. I like it. I didn't like it first, but I like it better now. I'm used to it. It took, it took, it was a learning, it was a learning thing for me to realize, oh, actually, I like it better because especially because a lot of times when I'm playing on the app, I'm playing the Daily Celebrity. And now that I understand, you know, you gave me some more background in the statistics and, you know, like what some of the top players average on
[00:36:59] there. And so I wanted to, you know, I want to get my, I've taken the, ever since we had that conversation, I've taken the Daily Celebrity like way more seriously. Like one of the things you said, which was interesting was, I think you said like the top players that play on there regularly average 25. And you said that that the celebrity tends to do better because they are more
[00:37:28] invested in their result because they're recording, you know, they're being made available for everyone. So it makes sense, you know, that the top players that play on there would average 25. Yeah, even Luke who is the inventor of Leah doesn't score more than 25 something on average per day because because when you play casually from home and you know that nobody will judge you harshly about how badly you played and generally good players most of the
[00:37:58] good players want to play fast because they think they know everything and they know, oh, it's obvious to play that. But when you spend a bit more time, like we know, especially from live events, you discover other lines of plays or better beats which might be just 5% better but over time it accumulates and it makes big difference. So indeed, the celebrities are trying hard when you look at the videos, the average video is
[00:38:27] between 20 and 30 minutes. So the players normally spend much less time and especially when you have a world-class player spending three times the time that worse players spend or even equal level players spend this is just computational power that can hardly be compensated. Of course, sometimes it works the other way around because of too much thinking we do some weird stuff that goes into a disaster but generally spending more time pays off better.
[00:38:57] And I think you told me something after maybe the second time that we were close to a record number of players. Was that right? Yeah, we scored a record but I don't remember if you're still the holder or you're no, actually, yes, we set a record then a French guy beat it and then I sent an email when it was your second time let's push let's try to beat the record once again but we were short of eight
[00:39:27] participants or something like that you got eight fewer than the French guy but you know when we have a French guy the French people come more often than when we have American guys so you can be happy that you achieved as much as he did but generally it's progressing we get three and a half new people every day and actually I had a meeting with Christophe and our our lead investor who is the bridge guy and who is an amazing
[00:39:57] guy supporting us big time Arno Fleckia and we were discussing exactly that how we can get more people because we all love the format we know everybody that loves the format place but in bridge marketing is very tough as I mentioned before if you try to sell something people are skeptical so word of mouth has been our best way to get people because every bridge player has two three friends and some of them tell their friends some don't so I just want to tell
[00:40:27] people who think that the game is great tell your friends to come first you save us money that we can use for development instead of marketing and these big hats the jokes about are north of 150 dollars and although they are not heavy they keep my head very warm so I'm not too excited to wear that hat but I will until we have a real business actually so yeah tell your friends and help us help us get people
[00:40:56] and if you don't like it if you come try and don't like it before leaving just spend a minute to tell us why you don't like it and we promise that we are trying hard to make it in a way that you like what's the best way to pass that information along like email is there an email address specifically so you can just copy the link to the platform and send it to your friend by email and ask them to try it but the best way is while you're waiting for a
[00:41:26] game online or in person tell them now you have five minutes because you're going to play with me get your phone out and register a new account and this is when you see it on your phone or when you have the account it's much easier because you become in our bubble and we send you emails so even if you forget to try it maybe you can do later but register an account for them it's much easier you can even create their account with no you cannot they need to
[00:41:55] activate it but anyway ask them to register like if they if they have a complaint if they have like a oh so there is book report after you finish a hint in the results page of run games and daily celebrity there is a book report also on the general menu on the left there is book report and also from the web page about us there is a contact form you can you can tell us my email word that there is on the sorry sorry i'm interrupting you no no no that's
[00:42:25] fine that's fine you're gonna say your email so my email is stefan at intobridge.com christoph is christoph at intobridge.com and we are very easily accessible and and yeah there are many ways to contact us there's a button that you can press after the deal that like reports the deal so when you finish a hint when you finish a hint you click results and on the results page on the top where it says victory or loss or whatever there is on a phone there
[00:42:55] is an icon of a bug and on the on the web version there it says report a bug and this is how people come yeah yeah bug bug i got it yeah you are joking about my accent and the need of taking elicution lessons maybe i should but i told you back then that i'm not doing it um how did uh i'm curious what did so you you were when we recorded this
