If you’ve ever played with a robot on BBO, you’ve already seen Lorand’s work in action. He is one of the minds behind GIBBO, the engine that powers your virtual partner at the table.
We asked him a few questions about his story, his work with bridge AI, and the person behind the robot.
Who is Lorand Dali away from the code?
I am originally from Romania, and now I live in a small town in the south of Germany with my wife and three children. Each of them plays a little bridge, and we occasionally play together at home. That’s also how I started playing bridge myself, at home with family and friends (and with computers when we were fewer than four players).
On a typical day, I code or debug something. It could be a robot, or something else.
In my free time, I like to spend time with my family and play bridge online. I don’t have many other hobbies, nothing unusual at least, just going for walks, watching YouTube, reading, and so on.
You've been working on BBO for years now. What keeps you interested?
There were two periods when I played a lot with computers.
The first was in the early 90s, when I was a child. I grew up in a small town with few bridge players. We used to play with my father on a program called Cybron almost every day, because it was hard to find four people to play.
The second was in the last 10–15 years, when I didn’t have time to play face-to-face bridge or participate in tournaments. I played a lot of robot bridge on BBO and Funbridge.
Since my job was in machine learning, it was almost inevitable that I would start tinkering with bridge AI at some point.
What's something about you that would surprise BBO players?
I’m not sure. Maybe that my preferred form of bridge is robot bridge. Also, I tend to think of bridge more like yoga or martial arts. It’s less about defeating opponents and more about trying to execute my moves perfectly.
Another thing that people may find controversial or surprising is that I don’t think bidding is as important for success, it’s all about the card play.
If you could leave one message for the BBO community, what would it be?
Thank you for playing bridge on BBO, and thank you for your patience and understanding when the robots do something you didn't expect.
Do you have any interesting stories to share?
I remember that when I was a child, we were playing bridge at home. There was no internet or online bridge yet. One day, someone I know heard that there was a bridge game in the neighborhood, but he didn’t know where it was. So he started going from house to house, looking through windows to see what people were doing, until he found the house where bridge was being played.
To this day, he still plays bridge, and a lot on BBO. It’s a much more convenient way to find a game 🙂
Hope you enjoyed getting to know more about Lorand. We also asked him a few questions about GIBBO. If you’re curious to learn how the robot works and what’s changed, you can read more here.
Who would you like to hear from next in our People Behind BBO series? Let us know in the comments.