President’s Newsletter February 2025

February is upon us – with the red hearts banner announcing Palo Alto Bridge’s first annual Valentine’s Day game celebration – more below.  I’m excited to share upcoming events and our many recent achievements.

Upcoming events for you at Palo Alto Bridge Center:

• Daily Monday – Friday club games: Bridge Center is open every weekday.  SignUp
• Monthly Swiss Team club games: Mondays February 3, March 10, April 14 at 11:30AM.  Swiss Team games  SignUp
• Paul Davis’s birthday game: come celebrate club director/owner Paul’s round birthday at our Friday club game on February 7 (also National Wear Red Day).  SignUp
• Grand National Teams (GNTs): Flights A & B on Saturday 2/8 & Sunday 2/9; Open Flight finals on 2/8.  Details below.
• Valentine’s Day: wear red and get romantic on Friday, February 14 at our special club game.  SignUp
• Saturday club games: next play dates (rain or shine) February 15 & 22.  SignUp
• Kathy Harper’s classes: her Spring season of classes start this month on Monday evenings and Tuesday mornings – register: Bridge classes
• Celebrity seminar by Adam Parrish: “All sorts of Doubles!” via Zoom on Saturday, March 1 – Save the Date!
• San Mateo Winter Sectional: earn silver points on Saturday 3/8 & Sunday 3/9 SanMateo Sectional
• Silicon Valley Unit 3-day Sectional: Friday 4/4, Saturday 4/5 & Sunday 4/6.  Save the Dates!
• Palo Alto Bridge 4-day Sectional (Open & Silver Rush): Thursday 4/24 – Sunday 4/27.  Save the Dates!
• Silicon Valley Youth Bridge (SiVY): Casual Fridays & other programs: SiVY website

Attached is a current list of planned events for the year, with more to come.

Team games are fun!  Come practice your team play at our next monthly Swiss teams game event on Monday, February 3 at 11:30AM, where the boards are already shuffled with hand records.  If you need a partner, or help to be matched with another pair, let us know.  Swiss Team games  SignUp

13 teams played on January 20 – congrats to the winning team: Ronald Powell – Edward Barlow – Frank Xie – Arif Janjua.

In addition to playing a lot of bridge, our volunteers were hard at work organizing a couple of new initiatives recently.  Highlights:

• Many of you played at District 21’s popular Monterey Regional tournament in January 6-12.  Congrats to the top Palo Alto Bridge masterpoint winners: Olivia Schireson (72mps), Susan Zhang (60mps), Bo Han Zhu (45mps), Gary Macgregor (42mps), Denise Pitsch(40mps).

• A common challenge of bridge is finding more compatible bridge partners.  Find-a-Partner game is similar to “speed dating”, where players play several hands and switch partners.  46(!) players signed up for the two sessions on January 15 and 22, with a wide range of experience from newcomers to Gold Life Masters with over 3500mps.  Teacher of the Year, Phil Abrahamson, gave a free lecture before each game, and each attendee was given a free-play coupon.  We look forward to seeing them play more often at Palo Alto Bridge Center!  Huge thank-you to our volunteers: Marc Cervellino, Liz Koh, Phil Abrahamson, Stephanie Youngquist, H. Paul Davis and Will Watson, for making this a success.  We may hold more of these in the future.  If you need a partner, please let us know: Partnership Desk

• Amber Lin gave a great seminar on January 18 via Zoom – “Think Like an Expert on Trick 1”.  If you missed this and any of our past Celebrity Seminars, you could purchase any seminar from our website:  Past Celebrity Seminars.  Big thank-you to our webmaster, Alan Templeton, for helping us with this launch, and his steadfast assistance maintaining our website.

• Nine teams competed in the GNTs Flight C games held on January 25-26.  Congrats to Youfeng Wu and his teammates Shailesh Sampat, Milind Girkar and Henry Zhang on their 1^st win!  And also congrats to other Palo Alto Bridge players: Pearl Renaker – Kathy Mach – David Scherer – Solveig Kjartansdottir for coming 4^th.  GNT Flight C results

• New-X game is where we match a Newer player with an Experienced player to partner together to play.  This is a great way for newer players to learn from an experienced player.  60 players will play this afternoon on February 1.  A big thank-you to our experienced players who volunteered to play, and to our volunteer team: H. Paul Davis,Phil Abrahamson, Marc Cervellino and Liz Koh for organizing this.  We plan to hold a few more of these.

Still need a New Year resolution?  We need volunteers, in particular for marketing and publicity (photographers, reporters, email blaster), coordinating our free lecture series, and help organize a bridge tournament.  Please contact either our Volunteer Chair, Gerry MacDonald (geraldinem@aol.com), or me.

Call to Intermediate Players: We would like to have more of you play in-person at Palo Alto Bridge Center.  If all of you sign up to play, we can have a regular weekly 499er or 750er section for you.  Please let us know which day of the week you prefer.

Newer Players: we have novice/0-49 masterpoint games at the Bridge Center on Tuesdays at 10:45AM, Wednesday evenings at 6:45PM, and Thursdays at 11:30AM starting January 16.  Gain experience and improve your game in a relaxed environment.  SignUp

Congrats to the following Palo Alto Unit 503 members who achieved a new ACBL Rank in January:

Junior Master: Daniel Cohen, Kent Perkocha, Rachel Perkocha.

Club Master: David Joffe, Lisa Steiny.

Regional Master: Solveig Kjartansdottir.

Advanced NABC Master: Nancy Steinbach.

Bronze Life Master: Ioana Galis, Kathy Wheeler.

Silver Life Master: Robert Brunkhorst, Gerry Macdonald.

Ruby Life Master: Winston Huang, Rich Nielsen.

Diamond Life Master (5000mps): Ming Sheng.

A very warm welcome to our new Palo Alto Unit 503 members:
Ping Chen, Betsy Friebel, Josh Jia, Ed Lechner, Pamela Resser.

P.S.  Feel free to forward this to others who play at Palo Alto Bridge but who are not members of Unit 503.