[00:43:24] the daily celebrity you were i was we were together like on google meet and that's how you recorded it um by the way i think i could do i think i could record it for you without you having to be there amazing amazing uh but uh um what do you what do you what are your responsibilities actually at with within the company oh it's well theoretically i'm ceo but in a small company the ceo does everything that the
[00:43:54] others don't so we have people that have specific tasks and i have to do everything else so starting from the worst which is administration lawyers accountants investment rounds all this paperwork that you never imagine when you have a dream to build a bridge platform you never think about these things but actually there and it reminds me by tomorrow we need to submit our annual accounts and i need to sign a paper um so that's
[00:44:24] that's one big thing the second big thing is the marketing so the emails the some of the articles going to tournaments recording the daily celebrity challenge uh brainstorming some ideas but the operational part of the platform in the in the development is christoph's responsibility however i actively participate because because it's my baby and i care yeah
[00:44:54] but generally christoph is responsible for what what is happening development side and i'm responsible on the business side although with him we have with everybody we have calls every day but with him we are in constant touch so we don't make big decisions without the other one being happy about it and now we've we've been together for so long before into bridge we played professionally together before that we were friends he played for france i
[00:45:23] played for bulgaria so just looking at each other's face when we know the topic we know what the other one thinks so so it's pretty easy but but it works it works well i'm happy um how did you guys decide to go into business together well we played bridge professionally together so in a way this started long time ago but but then when covid started look
[00:45:52] the lia creator and christoph started organizing the e-open which was a team's competition but they wanted to make it better so there was video broadcasting and stuff like that and they got me on that project i had because i had a previous startup with bridge and i was in the bridge circles and i was understanding what they're doing they invited me to join them i did and
[00:46:21] then some guy came and said uh why don't you develop a bridge platform to me and i said well okay give me the money and i'll develop it so he said okay i'll find you the money and he didn't find us the money but with christoph we started the project and we found the lead investor who convinced other investors and yeah it wasn't one thing but basically this guy who's
[00:46:51] never been part of the project he came and said why don't you create a platform i'll find the money and this is all he did and i don't mean it in a bad way he was a good guy but yeah this is how it started so you know we'll see where it ends if it ends i know i know what you talk about like with my movie uh for example you know i thought if i make this movie it's just gonna it's gonna happen you know once the movie's done you know people are gonna
[00:47:20] love it and they're gonna share it and it's gonna be like when you talked about you know everyone will come to play on your platform it's uh yeah it's a rude awakening uh i think to put a lot of effort in something making something really good uh you know putting your all into it and then finding out that guess what you know that's not necessarily what what the market wanted yeah well it's bad but this is
[00:47:50] the startup reality most of the startups fail and we knew that and it's fine but it's way more exciting way to live for me personally otherwise it's just boring uh things should happen every day many of them and this keeps me pumped up and yeah i like it although it's super stressful because you have investors that have put real money in you you have employees that may lose their job and in startup environment you have
[00:48:19] money for like 12 months at best and it's very stressful but but for for me i i i i entirely enjoy it also considering the huge responsibility i have to tell the people involved but generally generally it's it's it's a nice ride what's the hardest part well the hardest part is when when money is finishing and you're not making enough to compensate and
[00:48:48] you know that you may let many people down so so you focus 10 times more even although you were very focused before but yeah letting people down people who have put their money and heart into the project that's that's by far the rest the the worst story and the rest the rest is the rest is is is fine i mean just putting the work i said when you work for bridge and for your baby it's really not work at all just
[00:49:17] just hundred percent pleasure tackling issues although there you should you know the reward when you fix it and you can relate to previous issues that you've had and how much better it gets when you fix fix it so yeah i think some of our most dedicated users like this the most that we are responsive although we may not change something immediately they like the way that we listen to them and we make something and if we don't make something we tell them we
[00:49:47] don't think that's right because of that that and that and actually the most surprising thing for those four years in this journey is how how receptive and how nice are people to us we every time we do something more something bigger bigger change or something we expect people to go crazy and tell us that we are idiots and we shouldn't do that but for every one person that tells us we are idiots there are hundred others who say that we are good and people
[00:50:17] don't naturally say that you are good they are more inclined to tell you that you're an idiot normally especially especially online some some of the people they say a lot of bad stuff online and when you meet them in person they're the nicest person ever so but i've been like that and i i always remember when when bbo had this this many years ago i don't know when did you start playing on bbo uh i think my so bbo has this one
