Thanks for your letter, I forwarded it to my several regular partners and to the directors of the three duplicate Bridge clubs who host the games for about 30 to 50 players here in Atlantic and Cape May counties. They brought me into the ACBL in March 2017 after years of playing Bridge during childhood (in my family, then as a college student, all pre-duplicate games) and as a Spades addict in the Army in Vietnam in my twenties. It was a whole new experience both for the challenge of learning to play better and for the pleasure of making friends with so many people with their breadth of life experiences.

I was working up through COVID (Martin de Bruin kept us busy online) and until I retired at the end of’23. I had squeezed in several tournaments and slowly helped my regular partner Larry Gash get his Life and Bronze Life Master on the same day with the few gold points that we finally won at Rehoboth in’24.

Dozens of people partnered with me (Vinny Freaney mainly in the summer when he came north). My opponents in the games as well as my partners were all helping each to up our game. All our clubs have a positive culture as led by the directors: Martin, Karen Sylvester, and Mike Bruno and by our expert players.

Since retirement I’ve been free to play face-to-face from 3 to 5 times a week. Attaining this new rank is a reflection on the pleasure these games with these players have given me.