Bob Hamman is one of the all-time greats. He was elected to the ACBL Hall of Fame in 1999 and was the ACBL’s Player of the Year in 1990, 1993, and 2006. He has won the Bermuda Bowl 10 times, with an additional 6 silver medals. He has also won the World Open Team Olympiad, the World Open Pairs, and the Senior Team Championships. He has 54 NABC wins, including 6 Vanderbilts, 15 Spingolds, and 11 Reisingers. Bob was a member of the famed Dallas Aces and one of the original members of the fabled Nickell team.

Ralph Katz was born in 1957 in Pittsburgh, PA, and raised in Steubenville, OH. He started playing bridge at 16. After completing college, he moved to Chicago to trade options. At 22, he won his first NABC title, the Life Master Pairs, and at 24, he won both the Spingold and the Master Mixed Teams at the Summer NABC. Ralph was the ACBL Player of the Year in 2001 and won the Fishbein Trophy in 1981 and 2001. Some of his many wins include the Bermuda Bowl (2009), the Rosenblum (2002), the Vanderbilt (1999, 2004, 2009, 2014, 2017, 2024), the Spingold (1981, 2001, 2002), and the Reisinger (2000, 2009, 2021). In 2018, Ralph was a first-ballot selection for the ACBL Hall of Fame.

Ralph and his wife, Martha, herself a World Junior Champion, have an adult son, Sam, who was King of Bridge in 2006. Sam and his wife, Jenni, have given Ralph and Martha two adorable future players, Ben and Izzy.

Next to bridge and family, Ralph’s biggest loves are the Pirates and the Steelers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Kaplan is a member of the USA1 Open team that recently won the USBF trials 4-handed and will be representing the US this summer in the Bermuda Bowl. He has won two U26 World Junior Teams Championships, and has numerous additional medals in Juniors. In open events, he won the 2025 Gold Coast Teams, as well as the 2023 Gold Coast Pairs, and the 2024 European Winter Games Final B. He also stars in the documentary Double Dummy (https://doubledummymovie.com/).  
He learned bridge at age 5 and played regularly throughout his teenage years while homeschooled before taking a 5-year hiatus from the game while finishing college at Stanford and starting to work. He returned to the game in Fall 2022, and now plays semi-professionally while maintaining an active career as a trader.

Nabil Edgtton is a member of the Australian national team and regularly attends NABCs. His team was second in last year’s Reisinger. Other impressive finishes include second in the world pairs, second in the world transnationals, and second in the World Bridge Tour final.

Nabil has compiled an amazing document that he calls the Mental Edge. It documents all the research he has done about ways to improve focus and performance. He has been kind enough to share it with all of us. You can access it here.

Marty Fleisher is a world champion and was recently elected to the ACBL Hall of Fame. He was the 2013 ACBL Player of the Year, awarded to the player earning the most platinum masterpoints during the year. He took over 20 years off of bridge at the beginning of his career. Since coming back, he has amassed one of the most impressive records in bridge over the last three decades.