‘I have a wonderful hand to show you,’ Gunnar Hallberg exclaimed when I saw him last week. Gunnar is a world-class professional, now in his early seventies, whose passion for bridge remains undimmed. Since lockdown, there’s scarcely a high-level online tournament he hasn’t competed in, so naturally I assumed the hand came from one of those. But no: it turned out to be from the site FunBridge, where he spends his free time playing for sheer pleasure with three robots! He’s clearly fascinated by them. ‘The thing is, their bidding is really bad — they rely too much on points and not shape — but their play and defence is so pure. I’ve been studying the way they think…’ He spoke with such boyish enthusiasm that I had visions of bridge-playing aliens invading our galaxy, and Gunnar, with his understanding of their dark powers, brandishing his Lightsaber…
Here is the hand.
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