Leveling Up

The year is 1990. A teenage Danny Miles is introduced to bridge by his grandmother, Frances — proving once again that grandmothers are the game’s most effective recruiters.The hobby stuck. Danny went on to win four Canadian Open Championships and one Mixed title, along with representing Canada internationally.In addition to playing, he has dabbled in bridge administration — serving on his local unit board and helping organize the 2024 Toronto NABC — confirming he’s now fully immersed on all sides of the game.For a stretch, career and family limited his tournament schedule, but with semi-retirement and two daughters (9 and 7) getting older, a return to more frequent appearances seems likely. Perhaps, following the Wolperts and De Wijs’s, with kids in tow?He also mentors Canadian juniors, some as young as 12 — doing his part to ensure the next generation has someone to blame when they fall in love with the game.

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.

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!

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.

Frances Hinden started playing bridge seriously at Cambridge University, where she won the Portland Bowl, the Junior Camrose, and gained a silver medal in the first European Universities Championship. Since then she has won many UK events, including multiple Camrose trophies and the Premier League, Gold Cup and Spring Foursomes twice each. She played with Graham Osborne in the Open team for the Mind Sports games in Wroclaw in 2016 and she and Graham are now regulars on the English mixed team. Frances is also vice-chair of the EBU’s regulation committee and a member of the EBU Board. Frances is retiring from full-time employment in April and is looking forward to a more relaxed lifestyle involving travel, eating, drinking and bridge.

Gonzolo Goded started playing on Spain’s junior team in 1996 and joined the open team in 2008. He studied computer science and worked as a programmer before he became a full-time pro. He is currently working on the Bridge Owl system, which uses cameras at clubs and tournaments to create a full and (hopefully) accurate record of the bidding and play. I first met him at the NABC in San Francisco, where he was doing a test of the system in the Soloway.

Kim Frazer was an international rifle shooter who represented Australia at all levels of competition over a 28-year period from 1978 to 2006. She competed at the Olympic Games in Athens as well as 4 World Championships, 4 Commonwealth Games, winning Gold medals on 3 occasions and multiple World Cups. She became interested in the mental side of sport following an introduction to the subject during a training camp in 1985 and she used mental tools extensively during her shooting career.She played cards with the family as a child and first played a few games of bridge at lunchtimes while at university in the late 70’s and really liked the game. After retiring from international shooting, she returned to bridge at a local club in 2005 and applied the same passion and competitiveness to the game that she had brought success with her shooting career. She represented Australia on the women’s team in 2017 in Orlando Florida, and has represented her home state of Victoria on Open, Women’s and Senior teams since 2014.She started writing a series of articles for Australian bridge magazines on Mental Management for bridge in 2014, and these articles became the basis for her book Gaining the Mental Edge at Bridge which won an IBPA award for Book of the Year.Professionally, Kim held management roles in marketing and business development with Kodak & Telstra. Since retiring from corporate life, she has served on committees at her shooting club and the state & national bridge associations. She is currently treasurer of the IBPA.She lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband John and blue heeler Zoe. Outside bridge she still enjoys shooting, and also cooking, reading, and watching TV series & movies.

Gavin Wolpert is a 43-year old Canadian American Pro Bridge player turned online teacher. He grew up in a bridge playing family in Toronto. From age 14 he began traveling the world playing bridge. In 2001, he became a full-time professional bridge player and has never looked back. During the pandemic Gavin began teaching online and has developed a large following of players playing the system taught in his “master series” on wolpertbridge.comGavin currently lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, with his wife Jenny and their 3 children. Two of his kids have turned into bridge players and are part of the USBF Junior Program.Gavin is a World Grand Master and ACBL Grand Life Master with over 27000 Masterpoints.Gavin is a world champion, an 8-time NABC Champion with 7 different partners including the Blue Ribbon Pairs with his then fiancé Jenny, and most recently the 2025 Soloway KO. He believes his success with so many different partners comes down to keeping a simple but modern system and being a good partner.

Jason Feldman is an immigration attorney and accomplished professional bridge player. Raised in a bridge-playing family, he learned the game at ten and went on to win the World Junior Championship (2006), the NABC Open Swiss Teams (2008), and Canada’s CNTC titles in 2023 and 2025, along with numerous additional top-ten finishes. Beyond the table, Jason co-founded BridgeWinners.com, a leading online hub for players, teachers, and fans.He also leads a successful immigration law firm with his mother—expert player Lynne Feldman—helping clients, including many bridge players, pursue their dreams of working and living in the U.S. A longtime San Diegan who later lived in the ski town of Revelstoke, British Columbia, Jason now spends most of his time in Florida. When he isn’t working or playing bridge, he’s with his wife, three kids (ages 6, 9, and 11), and two dogs—or out chasing adventures like surfing, skiing, snowboarding, ice hockey, and disc golf.

Jill Meyers has won 8 world championships: four Venice Cups, one mixed team, one McConnell, and two women’s pairs. She currently ranks 10th on the WBF’s women’s all-time list. She has won 17 NABC+ titles and finished 2nd an additional 23 times. She was inducted into the ACBL Hall of Fame in 2014.Jill only plays bridge part-time, because she has a career in Hollywood: she is the music supervisor on movies and TV shows including The Voice and was formerly Vice President of Music at Tri-Star Pictures.

Geoff Hampson was born and raised in Toronto Canada and emigrated to the USA 31 years ago. He has lived in Las Vegas, Nevada, for the last 18 years. Seen above with his wife Lindsay and their golden retriever, Charlie. Geoff has won 25 NABC+ championships, with an additional 15 second place finishes. He is a World Grand Master, with wins in the Rosenblum in 2010 and 2022. He and longtime partner Eric Greco joined the Nickell team in 2020 and are considered one of the top pairs in the world.

Bill Neumann learned bridge at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, becoming an ACBL Life Master in 1972. After a long break from tournament play, he returned eight years ago and has since posted several NABC+ top-10 finishes in the last two years. A decades-long daily reader of The Bridge World, Bill writes about skill acquisition in bridge; he created the Red–Green framework and a companion flash-card system used for training and as a concise alternative to traditional system notes. He lives in Columbia, MD, and works full-time as a Principal Solution Architect and Systems Engineer at Connection (Microsoft Azure & Microsoft 365). Read his series on Red-Green at billneumann.substack.com.

a