When I was young, board and card games were a staple in our house. My father tried to teach all three of us children to play bridge, but with no interest from us. We had the cheater table cloth with the 4 card major bidding system and leads and more things than I can remember on it. At that age, it just didn’t click for me, although there was always the notion of the game in my brain.

I went on to college and stayed there for a long time, eventually earning my PhD in mathematics and landing a tenured job as Professor of Mathematics at SUNY Oswego. Along the way I focused my non-work time on physical activities, such as running in marathons, horse-back-riding, and flying my hot air balloon .

Fast forward to 2008: I was comfortably employed in my job, but health issues were getting in the way of my physical activities. I was trying to keep in touch with my older brother, Richard, who had learned bridge, and was living in Thailand. The best way to do that was to join BBO, where he was an established member spending his days running team-matches in the main room. Hence my online persona RedCat08 came into existence in 2008 (Red is my favorite color, I am a cat lady as I had 8 cats at that time). I’d get on to chat with my brother, who would make me his co-host so I could chat with everyone. His friends would ask me to be their partner in a team match and I would have to confess that I didn’t know how to play bridge.

Fate stepped in. I decided I would “surprise” my brother by learning to play bridge.
What a clear indication that I really did know nothing. It was around this time that the wonderful Maureen Hall envisioned the BIL, (beginner-intermediate-lounge). It was a privilege to study with the volunteers who stepped forward to run classes for beginners. I was in their first offerings of Bridge 101, 102, 201, and 202. There would have been no way I would get to this point without Maureen and the dedicated teachers and supporters of the BIL. It was quite the switch, being the student again.

Friends in the local Oswego County Bridge led me to face-to-face play. What a difference. Not good, not bad, just different. I let BBO slip away due to declining health. The Oswego Bridge Club is quite small, with many of the folks being life masters. My competitive nature appealed to people in the club who would say, hey Sue, want to go to (insert name of some sectional or some regional here) to which I’d say (given the time and energy), yes!! Especially for team matches. COVID hit, so what to do? With the club shutting in NY state at an appropriate time, I went back to my bridge roots in BBO. Our Oswego club with too few members could not possibly make a virtual club online but the Rochester NY club invited us to play as guests. Thank you for the invite Bruce! It was lovely to return to BBO although I miss face-to-face.

Combining virtual club play, a couple of the bigger ACBL events on BBO, and battling the robots, got me over the 200 point mark to make it to NABC. It is difficult to imagine at age 65, having just made it to 200 master points, that I will make it to the 500 points needed for Life Master, but that doesn’t mean I’ll quit being competitive. I hope to be able, in the future, to combine the best of both BBO and f2f.

I embrace, as should we all, what Maureen Hall says: “Cherish your partner and respect your opposition.” See some of you in the “BBO Bridge Cloud”.

While I’m pleased that I reached the NABC level – getting there was quite a challenge being confronted with the coronavirus and club closures. Out of adversity comes new challenges, opportunities and lessons to be learned!

I don’t always have regular ACBL partners and had to take my destiny in my own hands by traveling weekly to the wonderful South Jersey Bridge Center in Cherry Hill, NJ before the Covid-19 shutdown. It’s appropriate to use the adage ” it takes a village ” and I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the variety of ACBL/ABA players that helped me succeed on this journey: Claude Weems, John Oehrle, Joyce Cosby, Lois Davis, Karen Hill, Geraldine Zachery, Andy Antipin and Leon Ragland – many thanks to all of you!

Hopefully, help may be coming in the next 6 – 9 months with an effective Covid-19 vaccine allowing some clubs to resume indoor playing.

I first played bridge in 1961 when I was 8. I was visiting my paternal grandmother in Pittsburgh. One of her regular bridge foursome couldn’t make it one afternoon, so Gran sat me down opposite her, gave me a rudimentary lesson, and we played. The three ladies were very indulgent and I had a great time. I already loved card games and this experience immediately hooked me on bridge.

When I got home, I started reading my parents’ bridge books, Goren’s manual, Simon’s Why You Lose at Bridge and the daily bridge column in the local paper, but there was no one to play with. My parents and I were only 3. We needed 4. I never played with my mother at all and I didn’t play with my father until he was in his seventies. But during the summers when I was in high school I could sometimes pick up games with my friends Walker Hamilton, Beth Hamilton and McKayla Dockum.

