Kevin Castner hails from the San Francisco area, but is delighted now to call both the UK and Germany his part time homes (since he doesn’t have one anymore). After over 30 years at a boring desk job, he restarted playing tournament bridge at the Summer Congress in Brighton in 2014 and has enjoyed middling success, and failure, since then. Kevin has never represented any country (at anything, if we’re honest) and his chances (thanks a little to the EBL/WBF) aren’t improving.
He enjoys hiking, biking, tennis and creating custom treasure hunts (London, Paris, San Francisco).
He is happily married to Anja, who happily doesn’t play bridge at all. He has two children and two granddaughters back in the USofA. None of them play bridge, and all of them think he’s nuts for spending so much time doing so, though they don’t seem to begrudge the fact that he’s frittering away their inheritances.
Phil King lives in Harrow-on-the-Hill with his wife Su. He is a full time bridge player and coach and has won all the major domestic competitions, including four Gold Cups. Successes further from home include a Silver medal in the 2016 Winter Games and a Bronze in the 2018 Champions Cup. As well as being coach to three Gold medal winning bridge teams, Phil is patiently waiting for the WBF to hand over the Gold medal for the 2008 Olympiad, where he was captain of the current Open Silver medalists.
Brian McGuire: I began playing bridge relatively late in my thirties. 2001 was my previous appearance at this event after which as a FWC (future world champion) I vowed to play in it again. This has at last occured but with my ambition of becoming a WC nowhere near from being fulfilled! Despite this setback, I still enjoy playing both at home and abroad, in the United States and this week in Prague where I have just played in the Winter Games.
Trevor Mathews is a former junior international, now appearing in the Lederer for a second time. He is better known as the author of a number of bridge books on Card Reading and Polish Club.
David Muller first learnt to play bridge at the age of 14 at school, where an enthusiastic Maths teacher decided to teach a small group of pupils to play. After leaving school he went to Queen Mary College, London, where he met many of the players who he would play regularly with thereafter.
Workwise he worked in Information Management for British Airways for twenty-three years, and shortly after leaving that took over running a bridge club, which he continued doing until Covid came along and forced it to move online..
David made his International debut in the Senior Europeans in Ostend in 2018, the team qualified for the World Championships in Wuhan, China in 2019 and went on to win the Silver medal there in the D’Orsi Trophy.
David had been single most of his life, but that all changed when he met Lorinda in a chat room belonging to the Jdate dating site. Lorinda was in Chicago so for several years they conducted a Long Distance Relationship, but they were married in Chicago in 2016, and after a lengthy battle with the Home Office Lorinda eventually was able to move to the UK.
Gordon Rainsford will be better known to most of the players here as a TD than a player, since he directs tournaments for the EBU, the EBL and the WBF. This keeps him from playing as much as he would like, although he did once before play in this event. He is also the CEO of the EBU.
Lederer Trophy 