Get Inspired

While serving in the US Air Force in Taiwan in 1960, I learned to play Double-Deck Pinochle. The Non-Commissioned-Officers (NCO) Club there held regular Pinochle tournaments with cash prizes, and I enjoyed playing a partnership card game. After a couple of months, a friend from my home state of Wisconsin approached a few of us and suggested that we learn to play Bridge, which also happened to be a partnership game. He loaned me his copy of Charles Goren’s book, and I read it cover-to-cover. We began to play rubber bridge in the NCO club. There might be two or three tables of Pinochle taking place, but there was also usually one table where the airmen and soldiers were playing bridge.

It wasn’t long before my friend became disenchanted with the simple Goren form of the game, and learned the Italian Neapolitan Club bidding system that was then in use by one of the pairs on the Italian Blue Team, the current world Bridge champions at the time. I dutifully learned the Neapolitan Club system, and we did well with it, even though it was highly artificial and complex. The fun was short-lived however, as my friend and playing partner was transferred to Bangkok, and bridge came to an end for me.

I didn’t play bridge again until after both of us had left the Air Force, and ten years later both of us were working at a mainframe computer company based in St. Paul, Minnesota. I moved to St. Paul with my family, but only lived there for about a year, so I did not play a lot of bridge. That changed when I moved to Ohio and met a computer programmer who liked to play duplicate bridge. I played at a local club a few times, and then at a tournament in Cleveland. I immediately became hooked. I joined the ACBL in 1976 and began my long and interrupted quest to become a Life Master.

The next step, of course, was to learn a less-artificial bidding system, so I learned to play a modified version of C.C. Wei’s Precision system. I found a couple of different partners in my then area of residence, the upper Midwest, and we did well, even though I was traveling a lot and could not play often. My Air Force friend would occasionally travel to my home and we would play in Regional and Sectional tournaments in the upper Midwest, culminating in the NABC in Chicago during the summer of 1980.

At that point, I started a new business venture, and my Bridge playing had to take a back seat to my business priorities. I did not play Bridge again until 2018, when I began to play at Atria-Seville in Las Vegas. Soon, I had a couple of regular partners, and began playing at all of the sanctioned clubs in Las Vegas and Henderson. Unfortunately, nobody I knew seemed to want to play Precision, so I relearned Standard American, and began to play that system.

I noticed that my partners and I would often be beaten by players who were playing the Two Over One Game Forcing system, so I learned that system in 2019 and began playing it regularly with my then-partner, Greg Bohn. It, along with my excellent partners, including Greg, Tom Moore, Barbara Dunkley, and Duane Beisner, allowed me to complete the requirements for Life Master last month online at the ACBL Regional Tournament. Now I have a new quest: Bronze Life Master.

In 2020, I planned to go to as many tournaments as possible to reach my goal of Silver Life Master (SLM) by the end of the year. Due to the pandemic I played my last face-to-face tournament at the Tucson Winter Regional in March. After being shut down and realizing that it was going to last for some time, I decided to get my SLM another way. Here in Sierra Vista, AZ we have a very small club but many great bridge players. Since I can’t stand playing with robots I took this opportunity of playing with several of these players on BBO. Not only did I learn a lot of good bridge but I also got my SLM with one day to spare in the year. High Desert Hands Bridge Club of Sunsites, an even smaller club than ours, was able to continue their game for many months, and we were able to play in a lot of them. So as terrible as the year was, I was able to put some of my spare time to good use and accomplish something worthwhile for me.

I started playing “party” bridge for the first time when I moved to Sierra Vista in 2020.

In the fall of 2013 my good friend and my bridge mentor, Margaret Glenn, convinced me to try bridge at our local club –Thunder Mountain. In November of 2013 I went with Margaret to my first bridge tournament in Tucson. While there she persuaded me to join the ACBL. I earned 12 masterpoints in Tucson. I was ecstatic and I was hooked!

Through the years Margaret has spent hours with untold patience mentoring me. I can’t thank her enough. My thanks also to our most constant partners at tournaments Jan Dragoo and Mary Blanchard.

While I enjoy playing bridge online with a partner I must say playing with a crazed robot is a challenge.

