Hello, my name is Isaac Stephani. I am 15 years old and live in Cincinnati Ohio. I started my bridge career by caddying District 11's many tournaments; every single time someone knocked over their bidding box accidentally, I wondered what all the different colored cards were that I was picking up. My dad has been playing bridge since I was little, and after the Cincinnati Flying Pig regional one year, I finally asked him if I could learn how to play.

Not soon after, my father started a bridge club at a local school and every Monday, John Altman would drive us down there, and after it was over we would go to the local bridge club and play the evening session. From there, bridge just got to be a larger and larger thing in my life. The first national I went to was in Philadelphia, in the 2012 summer nationals. There I met so many of the junior and youth players that have been slowly taking over my life the past year or so. 

The largest accomplishment for me so far in my bridge career has probably been qualifying for the U26 Trials. A somewhat interesting story; John Altman and I didn't really know about the trials or the championships for a long time, and the day we got an email about it, I kind of pushed it aside and didn't really take note of it. A week or so before it began, other youth and junior players started messaging me about who my team was and everything, and then I kind of realized that it was a really cool opportunity. We couldn't find teammates for the U21 category, and our teammates, Jordan Kaye and Xu Wang, couldn't find teammates for the U26. So a few hours before the teams were required to be submitted, we entered as a team for the U26, with no one expecting us to do particularly well. But here I am.

In the bridge world, I am also a certified club director, and the District 11 youth coordinator, as I believe bridge is a great game, and it is always nice to see other bridge players who are as young as I am!