Taipei Forcing Club

I used to boycott IntoBridge because Taiwan was not in its country selector. A country dropdown looks trivial until your country is not in it. So I closed the tab and played bridge elsewhere.

Recently I gave it another try, and there it was: Taiwan, flag and all. So I stayed. Two weeks and 549 ranked games later, I became Taiwan’s first Ace, ranked #1 in Taiwan and #338 in the world.

Naturally I wanted to know when Taiwan was added. I found no announcement, so I asked Codex to investigate. I even disclosed my ulterior motive up front:

Humans are not completely rational and would waste tokens on showing off.

The investigation went considerably further than the brag required. Codex compared archived copies of the country list in the site’s JavaScript. The old list had 195 options; the current one has 197. The only additions are Taiwan and Hong Kong. Their flag files (tw.svg, hk.svg) carry exactly the same server timestamp, 25 February 2026 15:34:12 UTC, while most other flags date back to 2022. That is not an official release date, but it strongly suggests both were added together that day.

Was it rational to spend tokens on this? No. But the flag is there, my name sits on top of it, and now the date is on the record. Tokens well spent. 🇹🇼♣️

I want Natsuki to notify me when she goes down. This task is harder than I have thought. How can I count on a failing bot to send a message? I cannot trust the hosting provider, either. They may be the reason why the bot goes down. I have to rely on a third party.

#[shuttle_runtime::async_trait]
impl Service for Natsuki {
    async fn bind(mut self, addr: std::net::SocketAddr) -> Result<(), Error> {
        use axum::{response::NoContent, routing::get, Router};
        let router = Router::new().route("/", get(|| async { NoContent }));

        let (axum, serenity) = futures::join!(
            shuttle_axum::AxumService(router).bind(addr),
            self.0.start_autosharded(),
        );
        serenity.map_err(CustomError::new)?;
        axum
    }
}

use dotenv::var;
use serde_json::json;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> anyhow::Result<()> {
    let client = reqwest::Client::new();
    let ping = || async {
        const ENDPOINT: &str = "https://natsuki-oehk.shuttle.app/";
        anyhow::ensure!(client.head(ENDPOINT).send().await?.status().is_success());
        Ok(())
    };
    if let Err(error) = ping().await {
        client
            .post(var("WEBHOOK")?)
            .json(&json!({ "content": error.to_string() }))
            .send()
            .await?;
    }
    Ok(())
}

An o’ish relay is a forcing bid that is natural or has extra strength. Famous examples are Birthright (Kokish Relay, 2♣-2♦-2♥) and Polish Club (1♣), after which I name this treatment. I advocate playing a transfer o’ish relay instead, the relay that either transfers to the next suit or has extra strength. This method renders the negative response nonforcing and allows more descriptive rebids.

I’ve been with my girlfriend for 2+ months and finally found the red and blue mascots for my bridge bidding systems.

• Litten for Litten Polish Club
• Oshawott for Mijumaru Blue Club

Oshawott is my girlfriend’s favorite pokémon. She thinks that Litten is my pokémon since my fursona is an orange cat. These two pokémons fit the color stickers from WBF systems policy and also the Red Oni, Blue Oni trope.

By the way, recently I reached 1800+ Elo on Cuebids. I took a screenshot because I not only was proud of it but also thought it cannot last long.

I’m rewriting Natsuki (3.0) in Rust for several reasons. You can track my progress at this branch.

1. Hosting: Free hosting tend to assume that node.js projects are websites. They put the app to sleep when idle, which effectively takes down a Discord bot. I’m now self-hosting Natsuki, but I’m not a fan of that. Rewriting in another language solves this issue.
2. Economy commands: Shuttle provides free hosting even with 500 MB of database. This means we can make stateful features in the future, such as economy and games.
3. Also please note that I’m considering remove NSFW functions. Discord has been more and more hostile to NSFW features. Making Natsuki SFW can spread her further.

I made a new icon for the Taipei Forcing Club and this site. This icon honors both my hobbies: contract bridge and Japanese mahjong.

I used Inkscape to create the icon. I’m not a graphic designer, but I’m happy with the result. This icon combines lietxia’s 🀙 (1p) mahjong tile and ♣ in Noto Sans TC.