The Setting Trick: Conversations with World Class Bridge Players

In this episode of The Setting Trick, I sit down with Alessandro Calmanovici, the founder of Bridge Tricks, a site that quickly became a big part of my bridge learning journey. When I first discovered bridge tricks, Alessandro’s name rang a bell. He was featured in a scene from Double Dummy, the film I made at the 2012 World Junior Championships. Where a much younger Alessandro is recounting winning imps on each of the last four boards to barely qualify for the knockout. 
We dig into suit combinations and why an interactive solver changes how you think, the Survivor streaks that have players like Giovanni Donati obsessed, and the Bidding Architect that turns your own system into flashcards. Alessandro is building all of it around a full time job and a new baby. 
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Key Highlights

🎬 Finding Himself in Double Dummy: Alessandro watched the film years after it came out, recognised the event, and realised the player on screen was him.
🧠 Fifty Suit Combinations in a Row: Giovanni Donati ran a Survivor streak of fifty, and spent an hour on the last one. Alessandro explains the talent behind it.
📐 Commit to the Plan Before They Play: A disputed combination that looks wrong: 54% against 51.7%. Why the plan you settle on first beats what feels right at the table.
🤖 Built With AI, Starting From Nothing: It began when his wife mentioned a tool at work. A year later he had written the solver himself after being turned down for help.
♣️ As Popular as Chess: Juniors are close to extinct in Italy and the Swiss scene is thinner still. Alessandro wants to change the game’s public image.
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Resources & Next Steps

🃏 Bridge Tricks, Alessandro's practice platform
📝 Bridge Tricks on BridgeWinners
📘 Peak, the book on deliberate practice
🎯 Cuebids, the bidding practice app
🎧 Subscribe to The Setting Trick on Apple Podcasts
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Chapter Timestamps

00:00 A clip from Double Dummy
03:00 Bridge With Ballers and athletes
04:30 Hooking beginners with BridgeMaster
09:00 Donati, Percario, Italy's pipeline
13:30 Survivor streaks, fifty in a row
16:30 Reading par in seconds
19:30 Launching the site, built with AI
21:00 Bridge Lab and Bidding Architect
22:30 Daily users, Fred Gitelman's message
25:30 Leonardo Cima says it is wrong
27:19 A possible Cuebids collaboration
31:49 Learning bridge at twelve, Cagliari
34:49 Why the Italian scene shrinks
39:19 Building the solver after a refusal
42:19 What a live platform costs
46:49 Flashcards for your bidding system
54:19 The dinners, not the squeezes
57:19 How Double Dummy got made
61:49 The cup and the daily combination
66:19 Survivor, Rush, where to start
69:19 Paying students, chasing Chess.com

In this episode of The Setting Trick, I sit down with Nabil Edgtton, one of the best bridge players in the world, and AJ Antonios, a professional poker player who learned bridge from scratch then won the 2020 Gold Coast Open Teams three months later. Longtime friends from poker, Nabil and AJ were living together, when Nabil finally convinced AJ to learn bridge. What followed was three hours of study every morning, five days a week. AJ describes a teacher with enormous knowledge and no patience. Nabil describes a student he expected to remember everything first time. When they won their first club game, after about a fortnight, opponents refused to believe AJ had just started!
They both love to razz each other, starting from the story of how they first met. Nabil stacked AJ three times in a small poker game, then told him he was too good for these stakes. AJ explains why he rates bridge among the most skill based games he has played, and why its community beats every other he has been part of. Then there is the golf bet, which began with a claim that Nabil could clear the fence at a driving range and ended with a $220,000 wager, an acupuncture session and a punctured lung. AJ closes on Australian Survivor, where he finished third, and on the one minute that undid seven weeks.
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Key Highlights

🃏 Three Months to a National Title: AJ learned bridge from zero, won the 2020 Gold Coast Open Teams, then stopped playing.
🔑 Teaching From the Student's Side: Nabil is blunt about his own coaching. You have to explain a game from the learner's side, not your own.
🧠 A Flexible Mind Beats One Foundation: AJ credits Magic, poker, Yu Gi Oh and a Lebanese game called Tarneeb for giving each new idea somewhere to sit.
🎰 Stacked Three Times, Then Recruited: Nabil took AJ's money three times at a poker table, then told him he belonged in bigger games.
⛳ The Bet That Went Over the Fence: A claim about clearing a 350 metre fence became a $220,000 bet that Nabil could reach a three handicap.
🏝 Survivor Tests You at Your Worst: AJ finished third after 47 days in Samoa, lost 15 kilos, and stopped eating to kill a rumour.

