The Principle of Restricted Talent

Book excerpt: An anthology of humorous stories featuring Chthonic, the bridge-playing robot. The stories draw unmercifully funny portraits of human bridge players, as Chthonic's bridge brilliance and abrasive and ill-concealed contempt for his human creators leave them all in his wake. A particular target is the pompous Director of the Cybernetics Research Institute, whose opinion of his own bridge expertise differs greatly from that of his protigi. Some of these stories have appeared in The Bridge World magazine, where the characters are established as firm reader favorites. Danny Kleinman of Los Angeles is a prolific bridge writer, theorist, professional player, and teacher, who is a regular contributor to several bridge magazines. He is a Contributing Editor of The Bridge World, and is one of the moderators of 'The Master Solvers' Club' in that magazine. He also writes about backgammon, another game which he plays at an expert level. Nick Straguzzi of Mullica Hill, NJ, is a software analyst specializing in artificial intelligence and knowledge management. Nick has researched ways in which computer game theory could be applied to bridge, but concluded that it would be far easier to write about a perfect bridge-playing computer than to actually build one.