Game On – The Card Game Bridge Needs More People Like Steve Raine

Steve Raine is a bridge player, vlogger and gaming café owner who lives in Nottingham, England. His video blogs about attending bridge tournaments and subsequent board review have earned him fans across the globe.

[5:15] Steve ranks his favorite games but can’t always tell people bridge is his favorite.

[8:28] What makes Steve a good teacher and why teaching beginners bridge is difficult.

[10:05] Steve’s suggestion for introducing your non-bridge-playing friends to trick-taking games.

[17:07] Steve’s vast knowledge of gaming now includes the world championships of puzzling, thanks to Andi Boughey and her husband, and John’s bridge partner, Matthew Brown’s recent trip there.

[21:36] Steve is a self-described geek.

[24:40] The combativeness of personalities in bridge and how Steve’s Discord group seems to be genuinely rooting for one another.

[29:22] Back to puzzles, specifically The Impossible Puzzle.

[32:04] Well-explained trump squeeze link. Last trump is a threat to either ruff the clubs good or as a threat to get back to your diamonds.

[39:10] Ode to Jim Proctor

[43:31] Playing in the Premier League and the U.S. nationals, developing new partnerships. The beginning of vlogging.

[50:00] An issue Steve has with some American team events.

[53:40] Positivity and negativity, which is more contagious online?

[56:47] Harnessing social media.

[1:00:18] Playing with Matt Brown.

[1:02:27] If you like hearing John laugh, you’ll be happy he went against his partner Matt’s advice and asked Steve to tell some jokes.

[1:16:05] One of the ways how Steve can tell Matt is a better player than him.

[1:14:28] More about playing with Matt.

[1:22:27] Talking tech.

[1:24:00] Gizzy has a suggestion.

Support Steve’s vlogging by joining his Patreon.

Bridge with Steve on YouTube.

Steve’s top 30 games

Form of stepping stone squeeze discussed. [39:02]

The IBPA hand talked about is here. [48:05]

Transcript

John McAllister: I am here with Steve Raine, who I have gotten to know recently at the last two NABCs. Steve has been sharing an AirBnB, I think both times, with my partner for these last year tournaments, Matt Brown, and also creating quite a name for himself in the bridge community with his vlogs. I was the thumbnail on a vlog from the Atlanta NABC and got to team up with you and your partner for a Swiss where we didn't distinguish ourselves as much as we would've liked. But one of my favorite things about you, Steve, that comes off really is just how inclusive you are and I think you've got a big heart. And so in my little time knowing you, and I'm just excited to have you here to talk some bridge and the different types of stuff that you're doing. So thanks being here.

Steve Raine: Oh, thanks for the kind words. Yeah, all of that was true, I think. Yeah, I'm glad to be here. I've seen a few of your podcasts and especially you've put the videos up online now. I think some of those have been retroactively added to your online account, so I've been watching some of them. Generally the people I know have a looked through, like Nathan. I watch a lot of Nathan Gong’s. So yeah, it's good to be here. And hopefully we can talk about some interesting things.

John McAllister: So I think the way that you and Matt got to know each other, which is I'm intrigued by, is through some bridge group on Discord?

Steve Raine: Yeah, there's about maybe four or five ... Well, there's probably a few more actually. I'm only in three of them. There's several Discord servers and Discord is kind of like a closed group that you can join into and you can make posts a bit like a forum, but you've got lots of different rooms, so you might have a room about bidding discussion or hand discussion or robot tournaments or real life bridge stories or whatever you want. Or even just cooking, video games, other things, but obviously there's a lot of bridge players in the group.

And before I joined Discord, I used to stream on Twitch and I did other things in bridge. I did math challenges. I used to be a math teacher. I did math challenges. I played some board games and I did some bridge on there. And then I was playing in an event that I thought was a bit too slow paced for me because on BBO when you're not talking to anyone it can feel a bit slow. So I thought, “I'll stream this.” And then lo and behold, as soon as you change the category on Twitch when you're streaming, you pick what category you're streaming to and I picked Bridge. And then all these people who I'd never met before from around the world said, "Oh, in the Common Hill, a new bridge streamer." I'm like, "Well, not really. It's just the first time I've put bridge as my category." And so they said, "You should join this, you should join that." And they invited me to some robot tournaments and some different Discord groups. And that's where I met Matt Brown, who's your great partner. You won an NABC with Matt, I think.

And met Matt and obviously I'd never met Matt before in person until the Chicago NABC where we arranged to share an Airbnb together. AirBnBs make it affordable for me to come over to America as often as I do. I think if I stayed in the host hotels, I wouldn't be able to do it three times a year. Maybe I wouldn't be able to do it once or something like that. So the AirBnBs, staying with friends and cheapening the cost is really good.

John McAllister: And you also own a games cafe in Nottingham?

Steve Raine: I do, yeah. So I live in Nottingham, England. That's not where I'm from originally, I'm from Yorkshire. But I've been in Nottingham for about 13 years now. I used to be a math teacher and then I transitioned to running a board game cafe. So if you don't know what a board game cafe is, think of a cafe that does food and drink and things like that, as well as a board game shop as well as a place to sit and play board games. So we've got a library of about 1000 board games. So that's like your Monopolys, your Scrabbles and your old-fashioned games as well as your slightly more modern ones, Tickets, Right Catan, and then obviously 1000 different ones. I'll be naming here for quite a while if I list them all off. But pretty much whatever sort of games you're into, you might not have the exact game you want, but we'll have some very similar games.

And the advantage of a board game cafe is you can come in and socialize with people. You can come in on nights where it's just like a social gaming night. Or you can come and try a game that you weren't sure if you were going to buy first. You can play it first, get one of our staff to teach you and then decide if it's something that you want to take home with you. So I've been running that for about, it'd be eight years in January that's been open. So it takes a lot of my time. Actually, I've stepped away from that at the moment. I still own it, but I'm kind of doing a lot more bridge-related things than I used to be. So I'm kind of a bit in transition at the moment.

John McAllister: So you have a lot of videos online. I think I've just scratched the surface with them, but one of them that I saw after Chicago was something where you ranked I think the top 25, 20, 30, something like that, top of games. And I'm pretty sure that you ranked bridge first?

Steve Raine: I did.

John McAllister: Or maybe it wasn't even in the category.

Steve Raine: So I used to do some YouTubing with a couple of friends of mine and we had a channel called Board Game Opinions where the majority of our videos were, we'd play a game and straight after playing it for the first time or whatever, or maybe we've played it a few times, but straight after playing a guy would whip out his phone and record a video of a brief rundown of what the game was. And then you talk for 30 seconds to a minute to say what I liked and didn't like about the game and then we'd rate it out of 10. And occasionally we'd do these top 30 or top five or different lists where it might be my 30 favorite games or my five favorite two player games and we'd each kind of list our own personal five and talk about them. And for lots of categories where I could include bridge, I would usually put it either number one or I would say it's a game within itself.

It's hard to put bridge on a board game list because I would never go to a board game cafe to play it. If I want to go away and play bridge, I'd go away for a weekend or a week or something like that and play nothing but bridge for a week. And that's how I get my bridge fix. I wouldn't sit down for half an hour in a board game cafe and play a few games of bridge, that's not that sort of thing. So when I could sneak it into number one on the list, it will be there. And sometimes I'd mentioned bridge, but I kind of not include it on a list because it's a bit same-y if all your lists have bridge as number one. So yeah, I did used to do that. So I enjoyed doing those videos. I didn't do a lot of the editing for those videos, but I did a lot of the content

John McAllister: At the board game cafe, when you're there, are you ever suggesting bridge to people?

Steve Raine: It's very difficult because we don't ... for example, we don't have a chess club at the cafe, mainly because chess clubs like quiet and they don't want music in the background, they don't want kids, they want to sit there and think about whatever. So people come in and play chess, but in terms of organized chess, our cafe's a bit too noisy, a bit too loud, a bit too social for chess. But we have a Go club, stuff like that. So when people come in and say, "What's your favorite game?" I'd usually recommend one of the games we had. It's a bit silly, "What's your favorite game?" "Bridge." "Can you teach me it?" "I haven't got time," sort of thing. So I generally didn't recommend Bridge without being asked. But if someone said, "What's your number one game?" I might say, "Well, usually Bridge but board games, it's this one or that one." And I'd go there.

A few people have asked me about doing Bridge and I'm probably going to ... I used to be a teacher and I find teaching maths very easy. I find teaching board games very easy. I finding teaching bridge very difficult if they haven't played before. I think helping someone who is improving at bridge is fine. I know what level they're at. I know they know what a finesse means. I know what they do know, what they can't know, and I can easily find out where they're at and what sort of tips I can give them. But teaching someone from scratch is really difficult.

My dad used to teach bridge at a technical college, like a night school, and he used to be in Scarborough. He taught for, I don't know, 10 or 12 years or something in a row. And he brought a lot of that, the new people into the Scarborough scene for playing bridge. It's kind of where I learned. But he just basically said, some people have card sense and some people don't. And there's just so much to bridge that you can't sit down with someone for half an hour and teach it to them. You have to do these structured lessons. There might be a better way of doing it, maybe AppSing, but I found it very difficult to drop down to the level of someone who doesn't even know what a trick is.

