Joe was born in 1999 in Essex. His parents’ first date was a rubber bridge session; on their first board they bid 6 clubs and made 7. Although neither one of them ever played bridge competitively, they showed Joe the basics of the game at age 10 and he quickly formed an extremely unnatural level of attachment to the game, something that continues to this day.
He taught himself bidding by reading Charles Goren’s Bridge Complete (The “New” 5 card majors edition) and cardplay from a book by Flint and North at an age when he should have been making friends.
Not meeting another junior before university, Joe had developed a robust style of bidding — albeit one that was fifty years out of date. This was quickly rectified, and before long he was managing joint first/second round cue bids and was not so often employing Josephine 5NT. Here, with James Green, and later with Ambrose Holmes-Mackie, he formed partnerships that would be key to the Wiltshire bridge team for years to come, achieving such distinction as moving from last place to second last place in the Tollemache Cup.
Ambrose, with minimal assistance from Joe, developed IMP MACHINE, a system based on a NV mini NT, transfer responses to a club, unbalanced diamond and heart (but not spade) openings, and “on-brand” bidding meta-rules which include many penalty doubles. The machine does always produce IMPs, although the direction of the IMPs is variable.
Aside from bridge, Joe has a BSc in maths from Bath University and works in system administration and security. In his spare time he attempts to solve crosswords. He lives in Cambridge with his partner, who is sublimely uninterested in every aspect of the game.
Junior International Selections
Junior Camrose: 2023 (U26)
World Youth Team Championships: 2023