I started playing bridge at the age of 10 in 1968 with family. I played locally at bridge clubs from about 1981, and to quite a good level. I accumulated quite a few Masters Points between 1983 and 1987. However,I gave up playing in local bridge clubs in 1988.
I was disillusioned with the way the game was taught in the UK. The in house rules that were administered by the clubs from the EBU for low level events for any player, but particularly juniors and novices was not helpful. The EBU have wrongly believed that we should be using the inferior and flawed house bidding system that Acol is, at local club level events. I also walked away from over the board contests against human opponents before 1990, because of opponents behaviour at the table. I now enjoy playing against bridge robots, or competing with other human bridge players on Online bridge sites like Bridgez Bridgez.net http://bridgez.net:3002/ or SharkBridge https://www.thesharkbridgecompany.com/ . Playing with a robot partner like WBridge 5.12 or Shark 1.8, I normally score about 50% at these Butler or Cross IMP type events.

I prefer using American Bidding Systems with a correct point count, and correct Jump Shift structure, with regards to combined point count. Acol is mathematically flawed with regards to jump shift bidding and combined point count which does not reach game like it does in East Coast style Standard American and SAYC. So I use bidding systems like Standard American (East Coast Style), and Goren. I have also got interested in a few of the European bidding systems more recently, like Cinquieme Majeure (SEF) French Standard, and Biedemeier Blue, a Dutch Standard 4 Card system. I use a four card major systems with bridge robots because of Walsh Convention, and the bots sometimes bidding a 4 card major suit in a 5 card major system anyway. This is not the robot's fault, but most bridge robots using systems like SAYC have sadly been programmed with Walsh convention as standard. This allows your robot partner to bid a 4 card Major suit after you have bid 1 a variable minor type opening bid showing a 3 or 4 card suit in the absence of a 5 card major suit. So i use Cinquieme Majeure (SEF), which is a 5 card major system that doesn't have this issue within WBridge 5.12. So I use two 4 card major systems with bridge robots being Goren, and Biedemeier Blue a lot the time with bots.

I bought quite a few of the commercial bridge robots from 2002 onwards. I always liked to see how they compared, and started stand alone contests between them 5 years ago. I also wanted to find out how they worked at the official World Computer Bridge Championships. I discovered that 2 Table Managers were used, and were still available to make the robots work without to much human intervention. Because I have run tournaments for the last 5 years, I was asked to publish by people I have come into contact with during this journey.