And it's very difficult to not assume too many things that we take for granted because I grew up playing cards as a kid. And so even before I learned bridge, I knew what a trick was, I knew what a trump was, I knew things like that. Second and low, third and high, we played whist and things like that, we played solo and punch and whist and all those things. So for me, I didn't need to learn that. But when you're trying to teach bridge to absolute beginners who've not... "Have you played hearts on the computer?" And they go, "No," and they don't know what a trick is.

One thing I will say, if you want a game to introduce your non-bridge playing friends to trick-taking games, there's a game that won game of the year, oh, I don't know three years ago, called The Crew. And it's a cooperative trick-taking game where you've got a deck of four suits, like one to nine, four suits, and then there's four trumps as well. And you deal them out and then you have tasks to do. So I might have to win the green fall and then someone else might draft a couple of tasks, they might have to win the pink nine and the pink one. Now if they have the pink nine in their hand, that's easy because they can just play it and win it. But if they haven't got the pink nine, someone has to try and throw the pink nine away to them. And you're kind of cooperatively trying to do the tricks in such way everyone completes their tasks.

John McAllister: Ah, yeah, cooperative. Got it, got it.

Steve Raine: And the tasks get harder. So the very first mission, you only have one person has one task, dead easy. And when you get onto mission 15, 20, there's up to 50 missions, there's more and more tasks. And so I'd recommend if you want to get people into cooperative trick-taking games and you don't have time to teach them bridge, you start with The Crew, I think it's very good.

John McAllister: Right. That's worth it already. Already worth it.

Steve Raine: There's an expansion to it as well, which is ranked even higher called The Crew: Deep Sea, but I haven't played that yet. So maybe that's good. But it's amazing, even when you're playing that game with people who are clever and know it, that your trick-taking knowledge just fast surpasses them. And so they can learn from you just by playing bridge. Why didn't you win this trick? And normally you are counting 52 cards now you're only counting 40. And they're kind of going, "How do you know he's got the last two green cards?" He's like, "Well, you just count the hand. It's just [inaudible 00:11:51]. And when you play with people who don't play bridge, you don't realize just how many little things you're doing as you are playing without even thinking about it. Now counting the hand for me now, it's just automatic for me, even when I'm dummy, I just count the hand just so I can try to analyze what we could have made if we were in different contracts and that sort of thing.

John McAllister: When's the last time you played that game, The Crew?

Steve Raine: I played it a fair bit during COVID. Like I said, we used to stream board games online and three of the games we streamed, one of them was the crew and we would sit there cooperatively doing tasks on there and we'd kind of stream it and we'd have the four people's pictures on the side and then my gameplay or someone else's gameplay in the middle.

We also did Hanabi and we also did code games. They're all cooperative games, so it's quite a social thing. And we would use Discord for chatting to each other. So I said earlier Discord was like a... it was bit like lots of different rooms where you can talk about different things, but there's also some voice channels. And so you can all join in the same voice channel if you're playing the same game together. You might have seen some people playing these shooting games or whatever where they're on a team with three other people and they're trying to surround the enemy and they go, "Go left, go left." But basically they're just all in a chat room whilst they're playing the game. And so Discord's really good for that sort of social gaming. But yeah, so The Crew, haven't played it... maybe 2022's the last time I played it, sometime last year.

John McAllister: Have you beaten that game? Is it possible?

Steve Raine: Yes. Basically you play from the level one to 50 with the same group and you can start at whatever mission you want. So we were playing with three people and we all knew. We got to level 20 or something and then someone else wanted to join in. So we went back to level one, showed him the basics, jumped to level five, and we jumped up to the point where it was actually challenging for the four of us because obviously he was good at games. He wasn't a bridge player, but he was good at games and so you don't want to go through all the basic ones again. So we jumped to the level and then we worked up.

And yeah, we got to 50 and completed it. Basically if you fail a mission, you just redo it. You shuffle out the tasks again and redo it. And sometimes you can be dealt an impossible or what looks to be an impossible mission and then at the end you go, right, could we have made that? A bit like sometimes when you go off in six diamonds you're like, cool, could that be made? Oh yeah, if you pin the doubleton 10, you'd have made it. Yeah, you can do that and you can get some quite a nice analysis at the end, even for people who aren't pitch players.

John McAllister: We talked about The Mind, which is a game that I like that's a cooperative game. You're sort of like, yeah, it didn't make your top 30 list, I think?

Steve Raine: So, The Mind is... With the board game community, you can have gaming snobs, a bit like bridge basically saying, why would you ever play standard carding when upside down's better? You get this. And with board games you get... When I'm playing The Mind, I'm often playing with my friends who are proper board gamers, they play serious games that take three hours or something. And you bring out The Mind, which is a 10, 15-minute game and they're like, "Well, this isn't even a game. It's just a game about downtime, which is weird." So I like The Mind, I enjoy playing with a new group and completely failing and then playing again and as the time goes on, you get better and better and more in sync as you go. And I think it's a really good social game.

But from a board game point of view, if I want to sit down and play board games tonight, I want to be playing for several hours and thinking deeply. So The Mind's more of a, I would consider it as a filler, you play that before you play something heavier. Or if you've got 15 minutes at the end of an evening, you play that. I think it's very good. But I've been turned off slightly by some of my friends not liking it, so it doesn't come to the table as often as it possibly should do. Well if you bring a copy to Louisville, I'll gladly give you a game, you and Matt and I think Andi's coming as well.

John McAllister: Oh, that would be fun.

Steve Raine: That'd be good. That'd be good.

John McAllister: That would be a lot of fun. They have these game nights now at the nationals, and so I brought it to the game night at the nationals and some people got into it and other people... It was really fun because I played it and I love it, but only played it with a couple of people really. And so bringing it and then watching Kit Woolsey, he kind of got into it, Migry, not really, but played some. And then Gavin Wolpert really got into it, which was great. You start to see the people take ownership of the group. So I will definitely bring it to Louisville.

Steve Raine: It's sometimes even funny if you play with someone who's horrendous at it, whose timing is just so... You get a group of four and three of you start to line up your timing and the fourth person is so off the timing that it just becomes comical.

John McAllister: No. No. So that leads me to another question. So Matt Brown, who is how we know each other, his wife, Andi Bowie, is a puzzler.

Steve Raine: Yes.

John McAllister: She did the jigsaw puzzle, I don't know, the World Championships of Jigsaw Puzzling or something. Your cafe also has puzzles I'm told?

Steve Raine: It has a few. People don't usually do jigsaws, but since Andi went to that, so it was in Spain about a week or two after the Bermuda Bowl, and Andi and Matt were playing for New Zealand in the Bermuda Bowl, and then they just crossed the Mediterranean to Spain and Andi played in that. And she said there were so many positives about it because it was a very friendly environment, everyone was really, "Well done," really supportive to people outside their own country and things like that and it was a country by country basis. And she got to the final and the final was 180 people. So it was like a big final. And what happens is you have all these heats and then your semi-finals and final and you get a new puzzle that you might not have seen before, might not have a chance to do before, and then the timing, you get 90 minutes to do it.

So she got to the final and everyone on Discord was cheering her on and she was sharing links and then there was obviously these people were streaming it live to the point where I've gone away and bought several jigsaws to see if I can do it in 90 minutes. I've had a go about five of them and one of them I did in 86 minutes. So I am getting close to the time needed to go along, but she's way faster than me. She would trounce me if we actually played.

But the other thing is the sex is opposite. So in bridge, I would think top level bridge is very male dominated and the top level puzzling is very female dominated, even though the guy that wins every time is a man, but it must be like 90% women at these events, which is interesting and maybe that's why it's slightly more supportive than maybe what you see on top of a bridge. But yeah, I'd love to go to one.

John McAllister: How many pieces were in the puzzle that you did?

Steve Raine: So they're all 500 pieces. You basically get... It depends whether you're doing... So basically there were three categories, you've got individuals, pairs or teams. Individuals, you do a 500 piece puzzle in 90 minutes. And then when you're in pairs you get, I think it's 1000 pieces in 90 minutes, or maybe you get two hours or something.

John McAllister: Oh my gosh.

Steve Raine: And then when you're in teams, you do multiple puzzles. So you do a puzzle and a puzzle and a puzzle and you see how far you can get. And so basically sometimes only a few teams finish. But I imagine if you enter in a pair, you're a team, you've got one person who does all the edges and one person who does all the C and you can kind of delegate and stuff like that. So the individual ones are 500 pieces. So I bought several 500 piece ones and a lot of the Discord people have done it as well just to see how long it takes them compared to what Matt's wife Andi's done. And I used to do jigsaws anyway, I think they were quite therapeutic sometimes they just sit down and [inaudible 00:20:19].

John McAllister: Yeah, totally.

Steve Raine: I'm going back to Christmas with my mother in two days time and we often over Christmas put a jigsaw on the table and whenever we kind of make a cup of tea, we'll sit down and do it for 20 minutes. So I've always quite enjoyed them.

John McAllister: So is it a certain brand of puzzle that they're using or just 500 pieces, any... and is everybody doing the same one in the final?

Steve Raine: Yes, so on any given heat, so all the heats will be different puzzles per heat, but if you're in heat B, you'll all do the same puzzle. And they're Ravensburger puzzles, so if you want to try it, you pick one of the 500 piece Ravensburger ones. I'm pretty sure they're the sponsors of it or something like that. And they have a catalog-

John McAllister: That must be, yeah.

Steve Raine: ... they have a catalog every year, and if you are doing the championship in 2023, you'll be doing some puzzles from their 2024 catalog.

