Ozi, the YouTuber making bridge accessible

ID

Funbridge username: Ozikiewicz

Nationality: I am Polish, but at the same time, I’ve always felt like a citizen of the world.

Date of birth: 18 December 1991

Playing style: Somewhat balanced, or at least that’s what I’d like it to be 😉 Also, I’ve always been very focused on the bidding part of the game. The multitude of options to « sell » your hand has always been mind-boggling and exciting at the same time.

At what age did you start playing bridge?

I learned to play around the age of 17, but it was a very chaotic start with little mentoring and lots of self-teaching. It was like that for maybe 2-3 years and then I took a long break with very little, if any, practice. Finally, the last 3-4 years have been those when I’ve gained the most experience and structured a lot of my knowledge and techniques to perform better as a player. Who would have thought that it would also help me share these knowledge and methods further?

What is your best bridge memory?

Probably every time I declared Blackwood 4NT heading towards slam/grand slam. My heart always started to pound faster with excitement and anticipation for the contract.

What inspired you to become a bridge influencer?

I feel like I’ve always had a talent for explaining complicated things in an easy to understand way, while also being very passionate and enthusiastic about sharing my knowledge. That combined with my unconditional love for bridge was a natural way to express myself and try to propagate that hobby or discipline further into the world!

Hopefully, someday, bridge will be followed on a scale comparable to chess. That would be my dream come true and I’d love to add my building block to that future!

If you had to encourage someone to play bridge, what would you say?

Playing bridge will help you with everything in life. It’s a great hobby in itself if you love solving logic puzzles, playing card games, etc. But it will also help you develop your deduction skills, stay disciplined, trust your partner and take responsibility only when in position to do so.

You will encounter a lot of situations where you need to manage conflicts and work together, communicate accurately and efficiently in order to achieve your goals. This will translate into basically everything else in your life: your relationships, your professional career, not to mention the tons of great people from very different backgrounds you will meet.

What are your dreams and goals as a bridge player?

For now, I think I have more work to do and potential to unleash in promoting and propagating bridge. Keep your fingers crossed and support the channel! 🙂

What do you like most about Funbridge?

Funbridge really struck me as a « living environment ». The refreshed UI, the many options available (various tournaments, challenges against stars, learning modules, quizzes, articles, etc.) and the easy navigation through the app. It really feels like people are constantly working on the portal to make it a lively place to play bridge and interact with each other. But if I had to choose one specific thing, it would probably be the possibility to customise the bidding with robots — that’s just wow!