When I got to Bowdoin in 1970, I found plenty of bridge players for the first time in my life. John Mace and I partnered against Steve Wendler and Noel Webb in Wendler’s room almost every night during our first year. Then I met Ken Santagata and discovered that I had to unlearn everything I knew about bridge and relearn it again from scratch. Gran believed in 4-card majors, sound opening bids, sound overcalls, 16-18 no trump, strong twos, few if any preempts, and taking no chances. Stone-age Goren. But Kenny taught me 5-card majors, light overcalls, strong two clubs, weak twos, and the basic Kaplan-Sheinwold system. I developed a regular partnership with Jim Burke. We did quite well together in the weekly tournaments in the student union, directed by Kenny and taken seriously by no one. For my first 2 years at Bowdoin, I played about 8 hours a day, every day. Then it dawned on me that I was really there to get an education, not to play bridge. So, at the end of my sophomore year, I quit cold turkey. Jim was graduating anyway. My GPA immediately went from 2.8 to 3.6 and stayed there.

Except for a few sporadic games in grad school, I didn’t play again for 18 years. When my first wife gave birth to our second child, she took an extended maternity leave at my parents’ house in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. But after a week I had to return to work in Syracuse. Finding myself home alone for a few weeks until my family got home, I buzzed through the Yellow Pages looking for something to do in the meantime. I found a place called the Bridge Studio, so I went down there one night just to see what was what. They played duplicate. Serious duplicate. But the owner, Bill Barrinngton, was very friendly and welcomed novices like me with open arms. Again, I was hooked.

Serious duplicate bridge worthy of tournament play in the ACBL is a whole other animal. For the second time in my life, I had to unlearn everything I knew about bridge and relearn it again from scratch. My new partners and I experimented with aggressive, creative, and scientific bidding methods. I learned how to count cards the right way,I did well and won the Bridge Studio’s novice trophy in 1991. That fall I attended my first North American Bridge Championships in Indianapolis and won the 0-300 Zip Swiss with a pick-up team. I liked picking up partners whenever I was on the road, because I could learn new gadgets and strategies from them.

In April 1992, when I had only 95 masterpoints, my first wife and I split up and each of us became a single parent with financial difficulties. I didn’t play much bridge until July 1993, when the personal, parental, and financial problems had pretty much sorted themselves out. Then I returned with a vengeance, determined to make Life Master ASAP. One Friday night in September 1993, when I had only 111 masterpoints and only 5.2 gold points, I announced at the Bridge Studio (where I had just played a 46% game with one of my regular partners) that I was going to drive directly from there to the Regional in Springfield, MA, pick up a partner, and get all the rest of the gold points I needed for Life Master. No one believed me and several people laughed. But I picked up John Hackett, an expert from Maine, and when I returned home on Monday, I had 137 masterpoints including 30.72 gold. All the skeptics and mockers at the Bridge Studio ate crow.

Because I still had a lot of family responsibilities, I didn’t play as often as I wanted. When I finally made Life Master at the Buffalo Regional with Carole Sutphen as my pick-up partner in October 1995, I never saw 300 (which was all we needed in those days). I jumped from 298 to 304 masterpoints. By then I had 69.50 gold. Still able to play only occasionally, I didn’t make Bronze Life Master (which requires 500 masterpoints) until September 2002 at the Delaware Regional with Pierce Smith as my pick-up partner. In 2006 I wrote and published How I Became a Life Master Playing the Weak No Trump, a system book presenting very aggressive bidding methods. For a great variety of personal and professional reasons, I hardly played at all after 2006, having accumulated 716 masterpoints.

When the COVID-19 crisis hit in March 2020 and I could no longer watch sports, hang out with friends, visit people, take yoga classes, go to libraries, attend conferences, etc., I decided to try online bridge again (which I had not liked much when I tried it in 2004). I still had only 776 masterpoints (including 234.85 gold), having gained only 60 in a little over thirteen years. I logged onto BridgeBase.com and loved it. I play with a robot partner against two robots and earn about 1 masterpoint per day. At this rate I should make Silver Life Master (which requires 1000 masterpoints) sometime this fall. When that happens, I hope that the pandemic is kaput so that I can celebrate with a big party.