John McAllister: Got it.

Steve Raine: So you can't kind of buy the puzzles ahead of time and practice them. The finals definitely like a new puzzle for everyone.

John McAllister: I love that you know as much detail as you do about this, by the way. I think that's great. I mean it speaks to your passion for this type of stuff.

Steve Raine: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a geek at heart, basically. Knowledgeable and passionate about the things you're interested in. Bridge obviously, I would consider myself a bridge geek, although when I'm at a nationals I fit right in. But I will say I'm a [inaudible 00:21:50] geek-

John McAllister: Yeah, totally. Totally.

Steve Raine: ... I'm a maths geek, I'm a sports geek as well, or at least some sports anyway. So once I enjoy something, I kind of go into the rabbit hole and find out all I can about it. So yeah, I'm sure you're the same with all your-

John McAllister: Speaking of... Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think one of the cool things about bridge is it's amazing about... it would be interesting to see if I were friends with the people... Now just bridge, it's people who might be the biggest dork in the world, but they're a great bridge player and then they have super cache in the bridge world. So it's interesting to think what... Anyway, I don't know that that's necessarily a complete thought, but just, yeah, I love that you're that way. So let's just leave it at that.

Steve Raine: Yeah, thank you.

John McAllister: You can comment on what I said.

Steve Raine: No, thank you. No.

John McAllister: No, I mean-

Steve Raine: I think you're right.

John McAllister: Go ahead.

Steve Raine: I think you're right. I think there are some people who don't fit in other aspects of life but fit in at bridge, they're in their zone, they're in their comfort zone, and so they can be more themselves. And in real life, I think you're told, especially when you're at school and you're cleverer than some people, you get bullied or picked on, or maybe you've got some social difficulties, I think. But when you're playing bridge, you can focus on that instead.

If you are autistic or ADHD or something, you can fixate on bidding systems or just card player or just the game itself. And so I'm definitely somewhere in that zone. I'm mildly autistic, I think. And just sitting there and being comforted by something I enjoy doing, is where I want to be really. I don't want to be in an office working 9:00 to 5:00 on computers. I want to be playing games. And so that's why I moved from being a classroom math teacher to owning a cafe, because it was just a much more enjoyable thing for me to do.

John McAllister: One of the things that I admire and why I said it in the introduction, is you're very friendly and you're very inclusive. And I think sometimes bridge is confusing for me because I want to be friends with everybody in theory, but I'm also like, "These are the people that I'm playing against." And sometimes it's hard for me to untangle the competitive side from the social side.

And sometimes it's unusual, I see somebody and I'm like, "I like that person," but there's a lot of dynamics. One of the things that's really interesting... And I think bridge, in general, can be very combative amongst people. So one of the things that I've noticed in your Discord, Bridge Winners, people are oftentimes in conflict on that. And maybe it's just getting it from your perspective primarily, and Matt also, who's a very friendly, affable person, but it seems like your Discord group, you're really cheering for each other. You're really supportive of each other and everybody's on the same team, which is rare in bridge.

Steve Raine: Yeah, I think the Discord community is lovely, and I'm sad that there's so many people, I'm probably realistically never going to meet in real life because they live in places that I'm not going to go to play bridge, or they're not as high level bridge player as me, so they won't be going to the same events that I will. But I think they're lovely.

There's several people, thankfully Matt and Andi have moved to the UK now, but there will be several people in New Zealand that, realistically, I'm probably not going to go to New Zealand to play bridge. I might go to the Gold Coast in Australia. And so it's really nice to have all these people here.

And I think because the difference between Discord and Reddit or Bridge Winners is that Reddit and Bridge Winners aren't regulated who can join. The Discord groups are owned by people, so I own one of them. There's a guy called... Have you met Matt Weingarten of Coolbeans?

John McAllister: Yeah.

Steve Raine: He owns another one of them. And then there's a guy you probably haven't met, called Kyle Rockoff. He owns the third one that I'm in.

John McAllister: Yeah, I know him.

Steve Raine: And so in theory, if there's someone causing conflict or problems, we can just ask them to leave or just give them a warning and say, "Go away." In Bridge Winners, they just get a timeout and they come back, or they get booted and then they just make up a new account and do the same thing again, and I think the same with Reddit as well. And I think because they're left to their own regards, and there's a few mods that only come in when something really offensive is being said, is that it's just a very attacking place.

Whereas one of the reasons that I'm really enjoying bridge again is that, like I said, I was streaming and someone said, "Come and join these bridge Discords," and I did and I loved it. I thought it was such a innovative, polite, friendly thing. You can do stupid things on robot challenges and have a laugh. You can talk about interesting squeezes. You can do all this stuff that you want to do, and then when there's a topic that you don't want to do as a mature adult, I just don't get involved.

Whereas it seems like on Bridge Winners, when there's a topic that you don't agree with, you're in there fighting with caps lock on, and I just don't see why, I don't agree with that, I won't say anything. Why isn't that the philosophy that a lot of these people have? They just seem to want to argue online for the sake of it. And I'm glad that at least the three groups that I'm in on Discords don't have that because we just don't tolerate it really.

John McAllister: When you say, own, what does that mean?

Steve Raine: So Discord, you can set up your own server. So basically there's a collection of channels. I own the server, so to join my server and see all the different channels in there, it's effectively like lots of different forums. I own a forum, as in I am the moderator, the controller of it. I can choose what topics get added to what different channels and chat rooms and things get added. And I can choose who can be a moderator and who can't, but underlying-ly, it's mine, and I can control what's in there.

And so I have four or five moderators who, when I'm away or quiet or something, they can also step in and if someone is being silly, they can kick them, ban them, mute them, whatever.

And so basically, the idea behind it is if you've got a community that you want a place to voice chat or text chat on there, you can set it one, saying, "This is for backgammon players," and then lots of people who play backgammon will come in there and all you'll do is talk about backgammon. We've got a few for bridge.

And because I'm the server owner, without an invite, you'll need to get an invite. You'll need to get someone to send you a link or find my link somewhere to join in. You won't be able to find it just by searching.

Like I said earlier, it is a private member's club, but memberships free, basically. So you can just join in.

John McAllister: Got it.

Steve Raine: And then I can remove anyone I don't want in there, which I've only had to do once. I'm not going to go into that story, but.

John McAllister: Okay. Okay, it's fine. Okay. Puzzle question. Have you heard of the Impossible Puzzle?

Steve Raine: That's the see-through one, is it, that you've got in your hand?

John McAllister: Yeah.

Steve Raine: Yes.

John McAllister: Yeah. So I'm holding one in my hand. The pieces are clear. There's nothing-

Steve Raine: Yeah, and they can be either way round is the hard part, isn't it?

John McAllister: Yeah. And also, there's not an edge necessarily.

Steve Raine: Yeah, there's a lady called Karen Puzzles who has a YouTube channel that she does all these things on, and obviously Andy Metz, or at least went to the same event that Karen goes to. And every two times a week, she's posting a different unique special type of jigsaw, like mono-colored jigsaws, smallest jigsaw in the world, biggest jigsaw in the world, and then the Impossible Puzzle, which is... So you have a copy then, do you?

John McAllister: Yeah, so I got one for my birthday, and I love puzzles and honestly, the fact that it's clear, than see-through, I'm not interested in doing it. You put another puzzle on the thing, something that has colors, like a Ravensburger, for example. I like the wood ones though, actually. I don't think Ravensburger is wood. They're not wood, are they?

Steve Raine: No, they're cards. I think, just normal. Ravensburger are just normal jigsaws.

John McAllister: What's the ones that are these wood ones with these odd shapes?

Steve Raine: Oh, I know the ones you mean, where they're like every shape is an insect or a flower or a tiger or something?

John McAllister: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Raine: I don't know what they're called, but I've seen them advertised as Christmas gifts.

John McAllister: But if I have that on my... I'm not doing anything else. I'm doing that all the time. I'm not doing it in 90 minutes. But yeah, this Impossible Puzzle, it's no good.

Steve Raine: Andi would probably have a go at it, she'd probably like a challenge, actually.

John McAllister: I'll bring it for her.

Steve Raine: Did you meet her at Chicago?

John McAllister: I think I met Andi... Well, I have gone to New Zealand to play bridge.

Steve Raine: Oh, okay.

John McAllister: I played in the South Island teams, and Matt played with Andi. But I'm trying to think. Then I played the Gold Coast and Matt was on my team at the Gold Coast. I met Andi at some point. I don't remember talking to her necessarily that much.

Steve Raine: I'm sure she'd give it a go. I don't think she'll come and play much in Louisville, but she might sit and do the puzzle for a day or two if you bring it.

John McAllister: Well, the one I have is only 100 pieces, I think she can.

Steve Raine: It's still difficult.

John McAllister: It's definitely difficult, but it's been sitting on my dining room table basically since my birthday, which was in April.

Steve Raine: All right. She'll have to check there's no pieces missing then.

John McAllister: So you're coming to me today on a green screen, which anybody who's watching this on YouTube will see that. And I watched one of your videos earlier today, about a trump squeeze.

Steve Raine: Yes. That was my most recent one, I think. Yeah.

John McAllister: And I just want to say, you said that you're a good teacher. Maybe that's not what you said, but you didn't... I never actually knew what a trump squeeze was until you explained it beautifully.

