Augie Boehm has written for The Bridge World for 25 years and the ACBL Bulletin for 35 years. He has written 10 books, including Bridge Smarts, winner of the 2016 ABTA book-of-the-year award. At 14, he won the first USA Junior Championship in Washington, D.C., 1961, partnered by Hall-of-Famer Michael Becker. Augie is also a concert pianist, classically trained by his grandmother. He majored in music at Columbia and has performed at Carnegie Hall for 45 years. He has composed several art songs and a score for an off-off Broadway play.
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Bart Bramley
Bart Bramley won the first of his 17 NABC+ events in 1980, with a win in the Men’s BAM (as it was known then). He has also had strong results in World Championships, including a win in the Senior Teams in 2007 and second in the Par Contest in 1998. Bart was elected to the ACBL Hall of Fame in 2019.His partners over the years have included Lou Bluhm, Hugh Ross, Sidney Lazard, Lew Stansby, Bob Hamman and Kit Woolsey. Bart has written for The Bridge World magazine for decades; he has been a director of the Master Solvers Club for 20 years and writes tournament reports on major events about once a year.
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Chip Martel
Chip Martel began playing bridge seriously while in high school in Urbana, IL. He was fortunate to be near the University of Illinois campus where they had good campus games and several strong players willing to help him improve.Later, Chip studied computer science — and bridge — at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning a B.S. in 1975. In 1980, he earned a Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley where he met his wife and soulmate, Jan, and great long-time partner, Lew Stansby.In 1981, Chip won his first North American title, the Reisinger Board-a-Match Teams, with Stansby. The following year they won their first world title, the Open Pairs. Since then, he has won five additional open world championships, a world seniors title, and more than 35 North American titles. After playing with Stansby for 35 years, Chip started a new partnership with his old friend Marty Fleisher about 10 years ago with great success.Chip served as captain and coach of the world champion Junior team in 1991 and the world champion Senior team in 2005. He was a long time chair of the ACBL Laws Commission, a member of the World Bridge Federation Laws and System Committees, and was on the drafting committee for the 1997 laws. Additionally, he won the Bols Tip Competition and was named ACBL Honorary Member in 2000.Before he retired in 2013, Martel was a professor of computer science at the University of California at Davis. He helped found the computer science department there and served as one of its first department chairs. In the 1985-86 academic year, he achieved a rare double of winning a world championship and achieving tenure. He continues to work at the college as an emeritus professor.
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Judith Weiner
Judith Weiner graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in math and physics. She had the awesome opportunity to work in the original Friendship Seven space program and the development of the first Airline Reservation System. After several decades hiatus to raise her family, she resumed her interest in serious bridge learning and play.
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Joel Wooldridge
Joel Wooldridge became the ACBL’s youngest life master at age 11; this record has since been shattered and is currently held by Andrew Chen, who made Life Master at 8 years old. Joel was a fixture on the US junior teams, winning the junior world championships three times. He was the King of Bridge—awarded to an outstanding senior in high school—in 1997, which was the year he won his first NABC+ title, the Lebhar IMP Pairs in 1997, playing with Tom Carmichael. Since then, he has won 12 more NABC+ events, most recently the Platinum Pairs in 2024 with Kent Mignocchi. He also won the Platinum Pairs, the most difficult and prestigious pair event in the ACBL, in 2011, playing with John Hurd.
Adam Parrish is exploring how one gets better at bridge and advances to the next level—be that from intermediate to advanced or expert to world class. Adam is an expert player himself—a national champion and a Master Teacher—but he's looking to get to the next level, and devoting the year to figuring out what that takes. Adam will be talking to world-class bridge players about how they got to where they are and what they do to maintain and hone their game. He'll also talk to non-expert bridge players about how they work to get better, and to experts in fields outside of bridge.
Ireland