title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Lichtenstein's works based on enlarged panels from comic books engendered a widespread debate about their merits as art. Lichtenstein himself admitted, "I am nominally copying, but I am really restating the copied thing in other terms. In doing that, the original acquires a totally different texture. It isn't thick or thin brushstrokes, it's dots and flat colours and unyielding lines." Eddie Campbell blogged that "Lichtenstein took a tiny picture, smaller than the palm of the hand, printed in four color inks on newsprint and blew it up to the conventional size at which 'art' is made and exhibited and finished it in paint on canvas." With regard to Lichtenstein, Bill Griffith once said, "There's high art and there's low art. And then there's high art that can take low art, bring it into a high art context, appropriate it and elevate it into something else."


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Although Lichtenstein's comic-based work gained some acceptance, concerns are still expressed by critics who say Lichtenstein did not credit, pay any royalties to, or seek permission from the original artists or copyright holders. In an interview for a BBC Four documentary in 2013, Alastair Sooke asked the comic book artist Dave Gibbons if he considered Lichtenstein a plagiarist. Gibbons replied: "I would say 'copycat'. In music for instance, you can't just whistle somebody else's tune or perform somebody else's tune, no matter how badly, without somehow crediting and giving payment to the original artist. That's to say, this is 'WHAAM! by Roy Lichtenstein, after Irv Novick'." Sooke himself maintains that "Lichtenstein transformed Novick's artwork in a number of subtle but crucial ways."


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Journal founder, City University London lecturer and University College London PhD, Ernesto Priego notes that Lichtenstein's failure to credit the original creators of his comic works was a reflection on the decision by National Periodical Publications, the predecessor of DC Comics, to omit any credit for their writers and artists:


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Furthermore, Campbell notes that there was a time when comic artists often declined attribution for their work.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In an account published in 1998, Novick said that he had met Lichtenstein in the army in 1947 and, as his superior officer, had responded to Lichtenstein's tearful complaints about the menial tasks he was assigned by recommending him for a better job. Jean-Paul Gabilliet has questioned this account, saying that Lichtenstein had left the army a year before the time Novick says the incident took place. Bart Beaty, noting that Lichtenstein had appropriated Novick for works such as "Whaam!" and "Okay Hot-Shot, Okay!", says that Novick's story "seems to be an attempt to personally diminish" the more famous artist.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In 1966, Lichtenstein moved on from his much-celebrated imagery of the early 1960s, and began his "Modern Paintings" series, including over 60 paintings and accompanying drawings. Using his characteristic Ben-Day dots and geometric shapes and lines, he rendered incongruous, challenging images out of familiar architectural structures, patterns borrowed from Art Déco and other subtly evocative, often sequential, motifs. The "Modern Sculpture" series of 1967–8 made reference to motifs from Art Déco architecture.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In the early 1960s, Lichtenstein reproduced masterpieces by Cézanne, Mondrian and Picasso before embarking on the "Brushstrokes" series in 1965. Lichtenstein continued to revisit this theme later in his career with works such as "Bedroom at Arles" that derived from Vincent van Gogh's "Bedroom in Arles".


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In 1970, Lichtenstein was commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (within its Art and Technology program developed between 1967 and 1971) to make a film. With the help of Universal Film Studios, the artist conceived of, and produced, "Three Landscapes", a film of marine landscapes, directly related to a series of collages with landscape themes he created between 1964 and 1966. Although Lichtenstein had planned on producing 15 short films, the three-screen installation – made with New York-based independent filmmaker Joel Freedman – turned out to be the artist's only venture into the medium.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Also in 1970, Lichtenstein purchased a former carriage house in Southampton, Long Island, built a studio on the property, and spent the rest of the 1970s in relative seclusion. In the 1970s and 1980s, his style began to loosen and he expanded on what he had done before. Lichtenstein began a series of "Mirrors" paintings in 1969. By 1970, while continuing on the "Mirrors" series, he started work on the subject of entablatures. The "Entablatures" consisted of a first series of paintings from 1971 to 1972, followed by a second series in 1974–76, and the publication of a series of relief prints in 1976. He produced a series of "Artists Studios" which incorporated elements of his previous work. A notable example being "Artist's Studio, Look Mickey" (1973, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis) which incorporates five other previous works, fitted into the scene.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: During a trip to Los Angeles in 1978, Lichtenstein was fascinated by lawyer Robert Rifkind's collection of German Expressionist prints and illustrated books. He began to produce works that borrowed stylistic elements found in Expressionist paintings. "The White Tree" (1980) evokes lyric Der Blaue Reiter landscapes, while "Dr. Waldmann" (1980) recalls Otto Dix's "Dr. Mayer-Hermann" (1926). Small colored-pencil drawings were used as templates for woodcuts, a medium favored by Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein, as well as Dix and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Also in the late 1970s, Lichtenstein's style was replaced with more surreal works such as "Pow Wow" (1979, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen). A major series of Surrealist-Pop paintings from 1979 to 1981 is based on Native American themes. These works range from "Amerind Figure" (1981), a stylized life-size sculpture reminiscent of a streamlined totem pole in black-patinated bronze, to the monumental wool tapestry "Amerind Landscape" (1979). The "Indian" works took their themes, like the other parts of the Surrealist series, from contemporary art and other sources, including books on American Indian design from Lichtenstein's small library.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Lichtenstein's "Still Life" paintings, sculptures and drawings, which span from 1972 through the early 1980s, cover a variety of motifs and themes, including the most traditional such as fruit, flowers, and vases. In 1983 Lichtenstein made two anti-apartheid posters, simply titled "Against Apartheid". In his "Reflection" series, produced between 1988 and 1990, Lichtenstein reused his own motifs from previous works. "Interiors" (1991–1992) is a series of works depicting banal domestic environments inspired by furniture ads the artist found in telephone books or on billboards. Having garnered inspiration from the monochromatic prints of Edgar Degas featured in a 1994 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the motifs of his "Landscapes in the Chinese Style" series are formed with simulated Benday dots and block contours, rendered in hard, vivid color, with all traces of the hand removed. The nude is a recurring element in Lichtenstein's work of the 1990s, such as in "Collage for Nude with Red Shirt" (1995).


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In addition to paintings and sculptures, Lichtenstein also made over 300 prints, mostly in screenprinting.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In 1969, Lichtenstein was commissioned by Gunter Sachs to create "Composition" and "Leda and the Swan", for the collector's Pop Art bedroom suite at the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz. In the late 1970s and during the 1980s, Lichtenstein received major commissions for works in public places: the sculptures "Lamp" (1978) in St. Mary's, Georgia; "Mermaid" (1979) in Miami Beach; the 26 feet tall "Brushstrokes in Flight" (1984, moved in 1998) at John Glenn Columbus International Airport; the five-storey high "Mural with Blue Brushstroke" (1984–85) at the Equitable Center, New York; and "El Cap de Barcelona" (1992) in Barcelona. In 1994, Lichtenstein created the 53-foot-long, enamel-on-metal "Times Square Mural" in Times Square subway station. In 1977, he was commissioned by BMW to paint a Group 5 Racing Version of the BMW 320i for the third installment in the BMW Art Car Project. The DreamWorks Records logo was his last completed project. "I'm not in the business of doing anything like that (a corporate logo) and don't intend to do it again," allows Lichtenstein. "But I know Mo Ostin and David Geffen and it seemed interesting."