Steve Raine: Thank you very much. So like I said, I think what I said earlier is I struggle to teach beginners, people who've never played before. Once someone's got a modicum of knowledge, I know as long as you know what a trick is and a finesse is and a basic bidding and know what a trump is and what Stayman is and stuff like that, it's much easier to progress them upwards, than it is someone who doesn't know.

Imagine teaching maths to someone who doesn't know what a number is. It's so common sense to me that I know that two plus seven is nine, and things like that, but if you don't know that, it just becomes a very much more difficult thing to teach.

So I'd like to think squeeze is my forte. I quite like my squeeze stuff, and I'm thinking of doing a series on squeezes. I just go, "Here's an intro, here's some simple squeezes, positional squeezes." Because one of the things with squeezes, personally, is if you don't know the mechanics of the squeeze you're trying to execute, it becomes very difficult. Some people say, "Oh, I'm a natural. I just work out what it is at the time." Well, it gets to the point where they're too complicated for you to work out what it is, when you're talking about crisscross squeezes and winkle squeezes and guard squeezes and entry shifting squeezes and stuff like that.

And so if you know the mechanics of a trump squeeze or you know the mechanics of this squeeze, and you know what ending you're trying to get to make the squeeze work, it becomes a lot easier to do it down.

And so in my mind, I've broken down all the different things. And other people have said, "When I stream and I'm talking about squeezes, can you do some videos on squeezes?" So I think I'm going to give that a go, but again, that's going to take a lot of time to get all the diagrams right and all that sort of stuff right. But I think I'm going to give that a go. So a lot of my one-off videos involve a squeeze somewhere because I just like doing them.

John McAllister: So what you did that was really helpful is that you said the last trump is a threat to either ruff one of the suits good, or use as a threat to get back to the squeeze card that you have in your hand. And that clarity of thought, and obviously I watched it and I paused it at times and looked and everything, but it was just so clear.

I've heard of trump squeezes and I never really knew what it was, and I haven't pulled one off obviously. But what was amusing to me though, is where did you get the hand from? Because the funny thing about the hand, not to spoil it for anybody, but the funny thing about the hand is you actually don't make... Wait, did you make? No, you don't make a contract.

Steve Raine: No.

John McAllister: No. So you're in a slam and you went down in trick three, but you're completely locked in. So where'd you get the hand from?

Steve Raine: I played it online. A lot of the hands I put on there are either the hands I've played or hands of that other people have played, I'm not making them up. There's a BBO tournament called the Zenith, and it's one BBO dollar for 16 boards, and there's a 1,500 people play it every day. And it's match point, so it's not best on bridge. And so you just play it every day. And if you finish 54% or more, you get some money back. A lot of the time when I just play it once a day, and hopefully do well enough to tick over and never run out of money.

So it's a tournament I quite like doing. And so obviously when I'm playing in it, most people, I think, say they prefer teams. I don't know whether I prefer teams, but I'm better at match points. I'm better at making every trick count. So there have been some hands that I've posted where I'm in four hearts and I'm making 11, and then I've got a weird squeeze or positional thing to make 12, or a deception player or something.

This one, I was in six hearts. I took a finesse at trick two and then they ruffed something, so I went one off, but I'm actually booked, at that point, for two off if I don't find the squeeze.

John McAllister: Right.

Steve Raine: So I could have actually made it if I dropped the doubleton queen of hearts offside, I would have made it, so, I could have doctored the hand and say, "Oh look, you dropped the doubleton queen offside and you make it," but that's not that interesting, I don't think, to con them like that, so I didn't.

John McAllister: What was your score on the board?

Steve Raine: It was 62% because most people were going two off. I was losing out to the people in game. So anyone in game was just making 10 tricks or something, or 11 if they dropped the queen of hearts. Obviously, you're probably not going to find the chump squeeze in just game, possibly. But when I was in slam and I'm already one off, I'm like, "Oh, what can I do to try and not go two off," because obviously two off is just going to be bad or something like that.

Yeah, but like a trick one, because at trick one, I only have 10 tricks unless the chump finesse works. So even if the chump finesse worked, I still only had 11. So at trick one, I'm already looking for a squeeze, and so I'm already in the mind of the squeezer, "How can you do this?" And then when it turns out that one hand was three six in the majors, you can't squeeze them in a minor. So this is where you're having that book of mechanics or book, in your mind, of techniques and things about how you can squeeze someone who's over dummy, what squeezes work when that's the case. The only squeeze that does work is a trump squeeze. So hopefully, I explained that.

John McAllister: No, totally. And then there's another pretty hand that I saw where you had stiff king of clubs opposite jack 10 and the dummy.

Steve Raine: I gave that to Matt, and he didn't spot it.

John McAllister: Really?

Steve Raine: Yeah. That's quite a hard one. I think there's a guy called Steph who commented on it and he didn't spot it until eight minutes into the video, and he said, "Ooh, actually you could do this." So that was a nice one as well. And I wonder how many contracts I've just said, "Oh, you can have your last two tricks," but in this case, there is a weird squeeze.

John McAllister: Totally.

Steve Raine: And again, it's one of those things, you are trying to play for every single trick. And so if you were playing teams, you wouldn't spot these lines because you've already made your contract. I was already making 11 tricks there, but I found a weird squeeze for a 12th. And that was a weird one. I don't even know what the name of that is. I think it was a stepping stone, but it was a weird stepping stone, I think.

But yeah, they're interesting. The most interesting one that I've put up recently, there was a director called Jim Proctor in England who passed away two weeks ago, I think, or three. He passed away the week before the Nationals. And he had a hand that appeared in a book full of experts, and the hand's really, really nice. I would recommend you go and have a look at that.

So I've got a channel called Bridge with Steve, so if you go and have a look at that, it's called an Odes to Jim Proctor, which is my favorite hand that he ever played, so much so, it made it in the book. And the ending's quite nice as well, or at least interesting.

John McAllister: I did. I won't spoil it, but I saw that one as well and it is pretty.

Steve Raine: Yeah. And again, most people I give that hand to just don't get it right. And that's such an easy hand to get right, but we don't think that way. Every hand's got something to it, sort of thing is. Oh, I love bridge. It's great.

John McAllister: Yeah. You said something earlier about how you've gotten back into bridge, which made me think that maybe you were not playing as much? Tell me about that.

Steve Raine: So from about 2010 to 2015, I was teaching full-time, and it's very tiring for me to go away for a weekend, having taught for a full week and then back at school on Monday. So I didn't go to many congresses that were outside of my holidays.

John McAllister: Right.

Steve Raine: And then in England, there was a congress called the Brighton Congress, the summer festival at Brighton. And that is the closest thing we have to one of your Nationals.

John McAllister: Got it.

Steve Raine: And when I first went to Brighton in 2000 or 2001 or thereabouts, there were over 600 pairs in the main pairs event, and there were over 300 teams in the main teams event.

John McAllister: Oh my gosh.

Steve Raine: And that dwindled and dwindled and dwindled over about 15 years, to the point where the last Brighton, which was 2015, and there were only 88 teams, it went from over 300 to 88.

John McAllister: Wow.

Steve Raine: And the standard was, I used to love it, and I used to go for 10 days and spend all these time with my friends. It was absolutely great. And then obviously, numbers had dwindled so much that the EBU couldn't afford, or for whatever reason, tried to change the venue to a place that I didn't want to spend a week of my precious holiday time, and a lot of my friends didn't want to go either.

So I stopped going. And if I wasn't going to that, and I was hardly playing throughout the year, I just hardly played between 2015 and 2019, just before COVID. I hardly played. I played the odd county match, which is that's your districts. So basically, I would play for my district in a thing, and then I would play once a year at the Scarborough Congress because that where my parents lived. So I'd go to Scarborough, played for three or four days every year in Scarborough, and that was it. And that was all I played. So I played maybe once every two months or something like that.

And then COVID happened, and obviously my focus went into my cafe, but we had some lockdowns. And in the third lockdown, which was about four months long, that's when I said, "Oh, whatever, I'll stream this bridge match just to keep my attention span." And that's when I got all these people getting in, and they got me involved.

And then there was a lady called Leah who did some team-based bridge robot fights. You got onto a team of six, and every three days, you'd play a different team and you play lots of robot bridge. And robot bridge is a different sort of bridge to bridge-bridge, but obviously, the fact that you can't signal and the fact that they're not going to make a mistake once you've got or whatever, and the bidding is not what you're used to. So it's a different sort of bridge. But I got to play lots and lots of bridge again, which I wasn't doing pre 2021. And so that was really good.

And so when we came out of lockdown, I was still working at the cafe. I don't really work there anymore. I was still working at the cafe, so a lot of my weekends were still taken, but because I could then play online, which I wasn't doing pre-COVID, I still had access to bridge, and then I was still chatting to all these people on Discord and doing all this stuff.

And then a bit of a stroke of luck, actually; my regular partner, Chris Cooper and I got asked to be on a team in the Premier League. And the Premier League is one of our premium events. So we were playing in the second division and we got promoted to the top flight where we get to play against all the pro-teams, the best teams in the country, if you think of David Gold and Simon Cope and Tom Paske, and some of the people who come over to play in America, they were in there. So it was really nice to be asked to go and play on that team, and that was really good.

And then so I made plans at the end of 2022 to come to one of the Nationals. I thought, "I'll give it a go." I had so much fun at the first Nationals, I've actually been to America four times this year. I went to Sectional in Providence, and I went to Chicago, Atlanta, and New Orleans. And I've been there for the whole time, every time. It's absolutely great, playing lots of different people as well.

