story – Page 3 – ACBL District 4

Judy Cohen – Life Master

Bridge is my number 1 passion in life (after the welfare of my family). I started playing duplicate bridge in a beginner’s game at my local club almost 15 years ago. My first tournament was a regional one in Cherry Hill in a venue that no longer exists. My partner and I were entered in an “under 5 points” category. We won and I still have the glass that was embossed with Winner! District 4 Regional.

We rarely went to tournaments because my partner had no interest in traveling for bridge. I received a sprinkling of red and silver points, mostly through STaC games at our local club. When COVID hit, my partner did not want to play online so I found a partner who was interested in doing so. We clicked, studied our game together, and took a few sets of lessons once COVID was over. We became more serious players, discussing the hands we played each week once they appeared online. We also began traveling to District 4 tournaments and discovered that we enjoy the camaraderie and the competition. In my most recent tournament in Rehoboth Beach, I became a Life Master. Now I would like to help my partner achieve this goal as well.

Mike Spitulnik – Sapphire Life Master

I took up the game while in my 30’s, am self taught and have played almost exclusively in club games for the past 50 years. I have been the Ace of Clubs many times, but have fewer than 45 gold points and have been fortunate in that rankings above Life Master have been “grandfathered.” About 3100 of my 3500 points are black points, and most of the remaining 400 points were also won at club games.

I mentioned that I am self taught and I’ll share with you a story that I still enjoy telling. I learned to play from a book by Charles Goren. The book was structured so that you were given a lesson and at the bottom of the page was a question with multiple choice answers. Each answer required you to go to a different page in the book. If you selected the right answer, the new page gave you the next lesson. If you selected a wrong answer, you were told to go back and retake the lesson. The lesson on page one was, “A bridge deck is 52 cards, 13 cards in each of 4 suits.” The question was, “What is a bridge deck?” and the there were 2 choices for answers, one of them being, “A bridge deck is 52 cards plus 2 Jokers.” This is nonsense, I thought and turned to page 2. There in huge letters was, “YOU DID NOT FOLLOW DIRECTIONS. GO BACK TO PAGE ONE AND RETAKE THE LESSON.” From this, I learned that in bridge, expect to be criticized on occasion, but learn from your mistakes.

Sharon Durr – Silver Life Master

Here’s to the Persistent & Undaunted!

To put it succinctly my ACBL accomplishments have been achieved in a round-about manner.

We’ve lived in Houston, TX, Sarasota, FL, and Ithaca, NY, and in all those places I’ve been lucky enough to find kind partners with patience, willingness to learn, and good humor (though have had some tearful moments). I’ve also played at Clubs in Amsterdam, and London, and appreciate the portability of the game.

The love of the game, the willingness to take the bruises of failure, and to indulge my passion for figuring things out are what has gotten me to this point. I do love the challenge, and especially appreciate the camaraderie our Club in Ithaca offers.

I offer my thanks to all with whom I’ve played, particularly Ann, Diane, Betty, Marcia, and Janelle. I’ve learned from them, and with them.

Nancy Steele – Gold Life Master

In the fall of 2002 I was still working full time and was looking for people to play bridge with one evening a week. I learned about a game at Rehoboth Beach Country Club on Thursday nights and when I went there, I had the great fortune of meeting Dini Romito, ambassador extraordinaire for the game of bridge. I had never heard of the ACBL and knew nothing about conventions like transfers, negative doubles and weak two bids. I was a “kitchen table” player, aware of Stayman and Blackwood and little else. But Dini encouraged me, introduced me to serious duplicate play and was a fabulous mentor. I earned a little over 5 masterpoints that year and began taking lessons.

Most importantly, I met a lot of terrific people who also liked bridge and wanted to improve their skills. I also found experienced players who were willing to share their knowledge and expertise. Over the years many players helped me get masterpoints and I want to thank all of them. I’m reluctant to try to name them because I’m sure I will leave someone out–but you know who you are! I do want to give a special shout-out to Jane Myers, the partner I’ve played with the longest and the most and the person with whom I qualified to go to NAP games at Nationals a couple of times when we were in the top 3 pairs in our District 4 flights.

I began playing bridge more frequently in retirement and I must say that during the years of the pandemic BBO online bridge had been a lifeline for me. I got to “socialize” with my various partners and I had something to look forward to on a regular basis. I honestly didn’t think I would ever live long enough to get 2500 masterpoints but it happened and I had a lot of fun along the way!

Sandy Harrison – NABC Master

There has been nothing magical for me in attaining NABC Master status, mostly just playing enough in the past few years to accumulate the requisite number and colors of MPs. There has been no recruiting of bridge experts to play with me, and no classes or lessons either (although I do read many articles and some books). I played bridge socially somewhat in my twenties, and then casually for about five years prior to the pandemic leading up to my retirement in 2019. However, it was my COVID-isolation discovery in 2020 of BBO that launched my current trajectory. While I still very much enjoy playing face to face, both socially and competitively, BBO has enabled me to play with much enhanced flexibility (including remotely with my brother who lives too far away to conveniently play with me in most face to face events).

I also have found playing with BBO robots to be an excellent way to learn bridge, especially because of the ability to hover over bids to see their intended meanings. And more generally, BBO is much more helpful for reviewing where things went wrong on hands with poor results as opposed to verbal post-mortems after in-person play. However, I do sometimes wonder whether, as smart as the robots are, their programmers deliberately direct them to occasionally make head-scratchingly unsound bids or plays – maybe it is to inject a human element into their games!

In any event, despite being fully cognizant that an 8-year old not that long ago became a Life Master, I am under no illusions as to how much more I need to improve and persist to achieve that status myself. And that would still leave me about 99,500 MPs behind Jeff Meckstroth! But it’s the fun and challenging journey along the way that really counts, and bridge is great brain exercise too.

Jeff Rohrbeck – Life Master

While I learned bridge basics while young, I never played seriously until a coworker who was an accomplished bridge player got us started playing at lunch in the early 90s. This grew into social playing, novice games with my father-in-law at the Bridge Club of Delaware County, and eventually club play at North Penn in Landsdale.

Eventually we developed a core group of players that put together to form teams. Some of us went to the Philadelphia NABC in 1996 where we won a trophy in some side contest – we thought we knew everything there was to know about bridge! 30 years later I now realize I’m a bridge imbecile with so much more to learn.

While I had limited time to play bridge in those years, our base four-person team, along Jack & Dave Willgruber and Lou Primavera, continued to play in area team events. Once I retired from full-time work, I was able to start playing more frequently. While I continue to develop my pairs play, teams remains my favorite form of play. Our team qualified for the 2023 GNT flight C in Chicago, making it to the semifinals before losing to the eventual champions.

I do my best to try to get new players involved in duplicate. I have a few advancing players I partner with regularly, and a few more just getting started. There’s fun in bridge for everyone, and we need to get new players involved to keep it going. During the covid lockdown, I was able to get my 90-year-old parents on BBO to play with my brother, who is also just beginning. Our group phone calls and playing sessions were one of the few socialization opportunities they had during that period. They are now playing live bridge in their community.

4 THE LOVE OF BRIDGE

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