Randy Ingersoll lives in Port Orange, Florida, USA with his wonderful wife, Diane. He is a recovering chess-a-holic who happened across Hive® in 2006. After playing a few games online at BoardSpace he promptly forgot about the game and played sparingly for the next four years. In July 2010, he visited BoardSpace and again played the game, this time with a bit more enthusiasm. He quickly fell in love with the game and set it as his goal to become a better player. Under the tutelage of Christian Sperling (Eucalyx on BoardSpace) he rapidly improved and his enthusiasm became even more intense. His improvement continued playing against other BoardSpace opponents, including Jason Wallace (DrRaven), Dimitris Kopsidas (Fumanchu), and David Gburek (BlackMagic) all of whom quickly became online friends. In the spring of 2011, he entered and won the 2011 BoardSpace Online Championship, beating his friends, Fumanchu in the semi-finals and DrRaven in the finals. Since there did not seem to be any books available on the subject, he decided that he would write one himself. With editorial and layout help from both Christian and Jason, the book became available in May 2012. Thanks also goes to Jeffrey Yang, who designed the offline Hive® reviewer used to review hundreds of games searching for examples to demonstrate the important concepts discussed in this book.

In order to continue promoting this great game, Randy started a YouTube channel, aptly named 'Play Hive Like a Champion.'

Randy wishes you the best in your learning to play the game. May you enjoy and benefit from this book. He looks forward to playing you at BoardSpace or BoardGameArena. Feel free to challenge him to a game. You may contact him at RandyPlaysHive@gmail.com.