That's one of the reasons I liked Brighton, was I would go for the week, it was 10 days long, and the two main weekends were three-day pairs and then a three-day team event. And I would play with my regular partners on those. And then during the week, I'd rock up and play with a different person every day. And it was really fun, really social. And regardless of whether you do well or not, you're just playing bridge with interesting people.

And it's nice to play with lots of different people. You get to learn new things or different systems or try weird stuff out for a one-off session. And obviously, there's no commitment there. You can just play that person and the next day, play with someone else.

So I had a really good time at the Nationals because it reminded me of what I liked about Brighton. And so I played with a Finnish guy, and then I played with Beans, and I played with Andy for one of the events. And I played with Gizzy, who you met last time, and I played with lots of different people there. And the standard's really good. You don't really get that standard in England, outside of maybe one or two events in a year.

So the fact that I can still compete at that level and I've now got time to do so because on my weekends are now free, I'm going around a lot more and playing in these events. So one of the things I decided to do when I went to Chicago, was start doing a vlog. And if you were in Chicago, I was walking around in a Hawaiian shirt every day with a camera in front of me just doing some stuff.

And I modeled a vlog off, there's a guy called Daniel Negreanu, who's a poker player. He's a very famous poker player, and he does a vlog during the World Series. And I'm like, "If he does that during the World Series and he can produce so much content every day, I'll try it." So I went along, I didn't know how many episodes I was going to do, or whether it was going to work or something, but in the first day I got over half an hour's worth of material. So, I cut each one down to about half an hour, and I just churned out a vlog every day. And bridge needs that. Bridge needs, it needs connecting to people who wouldn't otherwise see it. So, my vlogs probably aren't aimed at beginners, but my vlogs are probably aimed at people who haven't been to a national, who might be encouraged to go, or who couldn't make the national, but want to see what it's like. That's what I'm aiming at.

But when I went back to England, I started doing vlogs at every weekend event I went to. So, I've done about 36 days' worth of vlogs or something like that, total. So, 10 in Chicago, 10 in Atlanta, and then about 16 across many events in England. Every time I go away for the weekend, I bring my camera phone on the big stick and walk around and just talk about bridge. One of the things, the reason you said I'm so supportive of Discard lot, is that a lot of the people on Discord are my main followers. So, they want to know how other people are doing. So, every time I say, "Oh, Nikki's just won that day, and that person's qualified for day two of this, and John and Matt are third going into the Soloway last round," or whatever we're doing, I'm mentioning people who I'm friends with, who are doing well at the same event. It's not just about me, necessarily, on the vlog. So yeah, I just love it. It's great.

John McAllister: You did two, at least two hands with Matt, two that I know of. One from Chicago was a squeeze with, the nine of spades comes into play.

Steve Raine: Yeah.

John McAllister: And then the other one was a defensive hand from the Swiss that we teamed up in, in Atlanta, which I actually submitted to the IBF, International Bridge Press. I'm a member of the International Bridge Press-

Steve Raine: Oh, right.

John McAllister: ... and so I submitted that to them.

Steve Raine: Oh, that's really good. Yeah, you might want to get Matt's recount of the hand, because the hands I put on the screen aren't necessarily accurate, because we didn't have hand records. So yeah, so maybe, I don't know. But yeah, that was really good. I think I've done a couple more of Matt's. He did, there was one where your Austrian teammates were defending something in the Mitchell BAM or something like that. I can't remember the exact event, but that one made it as well. Matt told me about that. I think that was in Chicago.

John McAllister: Oh, in the Mixed Board-a-Match?

Steve Raine: Yeah, Mixed Board-a-Match, yeah.

John McAllister: The Freeman.

Steve Raine: Oh, the Freeman, yeah. I think it was them defending something where one of them had ace king to eight clubs or something. I can't remember the hand, but I think that made one of them as well.

I also played with Matt in one of the events in England. Him and Andy moved to England, so I thought, just when they moved in, I thought I'll invite him to play in a tournament, just to try and get him to meet some of the-

John McAllister: Sure.

Steve Raine: ... British players. And we went along and won it, which he's pretty good isn't he? He's pretty good, isn't he? So, some of the hands he played made it in there. It's a bit easier to put my partner's hands in because I can see them happening, whereas-

John McAllister: Yeah, yeah.

Steve Raine: ... if I'm not at the table, I need to be told things.

John McAllister: Yeah, we actually... I did speak to Matt about that, because in the vlog you had him as having 10, 9, 8 of hearts.

Steve Raine: He didn't, I think he had four, but yeah.

John McAllister: Yeah. No, he only had three, but he signaled like he had four, and that was part of the ruse.

Steve Raine: Yeah, yeah.

John McAllister: So anyway, we've cleared that up. I think.

Steve Raine: Yeah, yeah. It must've been 10, 9, 2, maybe or something like that. I can't remember. And that's one of my big issues with the American events, is that you're paying all this money and then you're hand-dealing boards. It's not so bad for me. I've got a decent enough memory that I can reconstruct the hands, at least the important parts, the part of the hand which makes any sort of commentary on it important. But if you are an improving player and you're playing with someone who cannot recall the hands, it's much more difficult for you to get better if you don't have hand records. How on earth are you going to go to the pub at the end or something or you're sitting over dinner saying, "Should we have bid six hearts in the sand? What was your hand again? I can't remember." If you've not got that memory to remember all the pips or the hands or something, or just even look at double dummy to see whether 6 hearts should make or not.

John McAllister: Yeah, totally.

Steve Raine: I'm not sure what the solution to that is. It doesn't feel like they're aiming to move away from that, which is a shame.

They have for the Soloway and the Spingold, I'm not sure about the Vanderbilt, I imagine it's the same. When you get to the last 32, they have individual pre-dealt hands for each match. If they can do that, why can't they do that for some of the other events?

John McAllister: This question is for you, Bronia Jenkins, our new executive director of the ACBL.

Steve Raine: Well, they might spend more money in dealing all this stuff out, but they might then save money in caddies, because they won't need people to carry the boards across, because you just have your own pile of boards that are duplicated at the other table. I don't know. So I don't know, really.

I don't like it. It's probably the only thing I don't like about the American events is, it feels hand-dealing boards and then manually scoring Swiss events feels 20 years out of date, personally. But yeah, that was in response to your hand about Matt that you were submitting. It was really good. It was a really good hand for Matt. So yeah, I was impressed with that. That was-

John McAllister: You did some deceptive defending, and we'll put links to all this stuff, including Steve's videos in the show notes. So, be on the lookout, thesettingtrick.com, we have all that.

Steve Raine: The video you'll find that in, is the one where John's the thumbnail.

John McAllister: Oh yeah.

Steve Raine: That's where John was a thumbnail, where you came up to me and says, "Can I be the thumbnail in this one?" I went, "Sure," took a picture.

John McAllister: Yeah, I mean I was intentionally kind of teasing you a little bit with that.

Steve Raine: No, it's fine-

John McAllister: Because you were in the midst of filming your video. The other thing is, you-

Steve Raine: I want people to come up and say hi to me when I'm filming. I don't mind. like I say, I used to be a teacher, and so I'm used to being interrupted while I'm on a tRaine of thought. You need, if you are someone who's trying to impart knowledge, but also control a classroom, and also think about what time it is and think about all these things... I don't mind people coming up to me while I'm filming, because I wouldn't get distracted in the same extent that someone else might.

John McAllister: Right, yeah. Isn't it great when people come up to you and tell you that you're...

Steve Raine: I loved it. I don't know how many people came up to me over the 10 days. It must've been about 20 people who say they love the videos. They just came up to say, "I just want to tell you, really like you've vlogs," or whatever. It makes me feel really, really good about it. It makes me feel like they're watchable. We got back from Chicago and Matt Weingarten, Coolbeans, put a post on Bridge Winners, two days after Chicago had ended, saying, "One of my regular partners randomly turned up with a video camera and did vlogs all that. I couldn't believe it. This is the sort of thing bridge needs." Then that got three replies on Bridge Winners saying, "That's great, I'll have a look at that," whatever. And Gavin Wolpert was one of them. He said, "It was really good, I couldn't believe it. I watched every one of them." Three replies, and then we got a ruling against a very good player, and he didn't get the ruling he thought he should have got from us. So, he posted that on the same day and he got 78 to 80 replies. It's like, well there's an example of Bridge Winners just being about the negativity rather than their own positivity. Someone's doing something good for Bridge-

John McAllister: I know, yeah.

Steve Raine: ... and someone complained about a ruling and which do you think should get more attention?

John McAllister: Yeah.

Steve Raine: It's like click-bait, isn't it? People want to look at controversy on there-

John McAllister: Yeah.

Steve Raine: ... and that's just, it already starts off on a negative angle. I don't know if you've ever published or promoted your podcast on Bridge Winners...

John McAllister: Absolutely.

Steve Raine: My guess is that the number of replies you get are going to be much less than someone who's got this bidding problem or this director call that didn't go well for them.

John McAllister: Totally.

Steve Raine: But what you want to be doing is say, "This is advertising for bridge." You want people to come and go says, "Oh, that's a really good podcast, I really like it. Oh, I look forward to listening to what Amber Lin said, or..." What's Kolesnik’s dad called? Kevin?

John McAllister: No, Alex.