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Lichtenstein received numerous Honorary Doctorate degrees from, among others, the George Washington University (1996), Bard College, Royal College of Art (1993), Ohio State University (1987), Southampton College (1980), and the California Institute of the Arts (1977). He also served on the board of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In 2023, 5 of Lichtenstein's paintings will be featured on USPS Forever stamps: "Standing Explosion (Red)", "Modern Painting I", "Still Life with Crystal Bowl", "Still Life with Goldfish", and "Portrait of a Woman". Derry Noyes served as the stamp series' art director and designer.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In 1949, Lichtenstein married Isabel Wilson, who previously had been married to Ohio artist Michael Sarisky. However, the brutal upstate winters took a toll on Lichtenstein and his wife, after he began teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego in 1958. The couple sold the family home in Highland Park, New Jersey, in 1963 and divorced in 1965.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Lichtenstein married his second wife, Dorothy Herzka, in 1968. In the late 1960s, they rented a house in Southampton, New York that Larry Rivers had bought around the corner from his own house. Three years later, they bought a 1910 carriage house facing the ocean on Gin Lane. From 1970 until his death, Lichtenstein split his time between Manhattan and Southampton. He also had a home on Captiva Island.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In 1991, Lichtenstein began an affair with singer Erica Wexler who became the muse for his Nudes series including the 1994 “Nudes with Beach Ball.” She was 22 and he was 68. The affair lasted until 1994 and was over when Wexler went to England with future husband Andy Partridge of XTC. According to Wexler, Lichtenstein and his wife Dorothy had an understanding and they both had significant others in addition to their marriage.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Lichtenstein died of pneumonia on September 29, 1997 at New York University Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized for several weeks, four weeks before his 74th birthday. He was survived by his second wife, Dorothy Herzka, and by his sons, David and Mitchell, from his first marriage.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Pop art continues to influence the 21st century. "Pop Art from the Collection" features a wide range selection of screenprints by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as an assortment of Warhol’s Polaroid photographs known as the leading figures of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Warhol and Lichtenstein are celebrated for exploring the relationship between fine art, advertising, and consumerism.Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol were both used in U2's 1997, 1998 PopMart Tour and in an exhibition in 2007 at the British National Portrait Gallery.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Among many other works of art lost in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, a painting from Lichtenstein's "The Entablature Series" was destroyed in the subsequent fire.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In 1964, Lichtenstein became the first American to exhibit at the Tate Gallery, London, on the occasion of the show "'54–'64: Painting and Sculpture of a Decade." In 1967, his first museum retrospective exhibition was held at the Pasadena Art Museum in California. The same year, his first solo exhibition in Europe was held at museums in Amsterdam, London, Bern and Hannover. Lichtenstein later participated in documentas IV (1968) and VI in (1977). Lichtenstein had his first retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 1969, organized by Diane Waldman. The Guggenheim presented a second Lichtenstein retrospective in 1994. Lichtenstein became the first living artist to have a solo drawing exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art from March – June 1987. Recent retrospective surveys include the 2003 "All About Art," Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, in Denmark (which traveled on to the Hayward Gallery, London, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, until 2005); and "Classic of the New", Kunsthaus Bregenz (2005), "Roy Lichtenstein: Meditations on Art" Museo Triennale, Milan (2010, traveled to the Museum Ludwig, Cologne). In late 2010 The Morgan Library & Museum showed "Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961–1968". Another major retrospective opened at the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2012 before going to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Tate Modern in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2013. 2013:Roy Lichtenstein, Olyvia Fine Art. 2014: Roy Lichtenstein: Intimate Sculptures, The FLAG Art Foundation. Roy Lichtenstein: Opera Prima, Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Arts, Turin. 2018: Exhibition at The Tate Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In 1996 the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. became the largest single repository of the artist's work when Lichtenstein donated 154 prints and 2 books. The Art Institute of Chicago has several important works by Lichtenstein in its permanent collection, including "Brushstroke with Spatter" (1966) and "Mirror No. 3 (Six Panels)" (1971). The personal holdings of Lichtenstein's widow, Dorothy Lichtenstein, and of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation number in the hundreds. In Europe, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne has one of the most comprehensive Lichtenstein holdings with "Takka Takka" (1962), "Nurse" (1964), "Compositions I" (1964), besides the Frankfurt Museum für Moderne Kunst with "We rose up slowly" (1964) and "Yellow and Green Brushstrokes" (1966). Outside the United States and Europe, the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler Collection has extensive holdings of Lichtenstein's prints, numbering over 300 works. In total there are some 4,500 works thought to be in circulation.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: After the artist's death in 1997, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation was established in 1999. In 2011, the foundation's board decided the benefits of authenticating were outweighed by the risks of protracted lawsuits.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In late 2006, the foundation sent out a holiday card featuring a picture of "Electric Cord" (1961), a painting that had been missing since 1970 after being sent out to art restorer Daniel Goldreyer by the Leo Castelli Gallery. The card urged the public to report any information about its whereabouts. In 2012, the foundation authenticated the piece when it surfaced at a New York City warehouse.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Between 2008 and 2012, following the death of photographer Harry Shunk in 2006, the Lichtenstein Foundation acquired the collection of photographic material shot by Shunk and his János Kender as well as the photographers' copyright. In 2013, the foundation donated the Shunk-Kender trove to five institutions – Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the National Gallery of Art in Washington; the Centre Pompidou in Paris; and the Tate in London – that will allow each museum access to the others' share.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Since the 1950s Lichtenstein's work has been exhibited in New York and elsewhere with Leo Castelli at his gallery and at Castelli Graphics as well as with Ileana Sonnabend in her gallery in Paris, and at the Ferus Gallery, Pace Gallery, Gagosian Gallery, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Mary Boone, Brooke Alexander Gallery, Carlebach, Rosa Esman, Marilyn Pearl, James Goodman, John Heller, Blum Helman, Hirschl & Adler, Phyllis Kind, Getler Pall, Condon Riley, 65 Thompson Street, Holly Solomon, and Sperone Westwater Galleries among others. Leo Castelli Gallery represented Lichtenstein exclusively since 1962, when a solo show by the artist sold out before it opened.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Beginning in 1962, the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, held regular exhibitions of the artist's work. Gagosian Gallery has been exhibiting work by Lichtenstein since 1996.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: "Big Painting No. 6" (1965) became the highest priced Lichtenstein work in 1970. Like the entire Brushstrokes series, the subject of the painting is the process of Abstract Expressionist painting via sweeping brushstrokes and drips, but the result of Lichtenstein's simplification that uses a Ben-Day dots background is a representation of the mechanical/industrial color printing reproduction.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Lichtenstein's painting "Torpedo ... Los!" (1963) sold at Christie's for $5.5 million in 1989, a record sum at the time, making him one of only three living artists to have attracted such huge sums. In 2005, "In the Car" was sold for a then record $16.2m (£10m).


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In 2010, his cartoon-style 1964 painting "Ohhh...Alright...", previously owned by Steve Martin and later by Steve Wynn, was sold at a record US$42.6m (£26.7m) at a sale at Christie's in New York.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: Based on a 1961 William Overgard drawing for a "Steve Roper" cartoon story, Lichtenstein's "I Can See the Whole Room...and There's Nobody in It!" (1961) depicts a man looking through a hole in a door. It was sold by collector Courtney Sale Ross for $43 million, double its estimate, at Christie's in New York City in 2011; the seller's husband, Steve Ross had acquired it at auction in 1988 for $2.1 million. The painting measures four-foot by four-foot and is in graphite and oil.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: The comic painting "Sleeping Girl" (1964) from the collection of Beatrice and Phillip Gersh established a new Lichtenstein record $44.8 million at Sotheby's in 2012.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In October 2012, his painting "Electric Cord" (1962) was returned to Leo Castelli's widow Barbara Bertozzi Castelli, after having been missing for 42 years. Castelli had sent the painting to an art restorer for cleaning in January 1970, and never got it back. He died in 1999. In 2006, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation published an image of the painting on its holiday greeting card and asked the art community to help find it. The painting was found in a New York warehouse, after having been displayed in Bogota, Colombia.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In 2013, the painting "Woman with Flowered Hat" set another record at $56.1 million as it was purchased by British jeweller Laurence Graff from American investor Ronald O. Perelman.


title: Roy Lichtenstein

text: In January 2017, "Masterpiece" was sold for $165 million. The proceeds of this sale will be used to create a fund for criminal justice reform.


title: Contract bridge

text: Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table. Millions of people play bridge worldwide in clubs, tournaments, online and with friends at home, making it one of the world's most popular card games, particularly among seniors. The World Bridge Federation (WBF) is the governing body for international competitive bridge, with numerous other bodies governing it at the regional level.


title: Contract bridge

text: The game consists of a number of , each progressing through four phases. The cards are dealt to the players; then the players "call" (or "bid") in an auction seeking to take the , specifying how many tricks the partnership receiving the contract (the declaring side) needs to take to receive points for the deal. During the auction, partners use their bids to also exchange information about their hands, including overall strength and distribution of the suits; no other means of conveying or implying any information is permitted. The cards are then played, the trying to fulfill the contract, and the trying to stop the declaring side from achieving its goal. The deal is scored based on the number of tricks taken, the contract, and various other factors which depend to some extent on the variation of the game being played.


title: Contract bridge

text: Rubber bridge is the most popular variation for casual play, but most club and tournament play involves some variant of duplicate bridge, where the cards are not re-dealt on each occasion, but the same deal is played by two or more sets of players (or "tables") to enable comparative scoring.


title: Contract bridge

text: Bridge is a member of the family of trick-taking games and is a derivative of whist, which had become the dominant such game and enjoyed a loyal following for centuries. The idea of a trick-taking 52-card game has its first documented origins in Italy and France. The French physician and author Rabelais (1493–1553) mentions a game called "La Triomphe" in one of his works. Also Juan Luis Vives, in his "Linguae latinae exercitio" (Exercise in the Latin language) of 1539 has a dialogue on card games, where the characters play ‘Triumphus hispanicus’ (Spanish Triumph).


title: Contract bridge

text: Bridge departed from whist with the creation of "Biritch" in the 19th century and evolved through the late 19th and early 20th centuries to form the present game. The first rule book for bridge, dated 1886, is "" written by John Collinson, an English financier working in Ottoman Constantinople. It and his subsequent letter to "The Saturday Review" dated 28 May 1906, document the origin of "Biritch" as being the Russian community in Constantinople. The word "biritch" is thought to be a transliteration of the Russian word Бирюч (бирчий, бирич), an occupation of a diplomatic clerk or an announcer. Another theory is that British soldiers invented the game bridge while serving in the Crimean War, and named it after the Galata Bridge, which they crossed on their way to a coffeehouse to play cards.


title: Contract bridge

text: Biritch had many significant bridge-like developments: dealer chose the trump suit, or nominated his partner to do so; there was a call of no trumps ("biritch"); dealer's partner's hand became dummy; points were scored above and below the line; game was 3NT, 4 and 5 (although 8 club odd tricks and 15 spade odd tricks were needed); the score could be doubled and redoubled; and there were slam bonuses. It has some features in common with solo whist. This game, and variants of it known as "bridge" and "bridge whist", became popular in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1890s despite the long-established dominance of whist. Its breakthrough was its acceptance in 1894 by Lord Brougham at London's Portland Club.


title: Contract bridge

text: In 1904 auction bridge was developed, in which the players bid in a competitive auction to decide the contract and declarer. The object became to make at least as many tricks as were contracted for, and penalties were introduced for failing to do so. Auction bridge bidding beyond winning the auction is pointless. If taking all 13 tricks, there is no difference in score between a 1 and a 7 final bid, as the bonus for rubber, small slam or grand slam depends on the number of tricks taken rather than the number of tricks bid.


title: Contract bridge

text: The modern game of contract bridge was the result of innovations to the scoring of auction bridge by Harold Stirling Vanderbilt and others. The most significant change was that only the tricks contracted for were scored below the line toward game or a slam bonus, a change that resulted in bidding becoming much more challenging and interesting. Also new was the concept of "vulnerability", making sacrifices to protect the lead in a rubber more expensive. The various scores were adjusted to produce a more balanced and interesting game. Vanderbilt set out his rules in 1925, and within a few years contract bridge had so supplanted other forms of the game that "bridge" became synonymous with "contract bridge".


