Written by Jack WillgruberSo, sometime in the late 1990’s Dave and I made our first foray into the duplicate bridge world at the Raffles Bridge Club off City Line Avenue. For the past 20+ years, Dave and I have not gotten to play as much bridge as we would have liked (due to work and life commitments), but we kept at it and played enough over the years to slowly but steadily accumulate masterpoints.
Fast-forward to this year when Dave and I qualified for the Flight C GNT in Chicago with our long-time teammates Jeff & Lou. Entering the tournament, Dave had over 290 master points but I had only 277.67 points. That said, by making it to the semi-finals of our Flight C GNT tournament, we ended up receiving 22.5 masterpoints. That meant I just made the Life Master ranking by a fraction of a point! Whew!!!! But even more gratifying was to be able to cross that Life Master ranking threshold at the same time as my brother Dave. Our Mom & Dad died a year and a half ago, but somehow I felt them both with Dave and me while we played in Chicago.
If I may, I’d like to go back to the beginning 1969 at Virginia Tech. in Blacksburg VA. I was walking down a dorm hall when I peeked in an open dorm room where 4 guys had 1 suitcase standing on end and another on top playing a card game. Being from New York but going to college in Virginia, I said “what are y’all doing?” They responded, playing bridge, whereupon I responded “may I watch” and they said yes. It wasn’t long before I asked “can I join” and again they said yes, and again it wasn’t long before the game spilled out into the floor study lounge and became almost a 24 hr game.
I thought it would be fun to learn to play bridge in August of 2022, after learning about Buster Keaton’s lifelong commitment to the game. I tried to teach myself, which did not go well. And so I sought out a teacher and was eventually led to Nick Nelson via Mary Miller. I attended his classes and searched for a partner, and played on BBO constantly. I had several people who were kind enough to let me drag them down for several in-person club games, and I took advantage of BBO’s daylong tournaments just to keep practicing.
I started to play the pair game in my club – the Bridge Studio of Delaware in this January, where the manager, my partners and the members all help me to achieve my bridge goal – happiness in my life journey.
I learned to play bridge when I was 10 years old. I played social bridge through my high school and college years, and continued into my early adult life. I never played duplicate. I then stopped playing for many years, but always kept up with the bridge columns. After I retired in 2011, a friend asked me to substitute for him at a club in center city Philadelphia. I typically played one day a week, then switched clubs to the Jenkintown club. I moved to the King of Prussia arwea and also play at the Valley Forge club , but still only one day a week on average.