![]() “When Bill first got in touch with us and invited us to play bridge with him we thought someone was playing a joke on us. Life is strange sometimes,” Gitelman said. He said they’ve played together about a dozen times. The irony of having a software and bridge connection with someone so famous is not lost on him. Gitelman said he was the first kid on his block to a have a computer, around age 12 in 1977. So I became their fourth in a bridge game and we became friends.” “There were three of them and they thought that I might be an interesting person to invite. “Eventually Warren showed some of our software to Bill, who liked it, and one day they needed an extra person to play bridge,” Gitelman said. Team USA-BBO as seen on the tournament website. So when it came to bridge, the bridge between Gitelman and Gates was Buffett. “He said, ‘I like this, I’d like to order some more software from you.’ And when I took his name and address I realized who we were talking to, so along with the software I sent him a letter saying, ‘Can you give us some business advice?’ because we had no idea what we were doing, we were young and just bridge players.” “ liked it and he got in touch with us and just phoned us one day out of the blue,” Gitelman said. The couple got to meet Gates through Buffett, who they met around 1994 when the Berkshire Hathaway billionaire was given one of their educational CDs. Bill Gates chats with teammates before the start of play. It was before Windows, actually,” he said.Īround 2000, the couple created what became Bridge Base Online, the largest online game site for bridge, which is what Gates and his teammates are using this week to compete against teams from China and Italy. Gitelman said about 100,000 people log in from all over the world and play bridge on the site every day. “This was before everyone had an internet connection. Gitelman and Winestock started a company in the 1990s writing educational software for bridge. “The gray is very foreign to us,” Gitelman told GeekWire as team members assembled for photos and received medals for their participation Team USA-BBO members, from left, Jill Meyers, Bob Hamman, Fred Gitelman, Sheri Winestock, Bill Gates and Sharon Osberg. ![]() On an exceptionally gray and rainy Halloween in Seattle, the Microsoft co-founder even apologized to Gitelman and Winestock for the weather, as they had flown in from Las Vegas to take part. Gates, a longtime bridge player, was invited to be part of team USA-BBO ( Bridge Base Online), along with Bob Hamman, the world’s all-time top player Jill Meyers, No. 2 all-time women’s champion Sharon Osberg, a regular partner of Gates and his bridge pal, Warren Buffett Fred Gitelman, the founder of BBO and Sheri Winestock, wife of Gitelman. One of the world’s richest men, Bill Gates, just happened to be among those playing. In a small room off the lobby of Seattle’s Silver Cloud Hotel, some of the world’s best bridge players assembled on Monday morning to take on a team from China as the three-day Online Bridge World Cup kicked off. Bill Gates begins tournament play in the Online Bridge World Cup from the Silver Cloud Hotel in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood on Monday morning.
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