title: Contract bridge

text: The form of bridge mostly played in clubs, tournaments and online is duplicate bridge. The number of people playing contract bridge has declined since its peak in the 1940s, when a survey found it was played in 44% of US households. The game is still widely played, especially amongst retirees, and in 2005 the ACBL estimated there were 25 million players in the US.


title: Contract bridge

text: Bridge is a four-player partnership trick-taking game with thirteen tricks per deal. The dominant variations of the game are rubber bridge, more common in social play; and duplicate bridge, which enables comparative scoring in tournament play. Each player is dealt thirteen cards from a standard 52-card deck. A starts when a player leads, i.e. plays the first card. The leader to the first trick is determined by the auction; the leader to each subsequent trick is the player who won the preceding trick. Each player, in clockwise order, plays one card on the trick. Players must play a card of the same suit as the original card led, unless they have none (said to be "void"), in which case they may play any card.


title: Contract bridge

text: The player who played the highest-ranked card wins the trick. Within a suit, the ace is ranked highest followed by the king, queen and jack and then the ten through to the two. In a deal where the auction has determined that there is no trump suit, the trick must be won by a card of the suit led. However, in a deal where there is a trump suit, cards of that suit are superior in rank to any of the cards of any other suit. If one or more players plays a trump to a trick when void in the suit led, the highest trump wins. For example, if the trump suit is spades and a player is void in the suit led and plays a spade card, they win the trick if no other player plays a higher spade. If a trump suit is led, the usual rule for trick-taking applies.


title: Contract bridge

text: Unlike its predecessor, whist, the goal of bridge is not simply to take the most tricks in a deal. Instead, the goal is to successfully estimate how many tricks one's partnership can take. To illustrate this, the simpler partnership trick-taking game of spades has a similar mechanism: the usual trick-taking rules apply with the trump suit being spades, but in the beginning of the game, players "bid" or estimate how many tricks they can win, and the number of tricks bid by both players in a partnership are added. If a partnership takes at least that many tricks, they receive points for the round; otherwise, they lose penalty points.


title: Contract bridge

text: Bridge extends the concept of bidding into an , where partnerships compete to take a , specifying how many tricks they will need to take in order to receive points, and also specifying the trump suit (or no trump, meaning that there will be no trump suit). Players take turns to call in a clockwise order: each player in turn either passes, doubleswhich increases the penalties for not making the contract specified by the opposing partnership's last bid, but also increases the reward for making itor redoubles, or states a contract that their partnership will adopt, which must be higher than the previous highest bid (if any). Eventually, the player who bid the highest contractwhich is determined by the contract's level as well as the trump suit or no trumpwins the contract for their partnership.


title: Contract bridge

text: In the example auction below, the east–west pair secures the contract of 6; the auction concludes when there have been three successive passes. Note that six tricks are added to contract values, so the six-level contract would actually be a contract of twelve tricks. In practice, establishing a contract without enough information on the other partner's hand is difficult, so there exist many bidding systems assigning meanings to bids, with common ones including Standard American, Acol, and 2/1 game forcing. Contrast with Spades, where players only have to bid their own hand.


title: Contract bridge

text: After the contract is decided, and the first lead is made, the declarer's partner (dummy) lays their cards face up on the table, and the declarer plays the dummy's cards as well as their own. The opposing partnership is called the , and their goal is to stop the declarer from fulfilling his contract. Once all the cards have been played, the hand is scored: if the declaring side make their contract, they receive points based on the level of the contract, with some trump suits being worth more points than others and no trump being the highest, as well as bonus points for . But if the declarer fails to fulfil the contract, the defenders receive points depending on the declaring side's undertricks (the number of tricks short of the contract) and whether the contract was doubled by the defenders.


title: Contract bridge

text: The four players sit in two partnerships with players sitting opposite their partners. A cardinal direction is assigned to each seat, so that one partnership sits in North and South, while the other sits in West and East. The cards may be freshly dealt or, in duplicate bridge games, pre-dealt. All that is needed in basic games are the cards and a method of keeping score, but there is often other equipment on the table, such as a board containing the cards to be played (in duplicate bridge), bidding boxes, or screens.


title: Contract bridge

text: In rubber bridge, each player draws a card at the start of the game with the player who drew the highest cards dealing first. The second highest card becomes the dealer's partner and takes the chair on the opposite side of the table. They play against the other two. The deck is shuffled and cut, usually by the player to the left of the dealer, before dealing. Players take turns to deal, in clockwise order. The dealer deals the cards clockwise, one card at a time. Normally rubber bridge is played with two packs of cards and whilst one pack is being dealt, the dealer's partner shuffles the other pack. After shuffling the pack is placed on the right ready for the next dealer. Before dealing, the next dealer passes the cards to the previous dealer who cuts them.


title: Contract bridge

text: In duplicate bridge, the cards are pre-dealt, either by hand or by a computerized dealing machine, in order to allow for competitive scoring. Once dealt, the cards are placed in a device called a "board", having slots designated for each player's cardinal direction seating position. After a deal has been played, players return their cards to the appropriate slot in the board, ready to be played by the next table.


title: Contract bridge

text: The dealer opens the auction and can make the first call, and the auction proceeds clockwise. When it is their turn to call, a player may passbut can enter into the bidding lateror bid a contract, specifying the level of their contract and either the trump suit or no trump (the denomination), provided that it is higher than the last bid by any player, including their partner. All bids promise to take a number of tricks in excess of six, so a bid must be between one (seven tricks) and seven (thirteen tricks). A bid is higher than another bid if either the level is greater (e.g., 2 over 1NT) or the denomination is higher, with the order being in ascending order: , , , , and NT (no trump). Calls may be made orally or with a bidding box (digitally in online bridge).


title: Contract bridge

text: If the last bid was by the opposing partnership, one may also the opponents' bid, increasing the penalties for undertricks, but also increasing the reward for making the contract. Doubling does not carry to future bids by the opponents unless future bids are doubled again. A player on the opposing partnership being doubled may also , which increases the penalties and rewards further. Players may not see their partner's hand during the auction, only their own. There exist many bidding conventions that assign agreed meanings to various calls to assist players in reaching an optimal contract (or obstruct the opponents).


title: Contract bridge

text: The auction ends when, after a player bids, doubles, or redoubles, every other player has passed, in which case the action proceeds to the play; or every player has passed and no bid has been made, in which case the round is considered to be "passed out" and not played.


title: Contract bridge

text: The player from the declaring side who first bid the denomination named in the final contract becomes declarer. The player left to the declarer leads to the first trick. Dummy then lays his or her cards face-up on the table, organized in columns by suit. Play proceeds clockwise, with each player required to follow suit if possible. Tricks are won by the highest trump, or if there were none played, the highest card of the led suit. The player who won the previous trick leads to the next trick. The declarer has control of the dummy's cards and tells his partner which card to play at dummy's turn. There also exist conventions that communicate further information between defenders about their hands during the play.


title: Contract bridge

text: At any time, a player may , stating that their side will win a specific number of the remaining tricks. The claiming player lays his cards down on the table and explains the order in which he intends to play the remaining cards. The opponents can either accept the claim and the round is scored accordingly, or dispute the claim. If the claim is disputed, play continues with the claiming player's cards face up in rubber games, or in duplicate games, play ceases and the tournament director is called to adjudicate the hand.


title: Contract bridge

text: At the end of the hand, points are awarded to the declaring side if they make the contract, or else to the defenders. Partnerships can be , increasing the rewards for making the contract, but also increasing the penalties for undertricks. In rubber bridge, if a side has won 100 contract points, they have won a and are vulnerable for the remaining rounds, but in duplicate bridge, vulnerability is predetermined based on the number of each board.


title: Contract bridge

text: If the declaring side makes their contract, they receive points for , or tricks bid and made in excess of six. In both rubber and duplicate bridge, the declaring side is awarded 20 points per odd trick for a contract in clubs or diamonds, and 30 points per odd trick for a contract in hearts or spades. For a contract in notrump, the declaring side is awarded 40 points for the first odd trick and 30 points for the remaining odd tricks. Contract points are doubled or quadrupled if the contract is respectively doubled or redoubled.


title: Contract bridge

text: In rubber bridge, a partnership wins one game once it has accumulated 100 contract points; excess contract points do not carry over to the next game. A partnership that wins two games wins the rubber, receiving a bonus of 500 points if the opponents have won a game, and 700 points if they have not.


title: Contract bridge

text: Overtricks score the same number of points per odd trick, although their doubled and redoubled values differ. Bonuses vary between the two bridge variations both in score and in type (for example, rubber bridge awards a bonus for holding a certain combination of high cards), although some are common between the two.


title: Contract bridge

text: A larger bonus is awarded if the declaring side makes a small slam or grand slam, a contract of 12 or 13 tricks respectively. If the declaring side is not vulnerable, a small slam gets 500 points, and a grand slam 1000 points. If the declaring side is vulnerable, a small slam is 750 points and a grand slam is 1,500.


title: Contract bridge

text: In rubber bridge, the rubber finishes when a partnership has won two games, but the partnership receiving the most "overall" points wins the rubber. Duplicate bridge is scored comparatively, meaning that the score for the hand is compared to other tables playing the same cards and match points are scored according to the comparative results: usually either "matchpoint scoring", where each partnership receives 2 points (or 1 point) for each pair that they beat, and 1 point (or point) for each tie; or IMPs (international matchpoint) scoring, where the number of IMPs varies (but less than proportionately) with the points difference between the teams.


title: Contract bridge

text: The official rules of duplicate bridge are promulgated by the WBF as "The Laws of Duplicate Bridge 2017". The Laws Committee of the WBF, composed of world experts, updates the Laws every 10 years; it also issues a Laws Commentary advising on interpretations it has rendered.


