Hotlanta

Here we are in Atlanta playing bridge (what else!?) at one of our umpteenth national tournaments.  Trust me, it’s no great achievement to play in a national.  Anyone can play regardless of whether you have no masterpoints or thousands of them.

In order to be a life master in bridge, you have to accumulate hundreds of masterpoints.  I’m sure it would be a whole lot more appealing if you earned prize money, especially to the younger generation who can allegedly make a living playing online poker.  Personally, I don’t buy that.  The players I know brag about their winnings, but seem to have amnesia when it comes to their losses..

Thousands upon thousands of bridge players are here….median age probably around 80.  Yes, sad to say, bridge, the greatest card game ever invented, is teetering on extinction.  I admit I am hopelessly addicted to accumulating those masterpoints several times a week.  We travel to multiple local, regional and national tournaments annually.

Let me tell you, it is not easy to get even one point!  In Venice, we can beat everybody in the room and only get one point.  If we place (‘scratch’ in bridge lingo), we get .22 or .34 or some itty bitty ridiculous fraction of a point.  That’s why we travel….the bigger the field the better the payoff.  If you beat the best players, you get yoooge points.

We used to do pretty well at these tournaments until we got so many points we had to play with the big dogs.  In the bridge world, there are a lot of big dogs!  Most of them live in Florida or Las Vegas (so they can play poker).

Our tournament goal used to be 25 masterpoints.  Now, we’re lucky if we walk away with half that.  Pathetic.  But, this tournament has paid off well for us.  In just one event, we got almost 30 points.  Okay…time to call it quits and go home.  You know, quit while you’re ahead and all that.

Noooo….we’re feeling like we’re the cocks of the walk and can play with the best of them.  Today, we hit rock bottom ….had the worst games we’ve had in ages.  Karma is a true master.
There’s always tomorrow.

I like to play a lot of different people, people I haven’t played against before.  However, it’s truly intimidating when we play against young people.  They still have in tact brains.  Most of them are brilliant, can tell you where every card is after playing three tricks.  Scary.

When I used to play in Baltimore in 2010, there was a young girl there, Sylvia Shi, who was kibitzing one of my friends.  Another bridge term…she was watching him play.  She was about 21, in grad school at Johns Hopkins.  After a couple of weeks, she started playing.  Turns out, the girl is a bridge prodigy.

Today, she is the highest ranked woman in the world!!  She plays at the highest levels and walks out of these tournaments with hundreds of points.  I’m thrilled because we got 30!!

See what I mean? Those young brainiacs.  Scary.  Two more days here to focus, use good sense and stay cool as a cucumber.  Here’s hoping my bridge guardian angel channels some of that my way!