Steve Raine: Alex. Which I watched that one as well. I was looking forward to them. But what you get, is all about... I'm not a fan. I don't really post on there, to be honest. I don't find it as a positive person. I don't really find it a positive place to be.

John McAllister: I mean actually it does make me at least feel a little bit better about it, that that's the similar experience as Matt's post. Because I've had those thoughts, and it's frustrating, and maybe I should be spending some time on Discord, because that sounds like it might be more my speed in that sense.

Steve Raine: Yeah, obviously, and if it's not for you, you just don't post or comment, or you leave. It's not for everyone. I was in five different bridge servers and I've left two of them, because I never really chatted or cared about being in them.

John McAllister: Right.

Steve Raine: The more social media fingers in pies you have, the less time you can dedicate to them. So, I have my own server and then I have a couple of others for whatever reason, they have things that my server doesn't have.

So one of the other ones, Matt Weingarten's one has a lot of looking at results of friends, like real life results. When someone does something well in something, they'll post it in that server, and then you can see your friends doing well, winning, that sort of thing. Yeah.

There was a discussion on Bridge Winners about a year ago, about a young person who left bridge during college and came back to it in his late twenties, and then he kind of listed some of the reasons why he stopped playing for a while. It diverged into a comment about how to get young people involved and someone said, "You need to use medium..." I can't remember whether I said it, or I contributed to it, but, "You need to use a medium that they're willing to." So I said, "Whatever it might be, whether it be Discord now or in five years time, something different or whatever, you need to be liaising with them on their terms." Then all you get is, "Well, we've never had to do that before, so I'm not going to do it now." Well, of course. No wonder it's not working. You're just going to say, "People that age don't use email to the same extent that we might have done 10 years ago." It's now all about WhatsApps and TikToks and people are moving away from Facebook as well. The younger people aren't on Facebook as much as slightly older people are.

So, you need to liaise with these people on mediums that go together. I don't know how you'd get bridge TikToks to the point where people would watch them, people who don't know how to play Bridge would watch them. But that's probably what you have to do, just get them involved. Once they're hooked, then you've got them. But at the moment you're not coming close to hooking them, I don't think, because you're not even talking to them on their wavelength. There's so many young people who don't even know what bridge is anymore, I think, which is a problem.

John McAllister: All right, so now that we've been talking about how everybody's not... We don't like mean people, I have to read this, I have to read what... I sent Matt a text earlier today and I said, "Matt, you have any suggestions for, I'm interviewing Steve on my podcast, do you have any suggestions?"

Steve Raine: Oh, dear. Okay.

John McAllister: And he said, "Not that I can think of outside of obvious ones, you'll probably ask anyway, how he got into videos, bridge videos, et cetera. Whatever you do, whatever you do, don't ask for a joke or you'll get 100 terrible ones."

Steve Raine: Oh yeah. I do, when I'm with him, I reel off joke after joke after joke, and he doesn't laugh at them, but I still do it.

I get laughs from other people. He just, for whatever reason, doesn't laugh out loud, and he won't admit they're good jokes. He'll just say they're terrible, terrible.

John McAllister: You mentioned that Matt and I won an event at the NAC.

Steve Raine: It was the mixed teams, was it?

John McAllister: It was the Mixed Swiss.

Steve Raine: Mixed Swiss, yeah.

John McAllister: And the reason I'm bringing it up in this situation, is because I actually wasn't... Matt was partnering Sophia Baldysz and not me. And the reason I bring it up, is because I saw some looks on Matt's face throughout our eight days of play together, where it was hard to look over. He's a friendly guy, he's very kind, and sometimes the look on his face, I'm just like... After I had done something horrible, something terrible at the bridge table and I'm just like, "Oh my God, what is he thinking?"

Steve Raine: I've played with him and he might be the best person I've played with. I love playing with Matt, and I'll say this now. I've played with David Gold, but only for 10 boards or something, and he's pretty good as well. But I don't get the opportunity to play with people of Matt's caliber regularly. And when you play with someone as good as him, that's where you realize the gulf in class between you and the best, I think. Yeah, he's just a step above and there's probably a lot more people who are a step above, but you don't realize, because for a lot of these other good players, you only play with them for two boards. Whereas with Matt, not only have I played with him, but I've stayed in for 20 days at two different... 10 days across two different nationals, in AirBnBs with him.

He'll bring home, and we'll talk about hands. He'll say, "What do you do on this hand? What do you do on this hand?" And when you are not in and around bridge events, that's, in my opinion, the best way to get better. Chatting about hands with people at your level or better.

John McAllister: Yeah.

Steve Raine: Or just even discussing with people you think you're a bit better than, just talking about different concepts. "Why did you play a club to the queen? Why did you do that? What's your thinking behind that?" And he's just a [inaudible 01:01:29] person to do it with, because he's not biased either. He is not trying to make himself look great by doing these things. And some of the best plays are, David Gold's a bit like that as well. Jason Hackett's, another one in the UK. I'd love to get advice from, because you'll say, "I played a club to the queen, am I unlucky?" And they go, "Yeah, you are. I'd probably do the same and I'd go off too." So, that's the sort of advice you want, you want honest advice about... You don't want someone to just try and look clever. "Actually no, I would drop the singleton king off side, because that's the obvious play." "No, it isn't the obvious play. You're just trying to be look clever, I think." If you have someone like that in your entourage, you should pick their brains as much as you can, because that's the best way to get better.

John McAllister: Right.

Steve Raine: I'll tell you some jokes when we get to Louisville, I will reel off some jokes for you. You seem like a man who would laugh at them.

John McAllister: Oh, come on, give me one right now. You got one? I love that you... I don't have a head for jokes. I forget them.

Steve Raine: Okay, so my favorite joke, which about 30% of people don't get, is the following. Bruce Willis came up to me the other day. He goes, "Steve, you any good at impressions?" I went, "Not really."

That's my favorite joke because of the... All right, well-

John McAllister: Do you always do it with as Bruce Willis?

Steve Raine: Yeah, but you can do it with anyone you want, really. You can do David Beckham or the Queen or whatever. You can do it with whoever you want. So that's my favorite. Oh, the other one is, what's a secret to a good joke, timing. So yeah, I mean I don't want to turn this podcast into a jokathon, but yeah, one of the... The only thing he's impressed with my jokes, is how many I can rattle off, I think.

I'll do one more then, I'll do one more.

John McAllister: Okay.

Steve Raine: An Irishman walks into a library and says, "Can I have fish and chips please?" And the lady goes, "Sir, this is a library." He goes (whispers), "Oh sorry, can I have fish and chips, please?" So yeah, those three, you can see the level of my sense of humor. There you go.

John McAllister: My stepdad's Irish.

Steve Raine: Again, you can do that with any nationality.

John McAllister: I know. I couldn't help myself.

You said your dad played bridge and top bridge, but I didn't hear you mention him. I think you said you're going to your mom as your dad no longer-

Steve Raine: My dad passed away a year and a half ago. He had MS, so he was not a well man by the end of it. But he taught me... Actually, my nan taught me bridge. We used to have a chalet down at the beach, in Scarborough, and we'd rent it throughout the summer, and so my grandparents would take me to the beach most days during summer holidays, and whenever it would rain, we would rush off to the chalet, either get changed or just sit there playing little games. And she taught me bridge there with my two brothers. It was very basic bridge. It was just count your points. Whoever's got the most... It was, in fact, like mini bridge. But whoever's got most points, is declarer. And then... Oh, you've got seven spades, you have to open three spades. You've got 15 counts, seven spades. That's a three spade opening. Really basic stuff. But she just got me to play tricks with a dummy, and me and my brothers defending and stuff like that.

My youngest brother must have been about six at the time. So six, seven and eight we played there. Then my dad used to teach at a technical college on the evenings. He owned a bike shop, but in the evenings he would do night classes and he would rotate. He would do 10 weeks of beginner, 10 weeks of improver, 10 weeks of beginner, rotate. Invariably he'd get the same people in the beginner's class that he had the last time he did beginner's class, and he'd just go through it. But he dragged me along as a spare body. If he got an awkward number, he didn't want to sit and have to play and not go around helping people.

So he said, "Steven..." He called me Steven. "... can you go and sit in that game?" So, I'd sit there reading comics or doing my homework while he was teaching, and I'd just be listening out the side of my head, and as soon as he came to playing the cards, I'd jump in and play the cards. It was just so much easier for me. I was learning by not even really learning.

Then, when I was about 14, he took me along to the weaker bridge club in Scarborough. My mum didn't want to play anymore. She didn't really have the passion for it at the time. So, he took me along to that, and the first time I went, I came dead last, but I loved it. So we went the next week and I came dead last, and then the third week we won. Went from last, last, to winning, because it clicked.

One of the things they did, you used to hand deal them and then you'd have to write on a curtain card what your hand was so that you didn't mis-board it. You'd put that in with your hand, and every time you pulled your hand out from new board, you'd check your hand against the curtain card to make sure nothing had happened, then put it back in. And whenever my dad was declarer, they let me, although they weren't allowed to do it, they let me take his curtain card out and watch him play the hand.

So, I knew what hand cards he had, so I could follow what my dad was doing and why he was doing it. Because he was the best player at the [inaudible 01:06:40] club. He was also the second-youngest player at the club, which is, me being the youngest, was obviously not the best, but I loved it. Then, after about two years of going maybe once a week or once every two weeks or something, he took me to the proper bridge club in Scarborough where the better players were. You've got, some people who go out to play national tournaments and things like that. Again, I had a bit of a jump up in difficulty, but then that was at college at the time, and so I was going three times a week before I went off to university, and I loved it. That's kind of my bridge-playing thing.