title: Contract bridge

text: In addition to the basic rules of play, there are many additional rules covering playing conditions and the rectification of irregularities, which are primarily for use by tournament directors who act as referees and have overall control of procedures during competitions. But various details of procedure are left to the discretion of the zonal bridge organisation for tournaments under their aegis and some (for example, the choice of "movement") to the sponsoring organisation (for example, the club).


title: Contract bridge

text: Some zonal organisations of the WBF also publish editions of the Laws. For example, the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) publishes the "Laws of Duplicate Bridge" and additional documentation for club and tournament directors.


title: Contract bridge

text: There are no universally accepted rules for rubber bridge, but some zonal organisations have published their own. An example for those wishing to abide by a published standard is "The Laws of Rubber Bridge" as published by the American Contract Bridge League.


title: Contract bridge

text: The majority of rules mirror those of duplicate bridge in the bidding and play and differ primarily in procedures for dealing and scoring.


title: Contract bridge

text: Bridge is a game of skill played with randomly dealt cards, which makes it also a game of chance, or more exactly, a tactical game with inbuilt randomness, imperfect knowledge and restricted communication. The chance element is in the deal of the cards; in duplicate bridge some of the chance element is eliminated by comparing results of multiple pairs in identical situations. This is achievable when there are eight or more players, sitting at two or more tables, and the deals from each table are preserved and passed to the next table, thereby "duplicating" them for the other table(s) of players. At the end of a session, the scores for each deal are compared, and the most points are awarded to the players doing the best with each particular deal. This measures relative skill (but still with an element of luck) because each pair or team is being judged only on the ability to bid with, and play, the same cards as other players.


title: Contract bridge

text: Duplicate bridge is played in clubs and tournaments, which can gather as many as several hundred players. Duplicate bridge is a mind sport, and its popularity gradually became comparable to that of chess, with which it is often compared for its complexity and the mental skills required for high-level competition. Bridge and chess are the only "mind sports" recognized by the International Olympic Committee, although they were not found eligible for the main Olympic program. In October 2017 the British High Court ruled against the English Bridge Union, finding that Bridge is not a sport under a definition of sport as involving physical activity, but did not rule on the "broad, somewhat philosophical question" as to whether or not bridge is a sport.


title: Contract bridge

text: The basic premise of duplicate bridge had previously been used for whist matches as early as 1857. Initially, bridge was not thought to be suitable for duplicate competition; it was not until the 1920s that (auction) bridge tournaments became popular.


title: Contract bridge

text: In 1925 when contract bridge first evolved, bridge tournaments were becoming popular, but the rules were somewhat in flux, and several different organizing bodies were involved in tournament sponsorship: the American Bridge League (formerly the "American Auction Bridge League", which changed its name in 1929), the American Whist League, and the United States Bridge Association. In 1935, the first officially recognized world championship was held. In 1958, the World Bridge Federation (WBF) was founded to promote bridge worldwide, coordinate periodic revision to the Laws (each ten years, next in 2027) and conduct world championships.


title: Contract bridge

text: In tournaments, "bidding boxes" are frequently used, as noted above. These avoid the possibility of players at other tables hearing any spoken bids. The bidding cards are laid out in sequence as the auction progresses. Although it is not a formal rule, many clubs adopt a protocol that the bidding cards stay revealed until the first playing card is tabled, after which point the bidding cards are put away. Bidding pads are an alternative to bidding boxes. A bidding pad is a block of 100mm square tear-off sheets. Players write their bids on the top sheet. When the first trick is complete the sheet is torn off and discarded.


title: Contract bridge

text: In top national and international events, "bidding screens" are used. These are placed diagonally across the table, preventing partners from seeing each other during the game; often the screen is removed after the auction is complete.


title: Contract bridge

text: Much of the complexity in bridge arises from the difficulty of arriving at a good final contract in the auction (or deciding to let the opponents declare the contract). This is a difficult problem: the two players in a partnership must try to communicate enough information about their hands to arrive at a makeable contract, but the information they can exchange is restricted – information may be passed only by the calls made and later by the cards played, not by other means; in addition, the agreed-upon meaning of each call and play must be available to the opponents.


title: Contract bridge

text: Since a partnership that has freedom to bid gradually at leisure can exchange more information, and since a partnership that can interfere with the opponents' bidding (as by raising the bidding level rapidly) can cause difficulties for their opponents, bidding systems are both informational and strategic. It is this mixture of information exchange and evaluation, deduction, and tactics that is at the heart of bidding in bridge.


title: Contract bridge

text: A "bidding system" is a set of partnership agreements on the meanings of bids. A partnership's bidding system is usually made up of a core system, modified and complemented by specific conventions (optional customizations incorporated into the main system for handling specific bidding situations) which are pre-chosen between the partners prior to play. The line between a well-known convention and a part of a system is not always clear-cut: some bidding systems include specified conventions by default. Bidding systems can be divided into mainly natural systems such as Acol and Standard American, and mainly artificial systems such as the Precision Club and Polish Club.


title: Contract bridge

text: Calls are usually considered to be either "natural" or "conventional" (artificial). A natural call carries a meaning that reflects the call; a natural bid intuitively showing hand or suit strength based on the level or suit of the bid, and a natural double expressing that the player believes that the opposing partnership will not make their contract. By contrast, a conventional (artificial) call offers and/or asks for information by means of pre-agreed coded interpretations, in which some calls convey very specific information or requests that are not part of the natural meaning of the call. Thus in response to 4NT, a 'natural' bid of 5 would state a preference towards a diamond suit or a desire to play the contract in 5 diamonds, whereas if the partners have agreed to use the common Blackwood convention, a bid of 5 in the same situation would say nothing about the diamond suit, but tell the partner that the hand in question contains exactly one ace.


title: Contract bridge

text: Conventions are valuable in bridge because of the need to pass information beyond a simple like or dislike of a particular suit, and because the limited bidding space can be used more efficiently by adopting a conventional (artificial) meaning for a given call where a natural meaning would have less utility, because the information it would convey is not valuable or because the desire to convey that information would arise only rarely. The conventional meaning conveys more useful (or more frequently useful) information. There are a very large number of conventions from which players can choose; many books have been written detailing bidding conventions. Well-known conventions include Stayman (to ask the opening 1NT bidder to show any four-card major suit), Jacoby transfers (a request by (usually) the weak hand for the partner to bid a particular suit first, and therefore to become the declarer), and the Blackwood convention (to ask for information on the number of aces and kings held, used in slam bidding situations).


title: Contract bridge

text: The term "preempt" refers to a high-level tactical bid by a weak hand, relying upon a very long suit rather than high cards for tricks. Preemptive bids serve a double purpose – they allow players to indicate they are bidding on the basis of a long suit in an otherwise weak hand, which is important information to share, and they also consume substantial bidding space which prevents a possibly strong opposing pair from exchanging information on their cards. Several systems include the use of opening bids or other early bids with weak hands including long (usually six to eight card) suits at the 2, 3 or even 4 or 5 levels as preempts.


title: Contract bridge

text: As a rule, a natural suit bid indicates a holding of at least four (or more, depending on the situation and the system) cards in that suit as an opening bid, or a lesser number when supporting partner; a natural NT bid indicates a balanced hand.


title: Contract bridge

text: Most systems use a count of high card points as the basic evaluation of the strength of a hand, refining this by reference to shape and distribution if appropriate. In the most commonly used point count system, aces are counted as 4 points, kings as 3, queens as 2, and jacks as 1 point; therefore, the deck contains 40 points. In addition, the "distribution" of the cards in a hand into suits may also contribute to the strength of a hand and be counted as distribution points. A better than average hand, containing 12 or 13 points, is usually considered sufficient to "open" the bidding, i.e., to make the first bid in the auction. A combination of two such hands (i.e., 25 or 26 points shared between partners) is often sufficient for a partnership to bid, and generally to make, game in a major suit or notrump (more are usually needed for a minor suit game, as the level is higher).


title: Contract bridge

text: In natural systems, a 1NT opening bid usually reflects a hand that has a relatively balanced shape (usually between two and four (or less often five) cards in each suit) and a sharply limited number of high card points, usually somewhere between 12 and 18 – the most common ranges use a span of exactly three points (for example, 12–14, 15–17 or 16–18), but some systems use a four-point range, usually 15–18.


title: Contract bridge

text: Opening bids of three or higher are preemptive bids, i.e., bids made with weak hands that especially favor a particular suit, opened at a high level in order to define the hand's value quickly and to frustrate the opposition. For example, a hand of would be a candidate for an opening bid of 3, designed to make it difficult for the opposing team to bid and find their optimum contract even if they have the bulk of the points, as it is nearly valueless unless spades are trumps, it contains good enough spades that the penalty for being set should not be higher than the value of an opponent game, and the high card weakness makes it more likely that the opponents have enough strength to make game themselves.


title: Contract bridge

text: Openings at the 2 level are either unusually strong (2NT, natural, and 2, artificial) or preemptive, depending on the system. Unusually strong bids communicate an especially high number of points (normally 20 or more) or a high trick-taking potential (normally 8 or more). Also 2 as the strongest (by HCP and by DP+HCP) has become more common, perhaps especially at websites that offer duplicate bridge. Here the 2 opening is used for either hands with a good 6-card suit or longer (max one losing card) and a total of 18 HCP up to 23 total points – or "NT", like 2NT but with 22–23 HCP. Whilst the 2 opening bid takes care of all hands with 24 points (HCP or with distribution points included) with the only exception of "Gambling 3NT".


