story – Page 9 – ACBL District 4

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.

Stuart Nemser – Bronze Life Master

I retired in 2023. To stay mentally active I played bridge three times a week with my bridge partner Sally Humphrey. Sally is member of Delaware State Bridge Association Board. Sally noticed that all I needed was a few silver points to become Life Master. Therefore we played in the Sectional Tournament at Delaware Bridge Studio in early December. We won (see attached photo) and this gave me enough points to become life master.

My bridge goal in 2024 is to continue to play silver tournaments with Sally and have her become life master in 2024. Life and bridge are good.

Carl Coan – Sectional Master

I first started playing duplicate with my mother about thirty years ago. At first we played in a weekly club game at the Knight of Columbus in Arlington, VA. Then we played a few sectionals and regionals and one national tournament in Washington, DC. We had some modest success and earned approximately 31 master points. The last time I earned any master points before this year was, I believe, 2004. and before that it was 1997. Then, for reasons I don’t remember, we stopped playing duplicate.

Then, my wife and I moved to Rehoboth Beach in the spring of 2021. I started playing regular bridge at the country club I belong to. Then, at the end of last year, someone at the club suggested I play in a non-sanctioned duplicate game he played in. So, I started playing in this duplicate game beginning in January of this year.

Then, in July, I was on the ACBL website and, on a whim, I searched to see if there were any sanctioned games in or around Rehoboth. I saw Anna Delapo had a game close to where I live on Mondays and Wednesdays. So I contacted her and have been playing regularly since July. Then, through Anna, I found out about a game on Thursdays in Ocean View run by Donna Heckscher. So I have been playing in Donna’s game since August.

Amazingly, I have earned more than 26 master points in the few months since I resumed playing in sanctioned games in July. That’s almost as many master points I earned playing with my mother over a period of several years.

I enjoy playing duplicate bridge immensely. I plan on playing as often as I can in future.

4 THE LOVE OF BRIDGE

Tag Archives: story