[00:50:47] thing that is cool uh it tells you when you created your account uh and i created my account in 2007 i think yeah it tells it to people like you who created it after 2005 for those like me who started before that it says 2005 something because they started tracking it back then so bbo at some point uh they started advertisements some banners and stuff which was annoying but it's normal
[00:51:16] of course for free users but at some point they introduced some banner of uh of a live emoji so imagine an emoji that pumps pops out of the screen and starts laughing or something with sound like emoji with sound it was the most annoying thing and it would sometimes pop up while you play and you play you think how to do this triple squeeze and this emoji pops up in the middle of the screen and it was so annoying so i went to the bridge forum
[00:51:46] uh bbo forum and i told them that they're terrorists because this is like a terrorist attack on bridge players to play with their brains and i always and obviously i was harsh but i always remember that i was using it for free i was playing 15 hours a day it was my life literally and i was so ungrateful so now when i receive a negative feedback first i think oh who cares about your opinion but
[00:52:15] then i think no you spend the time you you texted us so you really care yeah yeah and i was so much worse back then that i should be more forgiving and actually actually people although some of them say bad things they don't have bad intentions and once they speak you you see how much it affects them deep in the heart because when you use stronger words normally you care more actually so if we we learn to not take it that
[00:52:44] personally and to think that people are really really trying their best to help us and that's the reality actually people are super nice and when we fix something that they didn't like before yeah it's been this this side has been much better than i thought before there there aren't any stefans out there saying that you're a terrorist i'm the only one so it's good have you uh i i mean i don't know this uh this is more
[00:53:14] sort of just my impression but it seems like uh you know what they did it with bridge space that they that was probably a pretty successful thing for uh the founders like fred gittleman uh have you have you talked to fred uh how much have you talked to fred about about what they did in what sense like bbo i mean they created bbo and i think they exited you know like i think they exited with uh you know had a decent exit well in the
[00:53:44] startup world of software for 18 plus years i don't think it was that decent but again uh those people i i suspect they had my mindset now that i don't care that i can work in a startup with way more opportunities financially because yeah if you have enough to live and to travel who cares uh so i guess they never thought about the money aspect and as long as they were providing for
[00:54:13] their families that was sufficient they had a good exit but not in the scope of having worked for 18 19 years and also it's i feel so sad for them because they exited uh i think summer of 2018 or some somewhere in 2018 and if they had waited two more years the company would be worth like like probably five ten fifteen times more so in a way i guess they feel badly for exiting in the scope of what happened afterwards
[00:54:43] but i i'm sure that they've exited with with generational wealth that will keep them going uh i've spoken to fred before um he i've always wanted to work with someone like him of course although i i feel like he's a god and i'm a mortal guy who who who cannot possibly work with someone like him like i i look up to him like him and you they have done so much for bridge
[00:55:12] and sherry as well i mean their whole team afterwards what what they did was amazing and i worship them and i can only dream working with them i don't know if it's possible i've spoken to fred about about bridge but he also had a non-compete contract and he has dedicated to pool and i understand him you know in a way i would feel guilty if i make those guys come back and work with us because they've done what they had to do and i know
[00:55:42] that the sparkle is probably still there and if i manipulate them in a good way maybe they'll be more responsive but yeah i i don't know i don't know but i would love to work with them if they listen to that and they want to work with us guys you're most welcome we cannot pay you but we can find you a lot of work to do and this is what i tell many people guys we cannot pay you but if you really want to work we have plenty of work so yeah well think
[00:56:12] about like i mean i thought of it i think about it after i asked you that question like think about how much they did for bridge with bridgebase like it's amazing you know like uh i mean such a part of my life like using bridgebase i use bridgebase all the time i i grew up literally i spent many years for 10 15 hours on bbo so it's it was it was huge having the free access the first free platform for me coming from
[00:56:41] bulgaria where 10 dollars back then was a fortune uh being a kid just just playing cards was bad enough but if i had to pay for it it would never worked out but because it was free and you were getting access to all these good players um it was it was huge for me and yeah they they have for our generation of players uh they they have been like the heart the heart of of our bridge
[00:57:10] body basically yeah yeah but still a lot more needs to be done for bridge uh i feel strongly about the way we should we should move forward and i uh we look at chess we talk about chess how successful they are and how how terrible we are so so much can be done about getting new players and and scaling up the game because it's not just that it's
[00:57:40] an amazing game but you see now that all people are more online more anti-social and bridge although we talk about online bridge when you like it it always evolves towards live bridge and it's something that people are missing new connections people to meet having these casual discussions making new friends i have so many friends from bridge uh and it's nice to talk to all of them and it adds to my social social life and and general