title: Contract bridge

text: Opening bids at the one level are made with hands containing 12–13 points or more and which are not suitable for one of the preceding bids. Using Standard American with 5-card majors, opening hearts or spades usually promises a 5-card suit. Partnerships who agree to play 5-card majors open a minor suit with 4-card majors and then bid their major suit at the next opportunity. This means that an opening bid of 1 or 1 will sometimes be made with only 3 cards in that suit.


title: Contract bridge

text: Doubles are sometimes given conventional meanings in otherwise mostly natural systems. A natural, or "penalty" double, is one used to try to gain extra points when the defenders are confident of setting (defeating) the contract. The most common example of a conventional double is the takeout double of a low-level suit bid, implying support for the unbid suits or the unbid major suits and asking partner to choose one of them.


title: Contract bridge

text: Bidding systems depart from these basic ideas in varying degrees. Standard American, for instance, is a collection of conventions designed to bolster the accuracy and power of these basic ideas, while Precision Club is a system that uses the 1 opening bid for all or almost all strong hands (but sets the threshold for "strong" rather lower than most other systems – usually 16 high card points) and may include other artificial calls to handle other situations (but it may contain natural calls as well). Many experts today use a system called 2/1 game forcing (enunciated as two over one game forcing), which amongst other features adds some complexity to the treatment of the one notrump response as used in Standard American. In the UK, Acol is the most common system; its main features are a weak one notrump opening with 12–14 high card points and several variations for 2-level openings.


title: Contract bridge

text: There are also a variety of advanced techniques used for hand evaluation. The most basic is the Milton Work point count, (the 4-3-2-1 system detailed above) but this is sometimes modified in various ways, or either augmented or replaced by other approaches such as losing trick count, honor point count, law of total tricks, or Zar Points.


title: Contract bridge

text: Within play, it is also commonly agreed what systems of opening leads, signals and discards will be played:


title: Contract bridge

text: Every call (including "pass", also sometimes called "no bid") serves two purposes. It confirms or passes some information to a partner, and also denies by implication any other kind of hand which would have tended to support an alternative call. For example, a bid of 2NT immediately after partner's 1NT not only shows a balanced hand of a certain point range, but also would almost always deny possession of a five-card major suit (otherwise the player would have bid it) or even a four card major suit (in that case, the player would probably have used the Stayman convention).


title: Contract bridge

text: Likewise, in some partnerships the bid of 2 in the sequence 1NT–2–2–2 between partners (opponents passing throughout) explicitly shows five hearts but also confirms four cards in spades: the bidder must hold at least five hearts to make it worth looking for a heart fit after 2 denied a four card major, and with at least five hearts, a Stayman bid must have been justified by having exactly four spades, the other major (since Stayman (as used by this partnership) is not useful with anything except a four card major suit). Thus an astute partner can read much more than the surface meaning into the bidding. Alternatively, many partnerships play this same bidding sequence as "Crawling Stayman" by which the responder shows a weak hand (less than eight high card points) with shortness in diamonds but at least four hearts and four spades; the opening bidder may correct to spades if that appears to be the better contract.


title: Contract bridge

text: The situations detailed here are extremely simple examples; many instances of advanced bidding involve specific agreements related to very specific situations and subtle inferences regarding entire sequences of calls.


title: Contract bridge

text: Terence Reese, a prolific author of bridge books, points out that there are only four ways of taking a trick by force, two of which are very easy:


title: Contract bridge

text: Nearly all trick-taking techniques in bridge can be reduced to one of these four methods. The optimum play of the cards can require much thought and experience and is the subject of whole books on bridge.


title: Contract bridge

text: The cards are dealt as shown in the bridge hand diagram; North is the dealer and starts the auction which proceeds as shown in the bidding table.


title: Contract bridge

text: As neither North nor East have sufficient strength to "open" the bidding, they each pass, denying such strength. South, next in turn, opens with the bid of 1, which denotes a reasonable heart suit (at least 4 or 5 cards long, depending on the bidding system) and at least 12 high card points. On this hand, South has 14 high card points. West "overcalls" with 1, since he has a long spade suit of reasonable quality and 10 high card points (an overcall can be made on a hand that is not quite strong enough for an opening bid). North "supports" partner's suit with 2, showing heart support and about points. East supports spades with 2. South inserts a "game try" of 3, "inviting" the partner to bid the "game" of 4 with good club support and overall values. North complies, as North is at the higher end of the range for his 2 bid, and has a fourth trump (the 2 bid promised only three), and the "doubleton" queen of clubs to fit with partner's strength there. (North could instead have bid 3, indicating not enough strength for game, asking South to pass and so play 3.)


title: Contract bridge

text: In the auction, north–south are trying to investigate whether their cards are sufficient to make a game (nine tricks at notrump, ten tricks in hearts or spades, 11 tricks in clubs or diamonds), which yields bonus points if bid and made. East-West are "competing" in spades, hoping to play a contract in spades at a low level. 4 is the final contract, 10 tricks being required for to make with hearts as trump.


title: Contract bridge

text: South is the "declarer", having been first to bid hearts, and the player to South's left, West, has to choose the first card in the play, known as the "opening lead". West chooses the spade king because spades is the suit the partnership has shown strength in, and because they have agreed that when they hold two "touching honors" (or "adjacent honors") they will play the higher one first. West plays the card face down, to give their partner and the declarer (but not dummy) a chance to ask any last questions about the bidding or to object if they believe West is not the correct hand to lead. After that, North's cards are laid on the table and North becomes "dummy", as both the North and South hands will be controlled by the declarer. West turns the lead card face up, and the declarer studies the two hands to make a plan for the play. On this hand, the trump ace, a spade, and a diamond trick must be lost, so declarer must not lose a trick in clubs.


title: Contract bridge

text: If the K is held by West, South will find it very hard to prevent it from making a trick (unless West leads a club). However, there is an almost-equal chance that it is held by East, in which case it can be 'trapped' against the ace, and will be beaten, using a tactic known as a "finesse".


title: Contract bridge

text: After considering the cards, the declarer directs dummy (North) to play a small spade. East plays "low" (small card) and South takes the A, gaining the "lead". (South may also elect to "duck", but for the purpose of this example, let us assume South wins the A at trick 1). South proceeds by "drawing trump", leading the K. West decides there is no benefit to holding back, and so wins the trick with the ace, and then cashes the Q. For fear of conceding a "ruff and discard", West plays the 2 instead of another spade. Declarer plays low from the table, and East scores the Q. Not having anything better to do, East returns the remaining trump, taken in South's hand. The trumps now accounted for, South can now execute the finesse, perhaps trapping the king as planned. South "enters" the dummy (i.e. wins a trick in the dummy's hand) by leading a low diamond, using dummy's A to win the trick, and leads the Q from dummy to the next trick. East "covers" the queen with the king, and South takes the trick with the ace, and proceeds by "cashing" the remaining "master" J. (If East doesn't play the king, then South will play a low club from South's hand and the queen will win anyway, this being the essence of the finesse). The game is now safe: South "ruffs" a small club with a dummy's trump, then ruffs a diamond in hand for an "entry" back, and ruffs the last club in dummy (sometimes described as a "crossruff"). Finally, South "claims" the remaining tricks by showing his or her hand, as it now contains only high trumps and there's no need to play the hand out to prove they are all winners.


title: Contract bridge

text: (The trick-by-trick notation used above can be also expressed in tabular form, but a textual explanation is usually preferred in practice, for reader's convenience. Plays of small cards or "discards" are often omitted from such a description, unless they were important for the outcome).


title: Contract bridge

text: North-South score the required 10 tricks, and their opponents take the remaining three. The contract is fulfilled, and North enters the pair numbers, the contract, and the score of +420 for the winning side (North is in charge of bookkeeping in duplicate tournaments) on the traveling sheet. North asks East to check the score entered on the traveller. All players return their own cards to the board, and the next deal is played.


title: Contract bridge

text: On the prior hand, it is quite possible that the K is held by West. For example, by swapping the K and A between the defending hands. Then the 4 contract would fail by one trick (unless West had led a club early in the play). However the failure of the contract would not mean that 4 is a bad contract on this hand. The contract depends on the club finesse working, or a mis-defense. The bonus points awarded for making a game contract far outweigh the penalty for going one off, so it is best strategy in the long run to bid game contracts such as this one.


title: Contract bridge

text: Similarly, there is a minuscule chance that the K is in the west hand, but the west hand has no other clubs. In that case, declarer can succeed by simply cashing the A, felling the K and setting up the Q as a winner. However the chance of this is far lower than the simple chance of approximately 50% that East started with the K. Therefore, the superior "percentage" play is to take the club finesse, as described above.


title: Contract bridge

text: After many years of little progress, computer bridge made great progress at the end of the 20th century. In 1996, the ACBL initiated the official World Championships Computer Bridge, to be held annually along with a major bridge event. The first Computer Bridge Championship took place in 1997 at the North American Bridge Championships in Albuquerque, New Mexico.


title: Contract bridge

text: Strong bridge playing programs such as Jack Bridge (World Champion in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2015), Wbridge5 (World Champion in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2016, 2017 and 2018), RoboBridge and many-time finalist Bridge Baron, would probably rank among the top few thousand human pairs worldwide. A series of articles published in 2005 and 2006 in the Dutch bridge magazine IMP describes matches between Jack Bridge and seven top Dutch pairs. A total of 196 boards were played. Jack Bridge lost, but by a small margin (359 versus 385 IMPs).


title: Contract bridge

text: There are several free and subscription-based services available for playing bridge on the internet. For example:


title: Contract bridge

text: Some national contract bridge organizations now offer online bridge play to their members, including the English Bridge Union, the Dutch Bridge Federation and the Australian Bridge Federation. MSN and Yahoo! Games have several online rubber bridge rooms. In 2001, the WBF issued a special edition of the lawbook adapted for internet and other electronic forms of the game.


title: Mile high club

text: The mile high club is slang for the group of people who have had sexual intercourse on board an aircraft in flight.


