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I continue to be excited to list all the upcoming activities taking place at the Palo Alto Bridge Center. May offers opportunities to earn silver/gold/red points, and we have some great lectures! Join us for tournament fun at our 4-day sectional, social fun at our regular club games and learn something new from our lectures!
Upcoming events for you at Palo Alto Bridge Center:
Attached is a current list of planned events for the year, with more to come. |
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Call your partners and friends and join us at our first Cinco de Mayo celebration club game on Monday, May 5. The Bridge Center will be colorfully decorated and there will be aptly themed snacks. SignUp |
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Highlights:
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Palo Alto Bridge’s 4-day Sectional runs from Thursday May 15 to Sunday May 18, where you can earn silver points. Call your partners, teammates and friends! Separate Silver Rush (under 750mps) and Open sections. Special 0-99er game with 18 boards on Sensational Saturday morning. U503 April Sectional – see attached flyer. |
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Team games! Calling newer and intermediate players! You should play team games – as they are a lot of fun (and less stressful…). Sharing my personal journey, I thought it would take me a decade or more to get to Life Master rank – however, playing team games at tournaments helped me tremendously. |
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Palo Alto Bridge offers monthly Swiss teams games for you to practice! Next team club game is on Monday, May 12 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 At last month’s game on April 14 – congrats to the winning team: Lori Spaeth – Marolyn Imaoka – Kip Kado – Gary Sheerer. |
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Many of you may remember Alan Cummings and his huge volunteer contributions towards bridge education and our bridge community over many years. PBEF (Peninsula Bridge Education Foundation) received its largest donation through a bequest from Alan Cummings’s estate. Palo Alto Bridge will kickstart The Alan Cummings Free Lecture Series with speaker, Amber Lin, giving a lecture on “Hold Up and Avoidance Plays” on Thursday, May 22 at 10:30AM at the Bridge Center. Come join us for this essential lecture and play at the 11:30AM club game. SignUp Thank-you to Stephanie Youngquist for coordinating this. If you wish to support our bridge community, please consider making a tax-exempt donation to PBEF: Donate PBEF |
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Our other celebrity lecturer this month, Barbara Seagram, will be discussing “Defensive Magic” via Zoom on Saturday, May 24 – register: Seagram seminar Dede Barsotti has done a wonderful job coordinating these celebrity seminars for us! |
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Recent highlights: For the first time since the Covid lockdown, we had 3 sections (EZ, 499er/Intermediate, Open) in a regular club game on Tuesday, April 8. Kudos to co-club owners Prue Saunders and Will Watsonfor building the game!
Palo Alto Bridge Center held 2 sectionals in April. Congrats to the top Palo Alto Bridge winners at:
Silicon Valley Unit’s Spring Sectional on April 4-6: U507 sectional winners
Palo Alto Unit’s Sectional on April 24-27: U503 sectional winners
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Thank YOU for coming to play at our sectional tournaments. Revenue from the tournaments is crucial for our Unit’s financial health. Our volunteers are also our largest asset. Huge thank-you to our April tournament chair, Marc Cervellino, and his team of volunteers: Gerry MacDonald, Liz Koh, Gloria Halliday, Nancy Steinbach, Dianne Giancarlo, Dede Barsotti, Chuck Horstmann, Phil Abrahamson, Dana Shelley, Amber Lin, Kai Eckert, Jian Fang, Alan Malloy. |
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You may have noticed the Bridge Center’s newly cleaned and waxed linoleum flooring! Many of you kindly volunteered and helped move furniture and items off the floor, and then put them back again! Thank-you: Stephanie Youngquist, Kevin O’Leary, Paul Davis, Alan Templeton, Marc Cervellino, Ken Rosenfeld, Frank Xie, Dianne Giancarlo, William Somers, Virginia Dare, Suzy Papazian, Lucy Ballard, Vince Wu, Randy Ryals, Debbie Carey. |
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You can purchase your own customized name badge with our colorful Palo Alto Bridge logo – order yours online for $14: Custom Name Badge Order |
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Join us and get involved in our community! Many of our events and activities are put together by our volunteers, and we need more of you to help us. Any little of your time would be appreciated! We are looking for volunteers for marketing and publicity (photo-takers, storytellers, email blaster), coordinating the Alan Cummings Free Lecture series, and help organize a bridge tournament. Please contact either our Volunteer Chair, Gerry MacDonald (geraldinem@aol.com), or me. |
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Newer Players: we have newcomer/0-49 masterpoint games at the Bridge Center on Tuesdays at 10:45AM, Wednesday evenings at 6:45PM, and Thursdays at 11:30AM. Gain experience and improve your game in a relaxed environment. SignUp |
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Congrats to the following Palo Alto Unit 503 members who achieved a new ACBL Rank in April: Junior Master: Krishnan Iyer, Matt Jennings, Jerry Pugh, Patricia Pugh, Christopher Rojahn. Club Master: Rob Boucher, Karen Gibson, Carla Hindie, Pamela Kissiah, Karen Saxena. Sectional Master: Cree Edwards, Lewis Lorton, Pamela Resser. NABC Master: Janet Tornow. Advanced NABC Master: Beatrice Fu, Dimitry Goder, Sudhir Virmani. Life Master: Liz Koh, Stephanie Youngquist. Bronze Life Master: Alice Redfield. Ruby Life Master: Debbie Machlin.
A very warm welcome to our new Palo Alto Unit 503 members:
P.S. Feel free to forward this to others who play at Palo Alto Bridge but who are not members of Unit 503. |
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Cinco de Mayo image attributed to Vecteezy.com |
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Play, Laugh & Learn!
Liz Koh |