I try to play bridge three times a week at Thunder Mountain Bridge Club in Sierra Vista, AZ which I sincerely hope can re-open. We also play at the High Desert Hands Bridge Club of Sunsites.

I love going to tournaments, meeting new and seeing old friends, enjoying new places and new restaurants as well.

We bridge lovers all hope in this ever-changing world that the game we love so much will survive.

I started playing at ACBL when a partner at Duplicate asked me to go to the Bridge Club of Baltimore as she needed black points. Additional partners, Bridge lessons and a few years later, I achieved Life Master. Then, 5 years ago, we moved from Clarksville, Maryland to Broomfield, Colorado. Since coming here, I’ve played with several faithful partners at Boulder, Anthem Ranch and Golden from whom I’ve learned from and who’ve made it rewarding and fun. The very existence of Bridge Base On-Line (BBO) during the Pandemic has been a super blessing. BBO enabled me to continue playing with them and maintain friendships. At BBO I can play more often; against and with people throughout the world and in the robot world; achieving Silver Life Master. I’ve met so many interesting people playing bridge and look forward to seeing everyone once again playing those challenging games at the local club. Luv Colorado!

Go ACBL!!!

Like many bridge players, I first became exposed to bridge watching my parents play. They used to play “social” bridge with their friends in London but, as I recall as a kid, the only time my parents ever argued was over the bridge table. Their friends were even worse – hurling nasty insults across the table which, as a 10 or 11 year old kid, was somewhat unsettling to my impressionable ears. Anyway, I quickly learned the basics of the game and formed a foursome with three of my school friends who had also watched their parents play.

From the age of 11 or 12, we played regularly every Saturday night, starting at 7 or 8 pm and going through until 4 or 5 in the morning for the next 4 or 5 years. It was then that I realized that my other friends had begun to date and I quickly concluded that there were much more interesting ways to spend my Saturday nights and so the weekly bridge game disbanded.

I didn’t return to bridge again until my mid-twenties. I was in South Africa at the time working for an insurance company and began to play in the national insurance industry bridge league. My regular partner was an imposing Scottish alcoholic whose performance as a bridge player resembled a normal distribution bell curve. To be specific, he was a merely average player if he hadn’t had a drink all day but his performance improved dramatically as his alcohol intake increased and then, later, fell off a cliff. At the bridge table, I got to learn quickly the point when his abilities peaked, and urged him at that point to slow his drinking down so we could enjoy his masterful play for as long as possible. Unfortunately, there were too many occasions when he rapidly deteriorated but there was one game I particularly remember. We were down to play in a Swiss teams event in the insurance industry league against by far the best team. Each individual member was the local equivalent of a Grand Life Master or better.  Not only were they very good but they knew it too and, as I recall, had never lost a game. As the game began, they clearly relished the thought of pummeling us into the ground, particularly as my partner had his drinks neatly lined up on the side table. To cut a long story short, we beat them, thanks mainly to my partner’s alcohol-induced masterful psych bidding. We were narrowly ahead at the break and I remember them being so bamboozled that they went into a huddle for 10 or 15 minutes.

After I left South Africa, I didn’t play competitive bridge again until I retired several years ago – a 40-year hiatus. It was then that I joined Mountainview Bridge Club and was surprised to encounter bidding boxes for the first time and strange mechanical scoring devices. What was even stranger was that no-one played Acol. After my first embarrassing game at Mountainview, I took a few weeks off to read up on Standard American and, later, 2/1. After returning armed with my newly gained knowledge of American bidding systems, I started to become a little more confident – until I made an illegal bid. The bidding had gone 1D/IH before it came to me to bid. I had four spades and decided quickly that I had a perfect hand for a negative double. I confidently doubled and, to my dismay, there was a pause and then all three players around the table, almost in unison, and my partner being the loudest, called for the director. Well, I’d doubled my partner. Even the director didn’t know how to handle that one and had to retrieve her book.

To conclude, I never expected that bridge would be a significant part of my life as a retiree but the camaraderie at Mountainview, Northwest Tucson and at other clubs and local tournaments, despite the current hiatus, has ensured that will continue.