Then I went to some England trials, I met up with some junior people at a junior event and then went to some England trials and I had a really good time. And eventually I did get to play for the England under 25s twice before I aged out a bit. So, that was really good. Then one of the best bits of bridge for me is all the people you know. The reason I used to going to Brighton every year, is because I got to see 20, 30 friends who I wouldn't see any other point during the year, and chat with them for 10 days, go out for drinks and meals and play with them. One of the reasons I never actually fully quit bridge, is because there will be a lot of people in my life who I really like, who I wouldn't see anymore.

One of the reasons I would go to America, well the two main reasons, are one, the level of, the standard of the competition's really good, but also, there's so many people I know when I go there. All the Discard people, all the British people that I see when I go over there, all the people who I've met now. Now, in theory, there's people who know me from my videos that chat to me as well when we're going down. It's just such a nice social thing to keep up with. So yeah, I really like it, but that's my bridge-playing history.

My dad was pretty good, actually. He was one of the better players in the Scarborough Bridge Club, and he played up until his late sixties when his health wouldn't let him out of the house. He stopped playing about maybe 2018, 2019. Then Covid kept him house-bound for a while, and he then became a bit immobile. He couldn't really stand up by himself anymore because of his MS. Yeah, he sadly died last year. But look, I go home every, two or three times a year to keep my mum company, and the fact that currently I don't work at the cafe, I can go home for a few weeks at a time and make sure she's okay. So that's nice.

John McAllister: Is working at the cafe a lot of fun?

Steve Raine: Yes. It's a job like no other, I think. Owning your own business is a weird feeling. It is fun, yes. And when we weren't as busy as we are now, we got to play games while we were quiet. So the rule was that as long as all staff can play, you can play a game while you're on shift as long as there's no major jobs to be done. So early on at the time, it'd be early on in the day, you've done all your opening tasks and cleaning tasks or whatever and you've done all your deliveries and then there'd maybe be a few people in and no food to do and whatever. So we'd sit down and play a game and then we'd teach the staff a game they didn't have to play. Obviously the staff weren't really big board gamers because they might have come because they play Dungeons and Dragons or they play Pokemon or something.

And they have different passions within the cafe, but we would teach them new games whenever we had some free time and that was just really enjoyable to sit and play games while you're working. Obviously who wouldn't want to do that? But obviously it took up a lot of my time. I was effectively, whenever I was there I could never switch off and I had no weekends free. Because if people called in ill, I would go in and cover. People called in ill on Saturday morning saying I'm too ill to work today. Okay, you roll your eyes a bit, but you'd go in and cover them because we needed the bodies.

So it was a bit annoying. But obviously now I do a couple of things. I'm starting to do videos for BBO. Obviously you can see the setup here. I've got the fancy microphone and the soundproofing and the green screen. So I'm doing videos for BBO. I'm also doing my own videos, but I don't make any money off those. But I also tutor maths online, so I don't teach anymore, but I do some math tutoring and that's only three days a week during the week. So I've got all my weekends free, which is why I'm able to go away a lot more than I used to be to go and do all this bridge stuff.

John McAllister: So if somebody doesn't want to go to the show notes, where would you tell them to find you online? Just Google Steve Raine on YouTube or?

Steve Raine: Bridge with Steve.

John McAllister: Bridge with Steve.

Steve Raine: Bridge with Steve is my current handle. It used to be Steviewevewo but one that was hard to spell and two, it didn't say anything about Bridge. So I've changed my branding to Bridge with Steve. I've got a blog that isn't that updated because I'm spending a lot more of my time doing digital content now. So the vlogs are on there and then obviously every once a week, maybe twice a week, I put on a hand that I've played on BBO or something or an interesting hand that I've got from this thing, which has a concept and that is unusual and we kind of have a look at that. So they're the ones you've seen, I think.

John McAllister: So all the vlogs, that's just money out right now. Obviously you're creating something.

Steve Raine: I've not made any money for many of them really. To make money off YouTube, you need a lot of likes and bridge players are stingy with their likes. They are some people that like everything they see on YouTube, but bridge players are not that sort of person. You can see from just the lack of interest when you post on bridge winners of your content versus other things that people want to do. Bridge players don't want to spend their time online watching people want to play bridge, they want to do it. Whereas chess, which probably the easiest comparison, tons of people want to watch the experts play chess. There's a guy called Hikaru, when he streams, he gets about 8,000 people live watching him play chess. Even if you put Zia online playing bridge with a camera in front of him, would you get 8,000 people? Probably not, not live.

When you see these vugraph, what's the most people you get watching a view graph? 1,500 maybe. I don't actually know, but when you get to the finals of the spin goal, you've got some really big people, but about then. And then this is daily, this is not just the final of an event. This is daily that these people in chess. So I don't know what you do, so to make money off it, I'd need to get a Patreon or something else. So the moment that's not the aim, I think the moment is just to get a following really and see where we go from there. I either get a following and it's maybe monitable or I realize I'm wasting my time and slow down or something like that.

But there's no outlay for me now. I've already bought all the equipment. So all this stuff, this will help me for my BBO videos. But all this stuff in terms of my cameras, just my phone on a stick and I've bought the stick now, so I've got everything I need and then I just film it. The only cost now is the time it takes me to edit the videos. So when I'm at nationals, I spend about an hour before I go to bed, editing the day's video to go up. I've kind of streamlined it to take about an hour now. So that's probably the biggest opportunity cost effectively for my current vlogs, but yeah.

John McAllister: I'd love for you to say, this is going back. Just say more about talking with, because you've got that time, you're doing an hour of editing, but what more can you say about talking with Matt about Bridge deals? How does it hit you? You were very generous in your praise of him, but how does it come across?

Steve Raine: Oh, he's just lovely. I think when you talk with someone much better than you, anything, whatever you're doing, whether you're talking about playing a board game or whatever, and they're not trying to be clever, they're interested in it too. It's just great. He's going to say, what do you think? What do you need partners have to beat it. And maybe I'll get it right, maybe I'll get it wrong. But you have to kind of voice your thoughts about what could he have and the speed in which he can do it. If we both get the right answer, the speed in which he can do it is staggering compared to me. I gave him a hand where I'd gone off and he made it and I told him exactly what happened and he just made it. He just goes, well, it's clear they've thrown a heart away, you can duck a heart now or whatever he says. When I used to drive to bridge matches or whatever, talking about hands as your warmup, you basically need to get, I don't think you can just sit down and play well from the first board.

What I want to do is, because we're an AirBnB, we'll get on the bus. And we'll go, oh yeah, there was this one hand from me yesterday where you partner up into spade and you hold blah, blah, blah, blah, and you rattle off a hand. What do you bid? And even if you learn nothing from that hand, you are getting your brain in gear. Let's say that he does exactly what you did or he does something that you wouldn't have even considered or something like that, whatever. You're getting your brain in gear to play a day of bridge.

And so when I used to drive to matches and things or drive to events, you'd talk about hands that you've played, that the people in the car with you haven't played. You'd say, oh yeah, two weeks ago I had this hand. And as long as you've got a memory to rattle off the hand and it's got an interesting point. And the question is not necessarily are you clever enough to find the right line? What would you do? I did this and it didn't work or I did this and it did work. And so when you rock up to an event, even if you're just in the lobby before the event saying, oh, I've got this hand for you yesterday. It's just getting your brain again. I think it's really good. And so to think about bridge when you're not playing bridge helps you. And when you've got the chance to talk about this with someone a lot better than you who's also really nice, why wouldn't you use that?

I think it's really good. When Matt goes home after a bridge match, he gives all the interesting hands to Andi and they talk about it even though she wasn't playing in the event that day. Because they like doing it. They like talking bridge. I like talking bridge. And so I've got people, friends of mine who when the event's over, they don't want to talk about bridge. They want to go out for a meal and socialize. And I do to some extent want to socialize and that's why I'm there. But I do also want to talk about this mistake I made or this excellent play I made or I went for 800, would you have gone for 800 too? Which I gave you the hand and you didn't go for 800. I gave a lot of people a hand and I went for 800. My worst bid of the event, I had a brain fart, I think.

So yeah, I think that's really good. And I've had people not want to talk bridge with me because they think I don't want to hear it. And what I think you should do, if anyone's got an interesting hand or a question, just come up to me and ask me. I'll either not have an answer for you, but I won't be rude about it. But there are some people who don't want to ask better players because they think, oh, they're too good for me. I can't ask them. I feel bad about it, but how are you going to get better if you don't? Cause I'm doing that, I'm asking better players for help. Even Matt will be talking to his regular partners about decisions that he's not sure about maybe. And that's just how you get better at the game. No one's perfect, not even the best players are perfect, I don't think. So use them.

John McAllister: You said your dad was a pretty good player. Was there a point where you realized that you had gotten better than him if you had. Yeah.

Steve Raine: Yeah. I don't know, I'd been about early twenties. I think I knew to the point where I was starting to win things that he wasn't winning. He used to win occasionally. The club would do four month long events three times a week. So there's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and there's a four month long event that if you played enough sessions over the four months you'd qualify and then the best pair would win the trophy or something. So he'd occasionally win. But in my last year before I went off to university, I won several of them, but I probably wasn't that consistent then. But then I went and went to university and while I was at university, I started winning. I won a national title or two and then I played for England. And then when I come back at that point, after playing in national events versus to regular club events, that's when you realize that's when he realized I was better than him, I thin.

