I started playing duplicate Bridge in March 1970, and immediately joined the ACBL. I was a student at DePauw University, in Indiana. We were 4 children in our family, close in age, and I had learned to play Bridge very young because we had the perfect amount of players for most card games or board games.

I continued to play in graduate school, at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana. They had a much larger and active Bridge Club, and I played with several partners, including weekly games and the occasional outside trip to a Sectional or Regional. We put together a Swiss Team and played in a Sectional, in Louisville KY, in October 1973- – which we won !

In September 1977, I left the United States for additional advanced education, and I did not return for almost 10 years. I did play some Bridge in London and in Athens, Greece, but accrued very little in the way of masterpoints. In 1998, I moved to Corning, NY with my family, but did not play any Bridge until I taught my oldest son, and we played in the local Corning Club (maybe 2000 ?). Soon thereafter, my youngest son also wanted to play, so my two boys played, and I did not.

All things changed with COVID. My youngest son had to leave school and came home. Bridge Base Online gave us the opportunity to play regularly for 3 months, and we continued online for almost 2 years. The Elmira Club took over the Corning Club for Face-to-Face play, and I have played there regularly since April 2022, accruing the points that I now have for Life Master.

I have the highest praise and commendations for the Elmira Bridge Club, including all the players, and the organizer/director Pat Stadelmaier.   I could not have accomplished this goal without them.

I’m 84 years old and it took me 4 years to get 50 points. I started out in Fort Collins, Colorado and only moved to Pennsylvania in December 2022.  I actually got a portion of a point years and years ago in Florida.

The Harrisburg Bridge club is very helpful in learning Bridge with free lessons and all kinds of offerings for special lessons, along with lots of games, opportunities and mentors.  I have decided that I cannot learn very many conventions so I stick to the basics.

I am 67 years old and fully retired since fall of 2024. I was working part time the two years before that. I have been an electrical engineer my whole career.

I started playing bridge when I was about 24 years old. I always liked card games and board games. My family played Pinochle and I learned when I was young. I always wanted to learn how to play bridge and even got a book out of the library when I was a teenager but found the description of bidding overwhelming.

When I was around 25 years old (1983), some fellow coworkers and I decided we would try to start playing bridge during lunchtime. Some of them tried it a few times in college. I purchased some bridge books at a local bookstore, including Contract Bridge Complete by Ernest Rovere and Contract Bridge for Beginners by Charles Goren. I also eventually purchased Modern Bridge Conventions by Root/Pavlicek.

We really loved playing and eventually one of my coworkers and I decided to take an adult evening class (Intermediate Bridge) once a week for some duration (maybe 6 weeks; I don’t recall). The last class we asked our instructor about bridge clubs. She directed us to one that Billy Gough was running near Glenside, PA. We tried it a few times and got our butts kicked. Obviously, we were nowhere near as good as we thought we were!

I started going for my master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 1984. I discovered that there was a bridge club there (run by Danny Sprung) that had a game once a week. One of my coworkers and I started playing there.

We started improving and even started improving at Billy Gough’s club. We joined the ACBL at the end of 1984. I noticed a Sectional Tournament in Cherry Hill in the spring of 1985. I asked one of the guys at the Penn bridge club about it and he said we should definitely go. They had beginner events, such as 49’er games

We played 2 or 3 sessions at this tournament. I remember we did poorly in the 49’er game and that demoralized us. But later we played in an open game and got second place in our section! We couldn’t believe it. Obviously, we were somewhat lucky, but it really motivated us. Since that first tournament, we started going to almost every local event there was, including regionals, etc. And started playing 2-3 nights a week at different clubs, including Raffles in Philadelphia.

In 1988 four of us tried out for the non-life master GNT and won our district. We traveled to the 1988 summer nationals in Salt Lake City to compete against all the districts. Unfortunately, we got knocked out the first day in a 3-way match. It was a 3-way tie all around, but we lost out in the victory points.  Still, we had a great time and played for several days in other events.

I became a life master in 1993 and a bronze life master in 2000. However, I got married in 1995 and we had a son in 1997. Since my wife is a career woman, I had to cut back on my extracurricular activities to help raise our son. Bottom line: I gave up tournament bridge. I still played at the bridge club once a week but acquiring masterpoints was a much slower process.

Then in 2020, COVID hit. All clubs suddenly closed. I have not had much interest in on-line play, so I didn’t play (except socially a few times) for 4 years. I understand clubs started up before then, but no evening games. Since I was not yet retired, I could not really play during the day. Also, my regular partner was not retired.

In April 2024, we were visiting friends in Florida. They live in a 55+ community, and this place has an ACBL sanctioned bridge club. My friend (who does not have much experience) suggested we play. We did and this gave me the itch to start playing again. The next day I reached out to my regular partner to see when he was going to retire. By coincidence, he retired the day before! After my vacation we started playing again at North Penn.   And I got back into it with a vengeance. I have a few regular partnerships and try to play 3 times a week. We formed a team for the GNT B team event, and qualified to play at the Philadelphia nationals this last summer. We didn’t make it past the first day, but we played in other events where we had moderate success.

Since I had approximately 780 master points when I started playing again, it was not a great challenge to hit 1000 in less than 2 years.  Hopefully I’ll hit Ruby over the next several years!