title: Mile high club

text: An alleged explanation for wanting to perform the act is the supposed vibration of the plane. Some say they have fantasies about pilots or flight attendants, or a fetish about planes themselves, a type of mechanophilia. For others, the appeal of joining the mile-high club is the thrill of doing something taboo and the thrill of the risk of being discovered.


title: Mile high club

text: An early reference to the concept is found in the betting book for Brooks's, a London gentlemen's club. The 1785 entry (only two years after the first successful balloon ascent by Étienne Montgolfier) reads: "Ld. Cholmondeley has given two guineas to Ld. Derby, to receive 500 Gs whenever his lordship [has sex with] a woman in a balloon one thousand yards from the Earth." (There is no further indication whether the bet was paid, or


title: Mile high club

text: During the First World War, German ace Oswald Boelcke was disciplined by superiors for taking a nurse up in the cockpit of his fighter, allegedly becoming the first person to qualify as a member of the club (although the claim is dubious, considering the cramped cockpit space and the pilot requirement to constantly keep hands and feet on the control stick and rudder pedals; others maintain it was a simple joyride).


title: Mile high club

text: Pilot/engineer Lawrence Sperry and socialite Dorothy Rice Sims have been described as the first persons to engage in sex while flying in an airplane; the two flew in an autopilot-equipped Curtiss Flying Boat near New York in November 1916.


title: Mile high club

text: The American National Transportation Safety Board reported on a 1991 incident in which sexual activity was at least partly responsible for the fatal crash of a Piper PA-34.


title: Mile high club

text: In November 2007, the BBC reported a story headlined "Airline Bans A380 Mile-High Club". The Airbus A380 allows double beds to be installed in the first-class cabin, but Singapore Airlines' cabins are not soundproof; shortly after installing the new seats/beds, the airline requested that first-class travelers respect other passengers.


title: Mile high club

text: In one survey in the 2010s, 9% of Americans claimed to have had a sexual encounter in an airplane seat, 17% in the airplane bathroom, 5% with a stranger on an airplane, and 3% with a crew member.


title: Mile high club

text: The BBC ran an article investigating whether sex on a plane was legal. Their conclusion was that it would depend on many factors, such as whether or not the act occurred in sight of others. If British law applied, for example, it may constitute sex in a lavatory to which the public has access, contrary to Sexual Offences Act 2003 s.71, with a maximum 6-month term of imprisonment.


title: Mile high club

text: Also, for international flights, the law could vary depending on departure and destination cities and the nation of the carrier airline, as well as the country of registration of the aircraft, and possibly the citizenship of the people involved.


title: Mile high club

text: In January 2011, the United Kingdom's aviation regulator body, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), refused to recertify Mile-High Flights, an air charter company located in Gloucestershire, for allowing its passengers to have sex while in-flight.


title: Mile high club

text: Some commercial enterprises cash in on people's interest in joining the "club" by offering special charter flights designed for the purpose.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is the principal naval force of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The professional head of the RAN is Chief of Navy (CN) Vice Admiral Mark Hammond AM, RAN. CN is also jointly responsible to the Minister of Defence (MINDEF) and the Chief of Defence Force (CDF). The Department of Defence as part of the Australian Public Service administers the ADF.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: Formed in 1901, as the Commonwealth Naval Forces (CNF), through the amalgamation of the colonial navies of Australia following the federation of Australia. Although it was originally intended for local defence, it became increasingly responsible for regional defence as the British Empire started to diminish its influence in the South Pacific.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The Royal Australian Navy was initially a green-water navy, and where the Royal Navy provided a blue-water force to the Australian Squadron, which the Australian and New Zealand governments helped to fund, and that was assigned to the Australia Station. This period lasted until 1913, when naval ships purchased from Britain arrived, although the British Admiralty continued to provide blue-water defence capability in the Pacific and Indian Oceans up to the early years of the Second World War.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: During its history, the Royal Australian Navy has participated in a number of major wars, including the First and Second World Wars, Korean War, Malayan Emergency, Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation and the Vietnam War. Today, the RAN consists of 43 commissioned vessels, 4 non-commissioned vessels and over 16,000 personnel. The navy is one of the largest and most sophisticated naval forces in the South Pacific region, with a significant presence in the Indian Ocean and worldwide operations in support of military campaigns and peacekeeping missions.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The Commonwealth Naval Forces were established on 1 March 1901, with the amalgamation of the six separate colonial naval forces, following the Federation of Australia. The Royal Australian Navy initially consisted of the former New South Wales, Victorian, Queensland, Western Australian, South Australian and Tasmanian ships and resources of their disbanded navies.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The "Defence Act 1903" established the operation and command structure of the Royal Australian Navy. When policymakers sought to determine the newly established force's requirements and purpose, there were arguments about whether Australia's naval force would be structured mainly for local defence or designed to serve as a fleet unit within a larger imperial force, controlled centrally by the British Admiralty. In 1908–09, a compromise solution was pursued, with the Australian government agreeing to establish a force for local defence but that would be capable of forming a fleet unit within the Royal Navy, albeit without central control. As a result, the navy's force structure was set at "one battlecruiser, three light cruisers, six destroyers and three submarines". The first of the RAN's new vessels, the destroyer HMAS Yarra (I), was completed in September 1910, and by the outbreak of the First World War the majority of the planned fleet had been realised. On 10 July 1911, the CNF was granted "Royal" status by King George V


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: Following the declaration of war on the Central Powers, the British War Office tasked the capture of German New Guinea to the Australian Government. This was to deprive the Imperial German Navy's East Asia Squadron of regional intelligence by removing their access to wireless stations. On 11 August, three destroyers and HMAS "Sydney" prepared to engage the squadron at German Anchorages in New Guinea, which did not eventuate as the vessels were not present. Landing parties were placed on Rabaul and Herbertshohe to destroy its German wireless station; however, the objective was found to be further inland and an expeditionary force was required. Meanwhile, HMAS "Australia" was tasked with scouring the Pacific Ocean for the German squadron.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF) began recruiting on the same day that the taskforce arrived in New Britain, and consisted of two battalions: one of 1,000 men, and the other with 500 serving and former seamen. On 19 August, the ANMEF departed Sydney for training in Townsville before the rendezvous with other RAN vessels in Port Moresby. On 29 August, four cruisers and HMAS "Australia" assisted the Samoa Expeditionary Force in landing at Apia, and committing a bloodless takeover of German Samoa. Additionally, the RAN captured German merchant vessels, disrupting German merchant shipping in the Pacific. On 7 September, the ANMEF, now including HMAS "Australia", three destroyers, and two each of cruisers and submarines, departed for Rabaul.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: A few days later, on 9 September, HMAS "Melbourne" landed a party to destroy the island's wireless station, though the German administration promptly surrendered. Between 11 and 12 September, landings were put ashore at Kabakaul, Rabaul and Herbertshohe; it was during this period that the first Australian casualties and deaths of the war occurred. On 14 September, HMAS "Encounter" barraged an enemy position at Toma with shells; it was the first time the RAN had fired upon an enemy and had shelled an inland location. On 17 September, German New Guinea surrendered to the encroaching ANMEF, with the overall campaign a success and exceeded the objectives set by the War Office. However, the RAN submarine HMAS "AE1" became the first ever vessel of the new navy to be sunk. The Australian Squadron was placed under control of the British Admiralty, and was moreover tasked with protecting Australian shipping.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: On 1 November, the RAN escorted the first Australian Imperial Force convoy from Albany, WA and set for the Khedivate of Egypt, which was soon to become the Sultanate of Egypt. On 9 November, HMAS "Sydney" began hunting for SMS "Emden", a troublesome German coastal raider, which Sydney later destroyed. Following the almost complete destruction of the East Asia Squadron in the Battle of the Falklands by the Royal Navy, the RAN became able to be reassigned to other naval theatres of the war.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: On 28 February 1915, the Royal Australian Naval Bridging Train (RANBT) was formed with members of the Royal Australian Naval Reserve who could not find billets in the RAN. Following the entrance of the Ottoman Empire in alliance with the Central Powers, HMAS "AE2" was committed to the initial naval operation of the Gallipoli campaign. After the failure of the naval strategy, an amphibious assault was planned to enable the Allies' warships to pass through the Dardanelles and capture Constantinople. The RANBT was sent ashore, along with the invasion, for engineering duties.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: Later in the war, most of the RAN's major ships operated as part of Royal Navy forces in the Mediterranean and North Seas, and then later in the Adriatic, and then the Black Sea following the surrender of the Ottoman Empire.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: In 1919, the RAN received a force of six destroyers, three sloops and six submarines from the Royal Navy, but throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, the RAN was drastically reduced in size due to a variety of factors including political apathy and economic hardship as a result of the Great Depression. In this time the focus of Australia's naval policy shifted from defence against invasion to trade protection, and several fleet units were sunk as targets or scrapped. By 1923, the size of the navy had fallen to eight vessels, and by the end of the decade it had fallen further to five, with just 3,500 personnel. In the late 1930s, as international tensions increased, the RAN was modernised and expanded, with the service receiving primacy of funding over the Army and Air Force during this time as Australia began to prepare for war.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: Early in the Second World War, RAN ships again operated as part of Royal Navy formations, many serving with distinction in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and off the West African coast. Following the outbreak of the Pacific War and the virtual destruction of Allied naval forces in Southeast Asia, the RAN operated more independently, defending against Axis naval activity in Australian waters, or participating in United States Navy offensives. As the navy took on an even greater role, it was expanded significantly and at its height the RAN was the fourth-largest navy in the world, with 39,650 personnel operating 337 warships. A total of 34 vessels were lost during the war, including three cruisers and four destroyers.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: After the Second World War, the size of the RAN was again reduced, but it gained new capabilities with the acquisition of two aircraft carriers, "Sydney" and "Melbourne". The RAN saw action in many Cold War–era conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region and operated alongside the Royal Navy and United States Navy off Korea, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Since the end of the Cold War, the RAN has been part of Coalition forces in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, operating in support of Operation Slipper and undertaking counter piracy operations. It was also deployed in support of Australian peacekeeping operations in East Timor and the Solomon Islands.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The high demand for personnel in the Second World War led to the establishment of the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) branch in 1942, where over 3,000 women served in shore-based positions. The WRANS was disbanded in 1947, but then re-established in 1951 during the Cold War. It was given permanent status in 1959, and the RAN was the final branch to integrate women in the Australian military in 1985.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The strategic command structure of the RAN was overhauled during the New Generation Navy changes. The RAN is commanded through Naval Headquarters (NHQ) in Canberra. NHQ is responsible for implementing policy decisions handed down from the Department of Defence and for overseeing tactical and operational issues that are the purview of the subordinate commands.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: Fleet Command was previously made up of seven Force Element Groups, but after the New Generation Navy changes, this was restructured into four Force Commands:


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The Royal Australian Navy consists of nearly 50 commissioned vessels and over 16,000 personnel. Ships commissioned into the RAN are given the prefix HMAS (His/Her Majesty's Australian Ship).