I don't know if it'd been somewhere in my early twenties and by the time I was 25 and I played for England under 25 twice, I think it was just clear because one of the things you do when you're playing within your own club is you just stick to your own club's meta game. Everyone knows everyone plays weak no chunk and four card majors. Everyone knows that one player that plays the multi, you just got to watch out for them and that's it, but that's it. And then you go away to these national events and you start learning Eck and two hearts and this and that and these weird things and you start doing upside down carding and scar. But they played standard count.

And so when I went to York for university, the York players I played with played upside down counting attitude or we would call it reverse counting attitude. Or when I'm in America or one of the things that bothers me a lot is what's your carding? And they go Standard. Fine. And then you go, what's your leads? And they go standard. I'm like, no, I'm not having that because standard to you and standard to me mean different things. So carding, you kind of roll your eyes, but everyone says standard to everything. But when they say, what's your leads and carding, you can't just say reverse. You've got say reverse and then fourth and seconds. You've got to say that. But Americans don't say anything other than the standard, which is a bit irritating for me.

John McAllister: What was it like? It must've been gratifying for your dad, but maybe a little, what was it like when he could tell.

Steve Raine: He was really supportive. He was really happy. We did play in the scab, the big Congress in Scarborough, and we won one of the sessions once, which it was nice of him because he didn't really go away and play in national events, but this is on his doorstep. So winning that was good for him I think. He just liked the game and he was happy being one of the better ones in the club. He was in the top five in the club or so. Something like that back when the club used to have a lot of people. Numbers are dwindling all over the board, I'm afraid, at the moment. But yeah, he wasn't envious or jealousy, he was really supportive.

John McAllister: And I signed up for your Patreon today. You have a Patreon, is that something?

Steve Raine: I do, yeah. It's to cover the costs and time it takes me to do the vlogs basically. So all the equipment I've spent doing it, I'm currently at a, I don't even want to think about what I've spent on editing software and this and that and images and thumbnails and intro videos, and then just the equipment that I'm walking around with a microphone and stuff. But it's just a way for me to do it back. And obviously if the Patreon becomes significant to the point where it can effectively cover maybe just the travel to the event or something, it makes me want to go to a lot more events. So thank you very much, John.

John McAllister: Yeah. And your editing, just as a techy, geeky thing, what software are you using to edit?

Steve Raine: Oh, iMovie. I have a Mac. It's the one program that I can use on this is my PC and my Mac, and it's the one program that I don't want to have to learn two different ones. And so a lot of them are kind of compatible now, but if I got Final Cup Pro, I'd have to buy it twice, maybe, I don't know. So iMovie comes through with a Mac, so I got it for my Windows as well. And because I'm not really that tech savvy, it might look like it, but I'm not, it's all new for me because I'm not really that big, I'm not into massively, I never really learned how to do video editing. It's all been self-taught. And if I got better at it, maybe there will be a better software to use. But for the moment I just use iMovie.

And then what I do is I screenshot the hands and stick them on the screen with me. So basically when I've got my camera in front of me, I'm like this because my intention is to put a hand here afterwards. And so I have to make sure every time I'm filming that I'm filming off to the side so that the space for a hand diagram. And all I do is just copy and paste and put that into the image and kind of size it up. And that's all I do really. And then I have to add, because the thing that takes a long time, especially when we don't have hand records, so I've got nothing to copy and paste. I have to sit though on BBO and manually create the hands, which is just that's what takes the time.

John McAllister: Your partner for Atlanta, his name is Adam.

Steve Raine: Adam Hickman. Yeah.

John McAllister: Adam Hickman. Yeah, everyone calls him Gizzy in the Bridge World, but his name's Adam Hickman.

So he goes by Gizzy. I also reached out to him today and he made a suggestion, he said that he listens to a podcast where where you ask the guest and you don't know who the next guest is going to be, but you ask them, what's a question for the next guest on this podcast?

Steve Raine: Oh, I wish I could have thought about this. What's the question?

John McAllister: All right.

Steve Raine: What's your favorite bridge moment?

John McAllister: Favorite bridge moment? Yeah,

Steve Raine: What's your favorite moment in Bridge? I can tell you. I've got two.

John McAllister: Okay.

Steve Raine: I've had this question a few times. I quite like it as a question because it can be anything you want. Would you like mine?

John McAllister: Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Raine: So I've got two. One of them is a bit weird. It was when all the teams forfeited against Italy in the Europeans. I loved that. I thought that was great. And as that was going on every day and another team forfeited, I was absolutely delighted that we'd stood up to this scourge of the game, this cheating. And then my other one was, it was a hand I played in Brighton in about 2004, five ish, something like that. And when you played in this teams event, this 300 team event. After 10 matches of Swiss, the top eight made it to the final, the next eight made it to the B final, and then the rest of the teams played another day just to see you won the remaining Swiss. And with one match to go, we're seventh. So if we win this last match, we make the A final.

And at the time I was only about 22 or something like that, I was just a rubbishy junior who was a bit inexperienced and stuff like that. So I got to four clubs and I got doubled in four clubs and three Ns laid down. And so to make the final, I have to make these four clubs. And it didn't take me long at all. I'm like, well, if Trump's a five one, I can't make it. So I played for them to be six nil, and I had King XA dimes up to Ace queen to six. I thought I need three diamond tricks before they left.

So I cashed three diamonds and Trump's a six nil, and I made it because the guy didn't lead a Trump with six of them, a ladies partner suit. And so to be able to spot that as quick as I did, I just went, well, okay, this is what I did. And so that made as a final. So that's my favorite bridge moment to this day. And my favorite other bridge moment is the standing up to cheating, I think. So well done those teams, what's your favorite moment?

John McAllister: Yeah, so we won the Mitchell last year, the Mitchell B-a-M. That's why I knew that it wasn't that one. And I mean I didn't think, we were leading after the... So it's two day event, four sessions. So we were in second place maybe after the first day. And then after the first session we were in first place and I had come second in the mixed board-a-match at the summer nationals. And so we didn't have a very good session, my partner and I. It felt like we didn't have a chance. And then when the woman, Amy Casanova, who actually helps me with these podcasts, she produces the show notes. She kind of is the final. She's a producer, I guess.

And when she told me that we won, it was like I screamed, but I had to cut myself off from the scream. I knew I couldn't let out as much emotion as was inside of me. I just felt like it would be too jarring for a room full of people like that. But I've been playing in nationals for 10 years and I had never really come close except for the previous summer one. And to actually finally win one of these things was just-

Steve Raine: Two in a row now.

John McAllister: Yeah. I mean it's-

Steve Raine: Two in two years let's say.

John McAllister: That's right. It's really cool. Yeah.

Steve Raine: Yeah. Good. Yeah. Nice. That's a really nice feeling when you win something that you've worked hard for. I felt pretty good winning the Great Northern with Matt, but I won it about 20 years previously. So when you've won the same event more than once, it feels a bit, your second win's not as good as your first, is it?

John McAllister: I'll tell you what, one of the things, so the Mitchell used to be like a premier event. That was the only event going on at the time. And sometimes I've started to be like, yeah, but we didn't win the Soloway. That's where all the best teams were. But actually this year when we lost the first round of Soloway, it actually made me appreciate, because that was the second day of the Mitchell now, when Matt and I were playing in matchpoints and it just made me appreciate winning so much more. It's really hard to win. And I had kind of forgotten about that a little bit.

Steve Raine: With the level of standard you get on a final day of nationals. It is really hard. Even if you think the Spingold's going on or whatever's going on elsewhere-

John McAllister: Yeah, so hard.

Steve Raine: ... there are teams, they have really good teams that don't make it through. So you've still got to beat them, haven't you?

John McAllister: Yeah. What's your next bridge engagement?

Steve Raine: So I had a badminton injury on Saturday and I can't walk at the moment. I've got a massively swollen ankle. So I was going to go to the […], but I think I'm going to not go to that anymore. And I think the next big one is I am going to Iceland in Reykjavik at the end of January.

John McAllister: Oh nice.

Steve Raine: And I'm playing with Matt as it stands, so that should be good. Cool. And then teammates are going to be potentially Zach Grossack, another friend of ours. So I mean that should be, I mean, that's a good experience, isn't it? So I'll take the camera to that. That's the next live event I'm going to. Oh, no, that's not true. There's an event in Nottingham. National event in Nottingham that I'm going to mid-January, so that'll be the next vlog I think. And then I'm planning to go into Louisville and Vegas, but I'm not sure about Toronto.

John McAllister: Well, it has been an absolute pleasure-

Steve Raine: Thank you very much.

John McAllister: ... having this conversation with you. And thank you for everything that you're doing and happy to call you a friend.

Steve Raine: You too, John. Yeah, hopefully see you in Louisville and we can maybe play the mind if you bring the mind. And maybe if I can find the crew, I'll bring the crew as well and we can have a game of that too.

John McAllister: All right. Well please, I had to remind you about this, will you remind me about the Mind? Sure, yeah.

Steve Raine: Yeah, sure.

John McAllister: Okay.

Steve Raine: I can do that. No worries.

John McAllister: All right. Thanks man.

Steve Raine: See you later. Bye.