Resources & Next Steps

🃏 Nabil Edgtton's ABF player profile
🏆 The 2020 Gold Coast Open Teams honour board
📰 Liam Milne's match report on the Gold Coast final
🎙 Episode 26, our earlier Nabil interview
🏝 AJ on Australian Survivor
🃏 Grand Archive, AJ's next worlds
📚 Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
📸 The Setting Trick on Instagram
🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

In this episode of The Setting Trick, I sit down with Nabil Edgtton, one of the best bridge players in the world, and AJ Antonios, a professional poker player who learned bridge from scratch and won the 2020 Gold Coast Open Teams three months later. Nabil talked AJ into moving in together, then announced on day one that they were learning bridge. What followed was three hours of study every morning, five days a week. AJ describes a teacher with enormous knowledge and no patience. Nabil describes a student he expected to remember everything first time. Within a fortnight, opponents at his club refused to believe AJ had been playing for weeks.
We also get into how they met at a poker table, where Nabil stacked AJ three times, then told him he was too good for his stakes. AJ explains why he rates bridge among the most skill based games he has played, and why its community beats every other he has been part of. Then there is the golf bet, which began with a claim that Nabil could clear the fence at a driving range and ended with a $220,000 wager, an acupuncture session and a punctured lung. AJ closes on Australian Survivor, where he finished third, and on the one minute that undid seven weeks.
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Key Highlights

🃏 Three Months to a National Title: AJ learned bridge from zero, won the 2020 Gold Coast Open Teams, then stopped playing.
🔑 Teaching From the Student's Side: Nabil is blunt about his own coaching. You have to explain a game from the learner's side, not your own.
🧠 A Flexible Mind Beats One Foundation: AJ credits Magic, poker, Yu Gi Oh and a Lebanese game called tanib for giving each new idea somewhere to sit.
🎰 Stacked Three Times, Then Recruited: Nabil took AJ's money three times at a poker table, then told him he belonged in bigger games.
⛳ The Bet That Went Over the Fence: A claim about clearing a 350 metre fence became a $220,000 bet that Nabil could reach a three handicap.
🏝 Survivor Tests You at Your Worst: AJ finished third after 47 days in Samoa, lost 15 kilos, and stopped eating to kill a rumour.
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Resources & Next Steps

🃏 Nabil Edgtton's ABF player profile
🏆 The 2020 Gold Coast Open Teams honour board
🎙 Episode 26, our earlier Nabil interview
🏝 AJ on Australian Survivor
🃏 Grand Archive, AJ's next worlds
📚 Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
📸 The Setting Trick on Instagram
🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

In this episode of The Setting Trick, I sit down with Tim Verbeek, professional bridge player and Chairman of the Dutch Athletes Committee, for a wide-ranging conversation about competitive bridge in the Netherlands and beyond. We open by reminiscing about a dinner in Lyon at the 2017 Transnational World Championships, where he helped pull me out of my post-elimination funk. From there we get into the remarkable depth of Dutch bridge talent, and the origin story of Tim's partnership with Danny Molenaar, which started when they were 12 and 13 years old and has now spanned 28 years.

We also dig into one of the most uncomfortable topics in competitive bridge: cheating. Tim walks through real cases, from the Lotan Fisher scandal to an online incident during COVID to a player at the Dutch Bridge Federation who duplicated a key to access hand records. He explains how he developed an eye for suspicious patterns, and why the standard of evidence required to convict in bridge is so much higher than for doping in other sports. We close on the emotional toll of losing, raising a four-year-old daughter while traveling the circuit, and the surprising lack of a definitive beginner's guide to the game.