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The RAN has two primary bases for its fleet: the first, Fleet Base East, is located at , Sydney and the second, Fleet Base West, is located at , near Perth. In addition, three other bases are home to the majority of the RAN's minor war vessels: , in Cairns, , in Darwin, and , in Sydney.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The Clearance Diving Branch is composed of two "Clearance Diving Teams" (CDT) that serve as parent units for naval clearance divers:


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: , the RAN has 15,285 permanent full-time personnel, 161 gap year personnel, and 3,932 reserve personnel. The permanent full-time trained force consisted of 2,914 commissioned officers, and 10,056 enlisted personnel. In June 2021, male personnel made up 73% of the permanent full-time force, while female personnel made up 23%. The RAN has the second-highest percentage of women in the permanent forces, compared to the RAAF's 25.5% and the Army's 15.1%.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: Commissioned officers of the Australian Navy have pay grades ranging from S-1 to O-11. The only O-11 position in the navy is honorary and has only ever been held by royalty, most recently being held by The Duke of Edinburgh as the Lord High Admrial of the United Kingdom. The highest rank achievable in the current Royal Australian Navy structure is O-10, an admiral who serves as the Chief of the Defence Force (CDF) when the psotion is held by a Naval Officer.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: O-8 (rear admiral) to O-11 (admiral of the fleet) are referred to as flag officers, O-5 (commander) and above are referred to as senior officers, while S-1 (midshipman) to O-4 (lieutenant commander) are referred to as junior officers. All RAN Officers are issue a commission by the Governor General of Australia as Commander-in-Chief on behalf of His Majesty King Charles III, King of Australia. .


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: Naval officers are trained at the Royal Australian Naval College (HMAS "Creswell") in Jervis Bay as well as the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: Royal Australian Navy Other Ranks wear "right arm rates" insignia, called "Category Insignia" to indicate specialty training qualifications. This is a holdover from the Royal Navy.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The Warrant Officer of the Navy (WO-N) is an appointment held by the most senior sailor in the RAN and holds the rank of warrant officer (WO). However, the WO-N does not wear the WO rank insignia; instead, they wear the special insignia of the appointment. The WO-N appointment has similar equivalent appointments in the other services, each holding the rank of warrant officer, each being the most senior sailor/soldier/airman in that service, and each wearing their own special insignia rather than their rank insignia. The Australian Army equivalent is the Regimental Sergeant Major of the Army (RSM-A) and the Royal Australian Air Force equivalent is the Warrant Officer of the Air Force (WOFF-AF).


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: Chaplains in the Royal Australian Navy are commissioned officers who complete the same training as other officers in the RAN at the Royal Australian Naval College, HMAS Creswell. From July 2020, Maritime Spiritual Wellbeing Officers (MSWOs) were introduced to the Navy Chaplaincy Branch, designed to give Navy people and their families with professional, non-religious pastoral care and spiritual support.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: RAN regulations group RAN Chaplains and MSWOs with Commanders for purposes of protocol such as marks of respect (saluting); however, have no other rank other than the notional rank of "Chaplain" or "MSWO" respectively. From January 2021, MSWOs and all chaplains will wear the branch's new non-faith-specific rank insignia of a fouled anchor overlaying a compass rose, which represents a united team front, encompassing all faiths and purpose. Faith Chaplains will have insignia that reflect their religion on collar mounted patches (Cross for Christian, Cresent for Muslim etc) Senior Chaplains and MSWOs are grouped with captains, and Principal Chaplains and MSWOs are grouped with Commodores, but their rank slide remains the same. Principal Chaplains and MSWOs, however, have gold braid on the peak of their white service cap.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: The RAN currently operates 42 commissioned vessels, made up of nine ship classes and three individual ships, plus four non-commissioned vessels. In addition, DMS Maritime operates a large number of civilian-crewed vessels under contract to the Australian Defence Force.


title: Royal Australian Navy

text: On 15 September 2021, the Australian Government announced their participation in the AUKUS agreement during a joint press conference with US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Under the new agreement, the Royal Australian Navy will, for the first time, be able to build nuclear submarines with the assistance of the United States and the United Kingdom The Morrison Government later also announced in March 2022 that an additional submarine base on the East Coast would be constructed in either: Port Kembla, Newcastle or Brisbane to support the incoming fleet.


title: Rob Brydon

text: Robert Brydon Jones (; born 3 May 1965) is a Welsh actor, comedian, impressionist, presenter, singer and writer. He played Dr Paul Hamilton in the Australian/British comedy series "Supernova", Bryn West in the BBC sitcom "Gavin & Stacey" and Keith Barret in the BBC comedy series "Marion and Geoff" and its spin-off "The Keith Barret Show".


title: Rob Brydon

text: He has appeared in a number of shows for the BBC with Steve Coogan, including "The Trip" series in 2010, released as a feature film later that year; and "The Trip to Italy" in 2014 and "The Trip to Spain" in 2017 and "The Trip to Greece" in 2020, also edited and released as feature films.


title: Rob Brydon

text: Since 2009, Brydon has presented the BBC One comedy panel show "Would I Lie to You?" after previously playing himself as host of a fictional panel show in "Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive", which ran on BBC Three from 2006 until 2007. In addition to presenting his own late-night chat show, "The Rob Brydon Show", for two years and hosting the 2014 Saturday-night game show "The Guess List" for BBC One, Brydon has also appeared in notable films including "Cruise of the Gods", "The Gruffalo", "24 Hour Party People", "" and "Holmes & Watson".


title: Rob Brydon

text: Brydon was born on 3 May 1965 in Baglan, Glamorgan. His mother, Joy Jones (née Brydon), was a school teacher, and his father, Howard Jones, was a car dealer. He grew up in Baglan, with his younger brother Peter (born 1973).


title: Rob Brydon

text: Brydon was educated at two independent schools: St. John's School in Porthcawl, which Eddie Izzard also attended, and Dumbarton House School in Swansea until the age of 14. This was followed by Porthcawl Comprehensive School, where he met Ruth Jones (with whom he later worked in "Gavin & Stacey") and became a member of the school's youth theatre group. While at Dumbarton, he once stole the lunch money of fellow pupil Catherine Zeta-Jones (which he admitted while participating in a series 4 episode of "Would I Lie To You?").


title: Rob Brydon

text: Brydon has said that his primary childhood influences in comedy were Barry Humphries, Frankie Howerd and Woody Allen. He has also said that he used to memorise entire sketches by Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Peter Sellers.


title: Rob Brydon

text: Brydon attended the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Cardiff. He left after a year, to join Radio Wales at the age of 20. His early broadcasts included work as a disc jockey on BBC Radio Wales, when his Saturday morning shows included contributions from stand-up comedian Pete Park-Walker. Between 1992 and 1994, on Radio Wales (where he stayed for six years) he was the main presenter of "Rave", one of BBC Radio 5's youth magazine and music programmes, with Alan Thompson. He developed his "Marion and Geoff" story from this.


title: Rob Brydon

text: In 1994 and 1995 Brydon appeared in numerous episodes of the original Radio Wales version of the cult comedy "Satellite City" with Boyd Clack. Although he has stayed with radio as a comedy performer on BBC Radio Five Live's "The Treatment", Brydon also does occasional stints as a stand-in presenter on BBC Radio 2. He has stood in for Ken Bruce, one of the people whom he impersonates. On 1 April 2011 he appeared in Bruce's place on his show as an April Fools' Day joke.


title: Rob Brydon

text: Between September and October 2011, Brydon starred alongside Kenneth Branagh in Francis Veber's play "The Painkiller" at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. He reprised his role with Branagh, in March and April 2016, at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End. Whilst not calling himself an impressionist Brydon says he "started out as an impressionist" but will "bristle" when described as such. His impressions include Alec Guinness, James Dean, Michael J. Fox, Richard Burton, Tom Jones, Michael Caine, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Corbett. He is also noted for his "Small Man in A Box" impression.


title: Rob Brydon

text: In an episode of "Would I Lie To You?", Rob admitted that he pretended to be his own agent during the early part of his career in order to get more money.


title: Rob Brydon

text: Brydon was first known nationally as a voice artist. He provided several voices for the "Discworld" computer games, radio & television programmes like Eurotrash and continuity announcements for BBC 1. He is also known for voice-over work in television advertising, including for Renault, Tango, "The Times", Tesco, Abbey National, Sainsbury's, McDonald's, Pot Noodle, Domino's Pizza, Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, "The Observer" and Fairy Liquid. He voiced the main character, Lewton, in the "Discworld" computer game "Discworld Noir", and provided voices in animated films such as "The Gruffalo", "The Gruffalo's Child" and "Room on the Broom".


