Matthew Tran Clegg, 33, yesterday was named the 1997 IBPA Personality of the Year. The award was accepted for him by IBPA President Henry Francis.

Matt founded OKbridge, bridge on Internet, in 1991. The system now has almost 10,000 subscribers from more than 70 nations. Some of the world's leading players use the service to practice with distant partners. Bill Gates, America's wealthiest man, has tried OKbridge. Probably nothing in recent years has opened bridge to new players everywhere than OKbridge.

Internet is also suitable for the disabled and house-bound. It attracts young players who prefer a computer keyboard to a bridge club. The Fifth Chair Foundation has been created to encourage talented young players on OKbridge by providing them with leading players as partners. The OKbridge program is set up so that you can play with your favorite partner, join a table as a single, play pairs or teams, keep track of your records in both teams and pairs - even converse with the other players at the table. In addition, it is possible to be a kibitzer at the table of your choice.

Matt's wife Merja reports: Matt was born in Davis, California, grew up in Rhode Island and in Athens, Georgia, and didn't come back to California until he went college at UC Riverside. After college he studied math at UC Berkeley where he got a Master's degree. He later switched to computer science and came to UC San Diego in 1991. He has been working on his PhD on "Distributed Real-Time Systems".

When he has time off from developing Okbridge and work on his Ph.D, he spends it with his daughter Anna, and Merja. Matt and Merja are learning how to sail. But no matter how busy Matt is, he would never skip an episode of Star Trek Voyager or Babyion5 on TV. Matt loves science fiction and anything to do with space and space research. (That's probably why he married an Alien!)

Matt met Merja when she came to the USA in 1989 from her native Finland to study with Matt's father, a geneticist. When she returned to Finland they kept in touch via Internet. This was the motivation for Okbridge. They were married in 1990