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Key Highlights

🇳🇱 The Golden Era of Dutch Bridge: Why the Netherlands keeps producing world-class pairs every five to ten years, and Tim's bet that the Dutch will be world champions again within the decade.
🏆 From Fill-ins to Full-Time Teammates: How Tim and Danny Molenaar went from last-minute fill-ins at a US National to permanent members of Patty Cayne's team, thanks to an Israeli pair's bad manners.
🔍 Catching Cheaters in the Bridge World: From Fisher and Schwartz to an online player who sent strategy messages to the wrong group chat, how Tim developed his instinct for spotting cheating.
⚖️ Bridge vs. Doping: Athletes get banned for trace substances, while bridge players suspected of cheating often walk free because federations demand an impossibly high standard of proof.
💔 The Emotional Weight of Losing: My tearful near-miss at the Lyon Transnationals, Tim's moment of self-doubt in Belgium, and how even top professionals lose far more often than they win.
👶 Life as a Bridge Pro and a Father: Two-week tournaments away from his four-year-old daughter Rosa, and coming home to find that "everything in our life is done by Mommy."
📚 The Missing Beginner's Guide to Bridge: Berry Westra's untranslated book, apps like Tricky Bridge, and why the game still lacks a simple learning path for new players.
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Resources & Next Steps

🎴 Learn more about the Dutch Bridge Federation (Nederlandse Bridge Bond)
📱 Try Tricky Bridge, the bridge learning app by Scott Hoffer
📖 The Complete Idiot's Guide to Bridge, recommended for beginners
🏅 Follow the Dutch Athletes Committee and their Olympic qualification work
🎧 Subscribe to The Setting Trick on Apple Podcasts

In this episode, I sit down with Luc Bellicaud - a three-time Junior World Champion from France and the developer of Lia, the AI bridge robot at IntoBridge.

Why is Luc the first French bridge player I’ve interviewed? Because last month, IntoBridge, launched a powerful new AI coaching tool, named after him. Coach Luc is designed to help beginner and intermediate players spot their bidding mistakes(!) in real time. And I wanted the scoop!

Luc started building Lia as an intern, describing himself as "quite clueless." Through time he has created an excellent partner and opponent. We discuss how he built her from the ground up and how he fixes her mistakes.

Having the coach named after you comes with pressure! Luc shares the controversy over Lia's full-deal access and why LLMs are still no match for hand-coded bridge logic.

Luc dates a bridge player who represents France internationally - and amusingly, she works for rival company Funbridge! Together they run a free weekly beginners club in Lille, fuelled by…FREE PIZZA!

Away from the table, Luc runs France's biggest YouTube bridge channel. He also refuses to fly unless he must in order to represent his country.

10:20 PM
Key Highlights:
🤖 Building Lia from Scratch: Starting with zero experience, Luc built Lia into a top bridge robot opponent and partner.
🎓 Coach Luc Goes Live: A brand-new AI feature giving real-time bidding feedback, now in beta.
🃏 Full Deal Access: Lia sees the full deal during card play - not to cheat, but for speed and better user experience.
🎥 YouTube & Bidding Systems: Luc runs France's biggest bridge YouTube channel and invented his own bidding system as a joke.

Resources and Next Steps:
🤖 Try Coach Luc on IntoBridge - Play a game and see if Coach Luc has any notes on your bidding.
▶️ Watch Luc's French Bridge YouTube Channel for weekly bridge content and lessons.
🎬 Watch the documentary Double Dummy featuring the USA junior team - with some familiar faces from Luc's opponents.
🎧 More Stories Like This - Subscribe to The Setting Trick wherever you listen to podcasts for more deep dives into the world of bridge.
📱 Follow @thesettingtrick - Stay connected on Instagram for episode drops, tournament pics, and more.

YouTube Chapter Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction – Luc Bellicaud
1:53 Coach Luc: The AI Bidding Coach on IntoBridge
7:06 Learning Bridge: Beginners, Teachers & The Lille Club
14:07 Bridge Companies, FunBridge Fallout & AI Controversy
23:21 Building Lia: Coding, Bidding Logic & Design Choices
36:06 The Story Behind Lia’s Name
39:22 Bridge Life: Travel, Tournaments & Playing with His Girlfriend
49:47 Bridge Systems, Partners & Competitive Play
58:39 The Bermuda Bowl Final in Lyon
1:04:04 Double Dummy Documentary & Youth Championships
1:13:00 Luc’s YouTube Channel & Closing