Leveling Up

Marc Smith was a member of the Great Britain team that won the Junior Teams at the European Union Championships in 1985. Marc has won most of England’s national events at some point in the past 40+ years, most recently picking up the Premier Grand Masters Pairs title in 2025.
However, it is as a bridge writer that he best known. Marc is the co-author, along with Barbara Seagram, of the best-selling bridge book since Culbertson, “25 Conventions You Should Know.” He collaborated with David Bird on two award-winning series of books: “Bridge Technique” and “Bridge Cardplay: An Easy Guide.” He has also co-written books with Jeff Meckstroth, Martin Hoffman, Julian Pottage, and Tim Bourke. Marc now has more than 50 titles to his name, including the “World Class” series and the “Enterprising Tales” books (bridge stories set in the “Star Trek” universe). These days, Marc conducts the world’s most popular bidding competition, hosted on the RealBridge website, and he also writes a regular cardplay column in the ACBL Bulletin. Marc also teaches numerous weekly online classes. For more details of both his classes and his books, visit Marc’s website at www.bridge-teacher.com.

Rob Barrington is a professional player, teacher, and one of the more recognizable personalities in the modern bridge world. His online content reaches a global audience where just his YouTube channel has over 6 million views! Based in South Florida Rob continues to teach, create content and travel the world for Bridge.

John Kranyak is a professional bridge player and world champion originally from Cleveland, Ohio, currently living in Tucson, Arizona. He is married to fellow bridge player, Dr. Allison Kranyak. Together they have a baby girl Lyla. In his spare time John enjoys golf, pickleball, running and hiking.
John won his first national event in 2005 playing with his mom, Laurie. He was on the winning team in the 2001, 2005, and 2006 world youth team championships. His team won the 2024 world transnational teams and the 2021 Soloway.

Maya attended her first NABC in 2022, and the next year took 2nd place in GNT Cs, won the 20-50 Mini-McKenney, and started teaching beginners with a novel strategy aimed at youngish working professionals. Since then, she's made Day 2 of a bunch of NABC+ events, captained a team to the Bronze Medal of the inaugural Bridge Brawl, and is just off a first place finish in GNT Bs at the Minneapolis NABC.

Rajath Shourie was introduced to bridge as a child by his family, but didn't really play until he had retired from his career in distressed debt investing. He took up the game during Covid, learning online, and went to his first in-person duplicate at the Austin NABC in late 2021.
Since then he has had a number of successful finishes, including wins in the world transnational teams in Argentina, the Soloway Knockout in San Francisco, and most recently the US Team Trials.
He lives in Pacific Palisades, California, with his wife Moira, and their two sets of twin boys.