The Setting Trick: Conversations with World Class Bridge Players

In this episode of The Setting Trick, I sit down with Emma Kolesnik, who just won the Mixed Teams at the 2026 World Bridge Series in Katowice, Poland. She partnered her husband Adam Grossack, and their teammates were prior Mixed champions Sabine Auken and Roy Welland. Emma takes me through their quarterfinal win, decided by a single imp, including a seven imp time penalty. The final was a marquee matchup against Adam's brother Zach.
We talk about pressure at the table, paying college students to learn bridge, and how the game turned her younger brother Finn Kolesnik into a close friend. We also get into playing with your spouse, family trips built around the European championships and why her family gave up cooperative games.
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Key Highlights

⏱ One IMP, After a Penalty: Seven minutes over cost seven imps, so a win by eight became a win by one.
🧠 Bridge is Grinding: Adam has helped Emma work hard on every deal.
🎓 Paid to Learn Bridge: With Mitch Dunitz, she paid college friends to come to four lessons.
👫 How Finn Came Around: He refused to play until he learned Emma was being paid to go to the youth NABCs.
🎲 Ticket to Ride: The team name came from a board game, and her family learned cooperative games only start blame games.
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Resources & Next Steps🏆 2026 World Bridge Series results
📸 The Setting Trick on Instagram
🎧 Subscribe to The Setting Trick on Apple Podcasts
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Chapter Timestamps00:00 Cold open
00:52 Welcoming Emma Kolesnik
01:47 A quarterfinal won by one imp
03:39 The seven imp time penalty
05:21 Checking scores on the tablet
07:18 Facing Klukowski and Zmuda
09:03 Pressure, and the grind
10:30 Seven spades doubled
11:44 The last board, two notrump
15:11 Bridesmaids who don't play
15:53 Paying students to learn
19:25 Did she cry? Finn's Soloway
21:32 A final against Zach Grossack
22:45 A comedy of errors
25:09 Rooting in the semifinal
26:56 Six years apart, bridge friends
28:31 Why Finn finally played
30:50 Adam asks Finn's permission
33:20 Playing with your spouse
36:14 Turning down a pro offer
38:23 Tablets, screens, the ACBL
41:56 Roy, Sabine and golf
43:06 Watching the Bermuda Bowl
48:09 Watching family on ViewGraph
49:57 Tromsø and family trips
52:56 How many countries
55:50 Museums on bridge trips
57:22 Why Ticket to Ride
60:56 No more cooperative games
63:10 Nationals with her dad
65:36 A yoga retreat instead
68:16 Boards that stick with you
73:01 The round of 16 ruff
76:06 When she plays next

In this episode of The Setting Trick, I sit down with Alessandro Calmanovici, the founder of Bridge Tricks, a site that became a big part of my own bridge learning. His name rang a bell the first time I found it. He appears in Double Dummy, the film I made at the 2012 World Junior Championships, winning imps on each of the last four boards to scrape into the knockout.
We dig into suit combinations and how a solver changes the way you think, the Survivor streaks that have players like Giovanni Donati obsessed, and the Bidding Architect that turns your own system into flashcards. Alessandro built all of it around a full time job and a new baby. We also get into why he thinks the game needs a better public image.
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Key Highlights

🎬 Finding Himself in Double Dummy: Alessandro watched the film years later, 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.
📐 Commit to the Plan Before They Play: 54% against 51.7% on a disputed combination, and why the plan you settle on first wins.
🤖 Built With AI, Starting From Nothing: His wife mentioned a tool at work. Turned down for help, he wrote the solver himself a year later.
♣️ As Popular as Chess: Juniors are close to extinct in Italy and the Swiss scene is thinner still. He wants to change the game's image.
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Resources & Next Steps

🃏 Bridge Tricks, Alessandro's platform
📝 Bridge Tricks on BridgeWinners
📘 Peak, on deliberate practice
🎯 Cuebids, the bidding practice app
🎧 Subscribe to The Setting Trick on Apple Podcasts
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Chapter Timestamps03:00 Bridge With Ballers and athletes
04:30 Hooking beginners with BridgeMaster
06:00 Pisa, a classmate's first ten hands
07:30 Taicang, the last four boards
12:00 Suit combinations, the feedback loop
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
24:00 Why a solver beats an encyclopaedia
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
37:49 Bridge as popular as chess
39:19 Building the solver after a refusal
43:49 Simon de Wijs, its best advocate
46:49 Flashcards for your bidding system
49:49 Being copied, and AI for small builders
52:49 A bridge class in Zurich
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