title: Rob Brydon

text: For a brief period in the early 1990s Brydon was a presenter for the Home Shopping Network. He began to find small roles in several successful films and television series. In 2000 he made his mark in television comedy, with two series which he co-wrote and performed for the BBC: "Human Remains," co-written by Julia Davis; and the commercially successful "Marion and Geoff."


title: Rob Brydon

text: Since these series Brydon has developed a career path as a character actor, in both comedic and serious roles. He portrayed controversial theatre critic Kenneth Tynan in the BBC Four film "Kenneth Tynan: In Praise of Hardcore" (2005), opposite Julian Sands as Laurence Olivier.


title: Rob Brydon

text: His character Bryn West in "Gavin & Stacey", written by Ruth Jones and James Corden, allowed him to return to his South Wales roots. In this role Brydon performed the 2009 Comic Relief charity single, "(Barry) Islands in the Stream", with Ruth Jones (both actors appearing as their characters from "Gavin & Stacey") and singer Tom Jones. It reached No.1 in the UK Singles Chart on 15 March 2009.


title: Rob Brydon

text: In 2010 Brydon starred alongside Steve Coogan in Michael Winterbottom's partially improvised BBC Two sitcom series "The Trip," in which both actors played fictionalised versions of their public personas (Brydon, optimistic and always eager to do an impression; and Coogan, misanthropic and bitter that he's not the major international star he believes he should be).


title: Rob Brydon

text: Brydon's book "Small Man in a Book" (the title a play on his "small-man-in-a-box" impression) was published in November 2011.


title: Rob Brydon

text: In 2006, Brydon first appeared on the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel game "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue". His singing voice earned the unprecedented accolade from the former host, Humphrey Lyttelton, of being "not bad". When the team went on a tour of non-broadcast stage shows, Brydon filled in as chairman when Lyttelton was in hospital to repair an aortic aneurysm. Lyttelton died in hospital after surgery.


title: Rob Brydon

text: In February 2009, it was announced that Brydon would be one of three people to replace Lyttelton as chairman of the 51st series of "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" (the others being Stephen Fry and Jack Dee). Brydon also appeared as guest panellist in the first two episodes of series 52, chaired by Jack Dee. He returned as a guest panellist in the last two episodes of series 54 in January 2011.


title: Rob Brydon

text: Additionally, in 2009 he took over as host of "Would I Lie To You?", replacing Angus Deayton. Brydon had also appeared as a guest panellist on the show during the previous season. Brydon has presented an episode of "Have I Got News for You" and has appeared on BBC Radio 4's panel game "Just a Minute".


title: Rob Brydon

text: Brydon narrated a two-part programme on BBC Radio 4, "The Pain of Laughter: The Last Days of Kenneth Williams". It explored the latter part of Williams's life, featuring many of the performer's friends and contemporaries. In other radio work Brydon sat in for Ken Bruce on BBC Radio 2 for one day only on 25 August 2008. In addition to this, on 1 April 2011, Brydon impersonated Bruce for the entire two-hour and thirty minutes show. Bruce came on the air at the end of the show to reveal the prank.


title: Rob Brydon

text: Brydon has appeared on the TV comedy quiz "QI". In his first appearance (Series A, episode 5), his talent for mimicry was displayed with impressions of Alec Guinness, James Dean, and Michael J. Fox. In the 2008 Christmas special, he provided impressions of Richard Burton and Tom Jones.


title: Rob Brydon

text: In 2009/10 Brydon had his first stand-up tour in the UK as Rob Brydon (rather than as a differently named character). The resulting DVD of the 2009/10 show, "Rob Brydon: Live", was released on 23 November 2009. Brydon appeared as a host on episode two of series five of the BBC series of "Live at the Apollo".


title: Rob Brydon

text: In 2010 Brydon took part in "Channel 4's Comedy Gala", a benefit show in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, filmed live at the O2 Arena in London on 30 March. He was one of six compères for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert held outside Buckingham Palace on 4 June 2012.


title: Rob Brydon

text: Brydon was married to Martina Fitchie from 1992 to 2000. They have two daughters together, Katie (born August 1994) and Amy (born July 1998), and a son, Harry (born October 1996).


title: Rob Brydon

text: On 6 October 2006, Brydon married Clare Holland, a former producer on "The South Bank Show", at Windsor church. They live in Strawberry Hill in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. They have two sons, Tom, born in April 2008, and George, born in June 2011. A keen golfer, Brydon is also a Swansea City fan and is an ambassador to their 1912 foundation.


title: Rob Brydon

text: In August 2014, Brydon was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to "The Guardian" opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.


title: Rob Brydon

text: Brydon was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama where he previously studied. Brydon was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to comedy and broadcasting, and for charitable services.


title: Gematria

text: Gematria (; or gimatria , plural or , "gimatriot") is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase according to an alphanumerical cipher. A single word can yield several values depending on the cipher which is used.


title: Gematria

text: Hebrew alphanumeric ciphers were probably used in biblical times, and were later adopted by other cultures. Gematria is still widely used in Jewish culture. Similar systems have been used in other languages and cultures: the Greeks isopsephy, and later, derived from or inspired by Hebrew gematria, Arabic abjad numerals, and English gematria.


title: Gematria

text: Although a type of gematria system ('Aru') was employed by the ancient Babylonian culture, their writing script was logographic, and the numerical assignations they made were to whole words. The value of these words were assigned in an entirely arbitrary manner and correspondences were made through tables, and so cannot be considered a true form of gematria. Aru was very different from the gematria systems used by Hebrew and Greek cultures, which used alphabetic writing scripts. Similar systems have been used in other languages and cultures derived from or inspired by Hebrew gematria; Arabic abjad numerals, and English gematria. There is currently no academic consensus over whether Hebrew gematria or Greek isopsephy was used first.


title: Gematria

text: Gematria sums can involve single words, or a string of lengthy calculations. A well-known short example of Hebrew numerology that uses a gematria cipher is the word "chai" ( "alive"), which is composed of two letters that (using the assignments in the "Mispar gadol" table shown below) add up to 18. This has made 18 a "lucky number" among the Jewish people. Donations of money in multiples of 18 are very popular.


title: Gematria

text: In early Jewish sources, the term "gematria" can also refer to other forms of calculation or letter manipulation, for example atbash.


title: Gematria

text: Although the term is Hebrew, it may be derived from the Greek γεωμετρία "geōmetriā", "geometry", which was used as a translation of gēmaṭriyā, though some scholars believe it to derive from Greek γραμματεια "grammateia" "knowledge of writing". It is likely that both Greek words had an influence on the formation of the Hebrew word. Some also hold it to derive from the order of the <nowiki>Greek alphabet</nowiki>, gamma being the third letter of the Greek alphabet ("gamma tria").


title: Gematria

text: The word has been extant in English since at least the 17th century from translations of works by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. It is largely used in Jewish texts, notably in those associated with the Kabbalah. The term does not appear in the Hebrew Bible itself.


title: Gematria

text: The first documented use of gematria is from an Assyrian inscription dating to the 8th century BCE, commissioned by Sargon II. In this inscription, Sargon II states: "the king built the wall of Khorsabad 16,283 cubits long to correspond with the numerical value of his name."


title: Gematria

text: The Hasmonean king of Judea, Alexander Jannaeus (died 76 BCE) had coins inscribed in Aramaic with the Phoenician alphabet, marking his 20th and 25th year of reign using the letters K and KE (למלכא אלכסנדרוס שנת כ and למלכא אלכסנדרוס שנת כה). It is the oldest known use of Gematria in Hebrew.


title: Gematria

text: Some old Mishnaic texts may preserve very early usage of this number system, but no surviving written documents exist, and some scholars believe these texts were passed down orally and during the early stages before the Bar Kochba rebellion were never written. Gematria is not known to be found in the Dead Sea scrolls, a vast body of texts from 100 years before and after 0 CE. Neither do any of the documents found from the Bar-Kochba revolt circa 150 CE.


title: Gematria

text: A sample of graffiti at Pompeii (destroyed under volcanic ash in the year 79 CE) reads "I love the girl whose name is phi mu epsilon (545)". According to Proclus in his commentary on the "Timaeus" of Plato written in the 5th century, the author Theodorus Asaeus from a century earlier interpreted the word "soul" (ψυχή) based on gematria and an inspection of the graphical aspects of the letters that make up the word. According to Proclus, Theodorus learned these methods from the writings of Numenius of Apamea and Amelius. Proclus rejects these methods by appealing to the arguments against them put forth by the Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus. The first argument was that some letters have the same numerical value but opposite meaning. His second argument was that the form of letters changes over the years, and so their graphical qualities cannot hold any deeper meaning. Finally, he puts forth the third argument that when you use all sorts of methods as addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, and even ratios, the sheer infinite ways to combine them will allow you to produce virtually every number for anything you are investigating.


title: Gematria

text: There are at least two cases of gematria appearing in the New Testament. The reference to the miraculous catch of 153 fish in John 21:11 is largely seen as an application of gematria derived from the name of the spring called 'EGLaIM in Ezekiel 47:10. The appearance of this gematria in John 21:11 has been connected to one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, namely 4Q252, which also applies the same gematria of 153 derived from Ezekiel 47 to state that Noah arrived at Mount Ararat on the 153rd day after the beginning of the flood. Some historians see gematria behind the reference to the number of the name of the beast in Revelation as "666", which corresponds to the numerical value of the Hebrew transliteration of the Greek name "Nero Caesar", referring to the 1st century Roman emperor who persecuted the early Christians. Another possible influence on the use of 666 in Revelation goes back to reference to Solomon's intake of 666 talents of gold in 1 Kings 10:14.