Leveling Up

Bill Bailey has an unusual bridge history. He discovered bridge in book form in his early 20s. He’d heard it was the “chess of card games” and so decided to buy an Intro to Bridge book. This started a 30-year habit of reading bridge books while nary touching a card. He was fascinated by declarer play problems in particular. His 3rd book was Bridge With the Blue Team. Then he started reading all of Kelsey’s works.
He spent 30 years in Silicon Valley as a software engineer, did well, and was able to retire in his early 50s from the intense high-tech rat race. Finally he was able to devote time to actually playing bridge. All the books provided a foundation but playing at the table is an entirely different experience. He recalls it was hard for him to track opponents’ cards at first, as that is something one obviously doesn’t have to do when reading books.
Over time he experimented working with various pros and now fields a top-tier team. He won his first National title in the Jacoby Swiss in St. Louis. Somewhat hilariously, his life partner Arti Bhargava also won a National title in St. Louis on the same day in a different event. He hopes to do well with his team at the transnationals in Poland this August.
And one last side-bar: in the middle of that 30 year career in high-tech, he took a couple years off and wrote Deep Finesse in the late 1990s. Deep Finesse is software that does perfect double-dummy analysis of bridge hands. Eventually he worked with the ACBL to incorporate the Deep Finesse analysis engine inside their hand record generator to include the double-dummy results that are now ubiquitously part of any hand record.

Owen Lien grew up in Hickory, NC, and now live in Oak Park, MI. He started playing bridge at 9 and now has over 20,000 masterpoints. He was a member of the US Junior Bridge Team from 2006 - 2014, winning the World Junior Championship in 2013. He worked in Real Estate Appraising from 2011 - 2015; now he works as a full-time bridge pro.

Kai Eckert learned Bridge in July 2018 after his grandmother refused to teach him. He learned on vacation to surprise her, and then Bridge turned into being a little bit a lot. He could never seem to get enough Bridge in his life, so he found clubs, tournaments, SIVY, Twitch (V8mama’s livestream) and the USBF Jr. Training program. During this time, he also is working on an online business administration degree but, that doesn’t really matter, his primary major is Bridge. He hasn’t had any outstanding playing achievements yet, but he is immersed in many aspects of Bridge. He is a teacher in the San Francisco Area, an ACBL Associate Tournament Director, and an online content creator. He made the Bridgin’ With Kai YouTube channel and you might have seen him all over, on the ACBL YouTube Channel, BBO YouTube Channel, on the Funbridge webpages, as a celebrity daily challenger on IntoBridge, or collaborating with many other Bridge content creators. His main goal in life is to help spread Bridge and facilitate the growth of a fun and enthusiastic player base the likes of which the Bridge hasn’t yet imagined!
Please don’t forget to go give his work some support but subscribing to Bridgin’ With Kai (IT’S FREE) and check out a few videos! His enthusiasm for Bridge is infectious!

David Gold started as a top junior chess player before her learned bridge at school around age 16. David has been a fixture on England’s open team since 2004, winning a silver medal in the World Bridge Games in 2008. He won bronze medals in world championships in 2017 and 2022. In the US, he won the Vanderbilt in 2023 and the Mitchell BAM in 2017.
David has won many events in the UK, including victory in the Gold Cup five times, Premier League nine times, and Spring Foursomes three times. He was the winner of the inaugural Player of the Year Championship for the 2014/15 season.

Josh Donn (or Jdonn, as he is commonly known in the world of bridge) is a professional bridge player, teacher, and writer. He was a member of the winning US junior team at the World Junior Team Championships in 2006. He won the Jacoby Open Swiss Teams recently in St. Louis, the Blue Ribbon Pairs in 2011, and the Roth Open Swiss Teams three times, in 2008, 2016, and 2019.
Josh first learned bridge in 1996, playing exclusively with his parents and grandparents for the first several years. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 2004 with a double major in mathematics and economics and a minor in actuarial studies. He moved to Los Angeles for two years and worked as an actuary, before finally settling in Las Vegas in 2006. He worked as a supervisor and manager in the Casino Accounting departments of several major casinos for the next eight years, jumping from the Bellagio to the MGM Grand to the Cosmopolitan. He resigned to become a full-time bridge player at the end of 2014. He also worked for BBO for the next four years, helping improve GIB and do cheating investigations.
Along with playing and teaching private lessons, Josh has co-written a book, written numerous columns, taught seminars, volunteered on several committees, and regularly gives free lectures at regionals.