[00:58:10] happiness so bridge bridge can offer a lot to today's generation generation but we are not selling it right we are so bad at selling it and also if we sell it we need to send you to a bridge club and go to a bridge teacher i think that we should have like 20 platforms that can teach and can teach new players and introduce new people to the game because we see online is the best way to get new
[00:58:39] people and when you have 20 different products some of them will be actually good because in competition you you obviously do better stuff and this is what we are missing big time we need to we need to invest invest a lot more in that all right so but but but it doesn't seem like i mean are you you talk about like how difficult it is and to introduce new people and the online platforms it doesn't seem like that is your focus
[00:59:08] within two bridge so no no it wasn't because our master plan when we started was to because when you get new people it's much more difficult to make them pay and when you have customers who know the game it's usually easier to make them pay so our initial strategy which is still only just taking more time is to monetize on current players by
[00:59:37] providing them with facilities they like to play and they would pay for and after we have a viable business then focus on recruiting new people so the original plan was that we would be at that stage already but we are not and yes we are focusing on current players just because we we hope that this will be the easier way to build up the business but it doesn't have have to be tricky bridge is doing very well by the way for those who don't know and you want to teach people
[01:00:07] to play go to tricky bridge their competitors but they are the only platform that has a facility to teach you play bridge and yeah maybe then you'll try into bridge but yeah tricky bridge bbo fun bridge into bridge every and 20 others everybody should have a facility to teach new players play the game and and then grow it because we know that the numbers are a disaster as worldwide of current bridge players every federation is dropping
[01:00:36] down even the online platforms that are bbo fun bridge they're losing members everybody is losing members and unless we really focus on fixing that that we will we will not like like until now and yeah that was maybe the the moral incentive about about why starting into bridge because i wanted to to develop a platform that can teach people bridge but it just didn't seem business
[01:01:05] viable back then maybe maybe it was actually considering considering what didn't work in the beginning with our master plan but yeah and this is where we should focus on development in near or not so near feature in near feature for the bridge for us whenever we can like into bridge so who are you playing with in memphis so i'll be
[01:01:34] playing again with james james holds our jeopardy james we play we play quite often we like each other and he wants to play with good players and i want to play with famous people although although james has been counterproductive on my promotion because when i don't play with james we finish the hand the round and now we need to wait to move for the next round and i'm more powerful than the other person usually
[01:02:04] with my hats and dress so they ask me what is this but when i'm with james i can be there completely naked nobody will notice the only time anybody is paying attention to me is when they ask me to take a picture of them and actually if i was charging them i told him i'll start charging per picture i'll become rich here so yeah i'll be playing with james again some of the tournaments and also
[01:02:33] my fiance desi you mentioned her earlier she's coming for first time at u.s nationals she's really good at bridge and i hope that she'll be able to reveal her potential because i think she can do really great there so it's a special national for me because you know better if your wife likes what you do and where you go than not yeah so so but i'm sure i'm sure it will be great and
[01:03:02] then actually we're visiting svenny in florida sven erickson which we also mentioned before he lives in delray beach so we gonna stay there for a week and uh we're gonna go to the local club see how it works there we didn't mention during this call that we were in england for five years in london in one of the biggest bridge clubs in the world i've also been to the to the new york big club uh what was the name the honors when it was big for covid it was big but i've never been to florida
[01:03:32] and now i know that it's like a mecca of bridge and i want to visit the local places there it will be very interesting how did you and svenny become friends well i like to i like people who do things more than people who talk things and yeah and while i talk i look what what people do and svenny is one of those enablers that
[01:04:01] actually do things and make things possible to connect different bridge worlds and he's been on my radar for a long time and then when i had leverage like something to offer uh i approached him but actually i've never given him anything he's he's just great to me and when i organized my first festival he sent five people from iceland to bulgaria and i asked so many friends and either nobody came or didn't tell
[01:04:30] anybody but svenny couldn't come but send five people and you know he's done a lot for the bridge festival in madeira in iceland he's a great neighbor and and i like being friends with people like him so that's why that that's that's why i approach him and stay around him because he's a really a real guy a real guy that that speaks up what is in his mind and i like that a lot very you guys were in second
[01:05:00] place uh after the first day of the uh the wreck to wreck masters yeah we were first day actually one of our teammate pairs svenny was a bit worried before the tournament about their performance but the guys were killing it and were top of the butler one of the top pairs the first day svenny and i played well but the second day didn't go so well yeah we were doing better than we expected
[01:05:29] but eventually we went down and although we are great friends we are not an experienced partnership with him so the field was so strong you know although you won very easily uh i don't think that was fair your team was strong but there were like 10 super strong teams you make it look like an easy win but but the field was huge and i was really worried we'll come bottom because when you come although my partner is good i'm decent when you don't have experience everybody
