May opens with a Sectional Tournament at the Club (STaC). The Western Conference STaC is running this week at all our regularly scheduled games. It is a great opportunity to earn silver points. I played on Monday and we had both an open and a limited section. Face-to-face bridge is picking up with the last week of April featuring our biggest games of the month despite competing with the special Gold Dust event online. Please pre-register for games whenever possible.
April saw the continuation of the celebrity bridge series with Robert Todd speaking to us about forcing bids on April 2nd. The next celebrity guest lecture takes place June 11th. Donna Compton will discuss “Using Dummy on Defense”. I have had the pleasure of taking a class from Donna previously and can tell you the class will be well worth your time. Sign up here.
We love our celebrity lecturers and would like to supplement them with local speakers! To restart our local lecture series, we need a volunteer to reestablish the program. Contact me if you are willing to help.
We are deep into planning for the Firecracker Sectional, which will be held at our club and the IFES facility from July 6th – July 10th. This is a HUGE event and while Gerry Macdonald and Marc Cervellino are leading the way, we will need volunteers to help both at the event and in advance. Contact Marc or Gerry if you can help. The Firecracker will feature pair games every day, special Newcomer sections (0-5 points), student discounts and four days of swiss teams. Make plans to attend and tell your friends, foes and bridge partners.
Speaking of swiss teams, our unit game on May 22 is a swiss teams game. Form teams now or sign up online to look for teammates. If you have questions you can contact Will at watsonbridge@gmail.com.
I would also like to congratulate the following Unit 503 members who achieve a new ACBL Rank in February:
Junior Masters : Alexander Bagerman, Ginger Glockner, Avery Wang
Club Masters : Mary L. Francis
Section Masters: Deidra D Barsotti
NABC Masters: Cathy Priest
Life Masters: Sona Bhambhra, Margo Seymour
Bronze Life Masters: Sona Bhambhra
Emerald Life Masters: Vinita Gupta
Our Next Board Meeting is May 9th at 4pm. Please contact me if you would like the Zoom link to attend.
As always, if you have questions, comments or concerns I can be reached at merenbach@yahoo.com.
See you at the table –
David