I don’t consider myself to be a bridge expert, though I have won the odd decent level tournament. I’ve always loved bridge, but it’s always been a source of fascination and frustration that so much of what we are taught about the game, “always lead your 4th highest”, “bid game when you have 25 HCP” etc, is driven by dogma rather than by analysis of data. The world’s experts may have better card play than me, but could I outperform them on some hands by doing the mathematically correct thing while they just blindly followed the dogma? I had to find out!
I have master’s degrees in both Engineering and Mathematics, with a particular interest in game theory. I worked as a software architect in the finance industry before retiring to concentrate on my many hobbies. Covid soon scotched that plan so, inspired by Bird and Anthias’s brilliant Winning Leads books, I used the time to build a bridge simulator that could reproduce these results and also help to answer a wide range of other bridge questions.
The original idea was simply to improve my own game but pretty soon my bridge friends were asking me to simulate all sorts of scenarios. Then I wrote a letter to English Bridge to suggest that it might be interesting to have some computer analysis of Alan Mould’s prize leads. Alan liked the idea so he’s been getting me to simulate the hands ever since.
Outside bridge my main interests include scuba diving, backgammon and nature photography.