[01:05:57] there is doing that all the time playing bridge together so i'm happy with how we ended up we didn't embarrass ourselves so yeah it was it was fine and and it's very nice when you make mistakes with svenny just goes with a with some joke and you carry on and you don't kill each other but you don't keep quiet you know that you can tease him and make a make a joke and it's fine this is actually you asked me before about
[01:06:25] my successes in bridge and i was super miserable back then now i'm so happy selecting my partners making jokes and i feel like winning more than i have won before it just so so satisfying to to have the same mindset with partner and to know that he doesn't hate you for not leading a trump or something else or if he does hate you in five minutes he'll forgive you and yeah that's very important to pick your partners
[01:06:54] correctly and not the best part the best player is not the best partner usually yeah are you and desi playing the mixed pairs is that one of the events you're playing well she'll be watching that so maybe i shouldn't answer what is in my heart but no i actually i hope that she gets hired or she finds some strong partners so i can play some other event
[01:07:24] because i'm not too much into mixed events and especially playing with your wife um it's very tough it's very tough and for men especially it's just very tough and playing with desi she has very strong opinions sometimes and and it gets ugly but we haven't played for many years now and i hope she'll be nice with me and yeah generally we should play the mixed pairs together
[01:07:53] unless something changes what event are you playing with james with james will play the the good question i think the last two days the the sweet yeah the swiss teams the jacobis swiss teams and before that the two day pairs last year we were doing extremely well in that event but the last session didn't go well and we finished somewhere like 15th and and we want to do better than that so
[01:08:23] we'll see i'm actually playing on a team with james in the u.s trials in april wow that's nice who else is there uh he's playing with fred stewart i'm playing with will watson and our teammates are uh we also have bart bramley and kit wolsey okay very nice very nice team so good luck to you i had friends uh three bulgarians they had actually a fort and they had a they
[01:08:51] have a 10-year plan to come to those qualifications and eventually win them and instead of having usa one and two have bulgarian one and two at world championships but so far their plan is not going great but yeah they have 10 years so be aware you have bulgarian competitors are you thinking about uh moving to the u.s did you tell me that i mentioned it as possibility but uh it's complicated moving to the u.s i guess
[01:09:22] since one or two months ago and it's even even harder sure uh but yeah because because most of the into bridge users are north americans and it's best to do to market the platform there and also i think desi will like it a lot because because you can play so much competitive bridge and that's all she wants to do play competitively in bulgaria unfortunately it's mostly weekend tournaments and in the u.s it's
[01:09:51] tuesday till sunday so she'll be very satisfied uh but it's a big step so now she's coming for first time she's been there 15 years ago but now we'll see for me it's very easy to move i'm not like stuck at one place i actually prefer to move wherever um we used to live in london for several years maybe we go back there but we'll see i i like trying the states a bit less recently but
[01:10:18] but still maybe uh maybe it's still an opportunity and is desi at the place where you are at your house here now or your apartment she wasn't two few hours ago but she left for a bridge tournament so i'm working at home and she's going to play she's right now playing and i told her don't call me because i'm busy but but eventually when when things go south for her
[01:10:46] her session is not going well she calls me to tell me that i need to wish her luck she hasn't yet done anything so maybe she's not doing too badly but yeah she plays a lot of bridge well well please give her my best and tell her i'm looking forward to seeing her and you in memphis and we should get together for uh for a meal definitely thanks john uh i i guess we are finishing this podcast now
[01:11:13] so i want to use the opportunity to thank you uh because although i haven't approached you for the daily celebrity challenge before i think that you are a very important person in bridge uh you created this amazing movie before but then you had the podcast and also through your private sponsorship of professionals that have harder time to be hired uh i think you're a great enabler of bridge and
[01:11:42] if there are more people like you this game will do really wonderful and i i know that very often this this job feels unrewarding and nobody cares but really people do for example i've cared about what you do for 15 years and i've never told you so i just want you to tell you to keep doing what you are doing because people see it and it makes difference and although you are not told so it does so thank you
[01:12:12] thank you stefan i really i really appreciate that that's that's uh yeah yeah sure well thanks for inviting me i know that the list of your guests is really amazing so being on that list again i feel privileged um and i hope people will enjoy this and maybe try the daily celebrity challenge to beat john one day soon yeah let's get a record
[01:12:38] let's get a new record for the for the daily celebrity uh challenge absolutely we can do it and i'll play and i'll record my video and everything on my own so that you can play in it and you can get your good score this will be amazing because recording people every day you don't know how much of my time this is although i'm enjoying to meet these people uh yes
[01:13:02] uh i'll be looking forward to receive your recording all right thanks stefan i really uh i really enjoyed it and uh thank you yeah absolutely thanks john