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. 🇹🇼♣️