Unit 239 welcomes new members:

      Andrew Degride (Rockford) and Mrs. Hewlett Prucher (St. Charles)

Congratulations to the many members who have achieved new ACBL levels:

Junior Master: William Harfst (Crystal Lake) and Shirley Skinner (Crystal Lake)

Club Master: Joseph Lepscier (Aurora,) Lela Lowe (Geneva,) Doug Shuman (St. Charles,) Carlos Castellon (Huntley,) and Bell Perry (Rockford)

Sectional Master: Nancy Kubitz (Rockford,) Kyle I E Larson (Belvidere,) Steve Lowe (Geneva,) Elizabeth McCoy (Rockford,) Dr. Richard Novak (Rockford,) Bonnie Caswell (Sugar Grove,) John Schoonover (Rockford), Amy Goldberg (Belvidere) and Beverly Gilroy (Rockford)

Regional Master: Kip Sleeth (Kenneth City, FL) and Susan Seaver (Crystal Lake)

NABC Master: Wanda Burgard (Cherry Valley,) Barbara Ellingson (Rockford,)  and Greg Maccoubrey (Crystal Lake)

Life Master: Gary Brigel (Aurora)

Ruby Life Master: Karen Anderson (Batavia)

Sapphire Life Master: Dennis Ryan (Janesville WI)

Gary Brigel is a new Life Master! 

I am pleased and honored to recently become a Life Master. I would not have accomplished this if it were not for a number of people who I have to thank.

First, I have to thank my beginning bridge teacher, Celeste Jacklin, a person who has the patience of a saint. How she kept her composure with all of the confusion and frustrations of myself and other beginning bridge players was a marvel. She used the Audrey Grant’s manual to teach bridge which, I feel, is an excellent way to learn the game. I met her, in 2011, through an advertisement to learn bridge sponsored by a singles group. Being single, I attended it thinking maybe I will find love. I did: duplicate bridge.

Another person I have to thank is Karl Anderson, the director of the Yorkville, Illinois game. He doesn’t know this but he is my mentor. Whenever I have a question he always answered it without hesitation. Some players guard what they know. Not Karl, he brought me up many levels by his willingness to share his knowledge. .

I also have to thank all of my duplicate partners who are too numerous to name. I have to confess: I am sometimes a difficult partner. I love this game, and sometimes I have to vent. Partners, forgive me. Thank you for putting up with me.

I love this game because I feel there is no ceiling to it. You never stop learning new things and adjusting your game. My advice for new players: read and study articles. I am always reading and studying. This game evolves and will continue to evolve. I sometimes play against opponents who use Goren. They have a difficult time competing. You have to continue to adjust, and it will never stop.

Find a good mentor and pick his mind. Be a little discriminate. I have had many people, trying to be helpful, tell me how to play bridge. I love them all, but some of the information that they have given me, I now realize, was bad bridge.

Last, be humble. I always tell my partners if I make a mistake I want to know about it. They all tell me my mistakes. Truthfully, a couple of my partners tell me my mistakes with glee,.  I am glad to hear about my mistakes. I learn from my mistakes. Mistakes are great teaching tools.

My last bit of advice: enjoy the game. It is a great game.I have another reason for being grateful to this game. Let me share a secret. In 2015 I had a health crises. I was diagnosed with lymphoma, stage three, and my five-year prognosis: fifty per cent survival. Thank goodness I am doing great now, but for a while it was a touch and go situation. During this period when I played bridge I was able to completely escape the pain and my frightening future. I did not become mindless and I could have. The doctors were pumping a lot of chemicals into me. In fact, I believe this game does help your mind in your old age. This is a great game for everyone but especially for the elderly. I will always be grateful to bridge. I will always be grateful to the numerous bridge players, some complete strangers, who reach out to me during my treatment. Without them I am not sure I would have survived. God Bless them all.

I have traveled the whole nation playing this game. My sister thinks I need help. I have met so many wonderful people. One time while playing in Gatlinburg TN tournament I introduced myself being from Chicago. My opponent from Georgia said, “Chicago, do you pack up there?” I said, “No, I only pack at the bridge table.” Bridge is serious.

If I really get good at this game I am thinking of turning professional. I own a horse so I am taking a western approach to my calling cards. I am calling myself “The Cardslinger.” Underneath it will be my motto: “Have Cards Will Travel.” To keep in the western theme I sometimes wear a bolo tie to the bridge clubs. You can all say you knew me before I became famous.

And if my lymphoma comes back and I have to ride my horse, Street, into the sunset to my last bridge game, one of the things I hope people will say about me is “He was a good bridge player.”  

Rich Whitsitt is new Sapphire LM!

Rich Whitsitt’s achievement of Sapphire Life Master was listed in the December edition. Here is his story.

My parents had friends with whom they played bridge each week. They had two sons the same ages as my older brother and me. When I was 9, we asked them to show us what they were doing. De Foster, who has started coming to the Rockford club as a novice in the last year, was the one my age. When I was 21 (1970), I found the ACBL.

It took me 19 years to become a Life Master (1989), and over the first 28 years, I won 500 points (1998.) Becoming a Life Master was much larder then. There were no flighted events, and all events payed approximately 1/3 the points they do now. Local club was 60%of current awards. The Rockford club had 5 games a week. Only the Friday evening game had master and non-master separate sections, over and under 20 points.

Then (1998-2018,) I started playing more, and over that 20 years, I won 3,000 more points. Twenty or more people over the years have contributed to an increase in my bridge knowledge. Some with good instruction, and some by being bad examples. Brad Nelson was instrumental in my becoming a certified director. I directed at the club for many years, and ran the club for six years when my father bought it, about 1980.80.

My best year, I had a better than usual start, so I added a couple of tournaments and won 248 points; the only time I went over 200 in a year.

My suggestions you may have heard before from others:

• Pay attention to the conventions that the better players use, even if you don’t use them. Know what they are doing!Play with as good a partner as you can get to play with you. Play the open games, not the novice ones!!

• Buy a copy of the rules and study it; make your partner do the same. Always call the director, no matter how much you may respect (or be in awe of) your opponent. Never take an opponent’s word for the ruling!ng!

• Play with many partners but have a regular you play with the most. Make sure you and partner are playing the same things. You may be playing the same convention but interpreting it differently.

• Review every bad board with your regular partner to see what went wrongCount everything!

• Kibitz top players at regionals, really big players, not the local pro at your club. I learned more as a beginner by watching four top pros play money bridge from midnight to 3 A.M. at a regional than anything else I did to try to learn.

Dennis Ryan is now a Sapphire Life Master!

I was born and raised in Alaska, spent early years as a newspaper reporter, and then began a 31-year career teaching high school English. I have lived in Janesville WI for the past 53 years, and retired in 1992. I have served three terms on the board of the Bridge Center of Rockford, served two terms on the board of Unit 239, and chaired the Rockford Classic Sectional for nine years, somewhere in there. The bridge experience I treasure the most was winning Unit 239’s Goodwill Award.

My mother taught me bridge at home when I was 9 years old. When one of her foursome regulars suddenly had to work later on their “bridge evenings,” I got commissioned as a “temp” to play until she was free later. So I learned the game really through foursomes with family and friends, all the while urging my mother to attend a local duplicate club with me. “Oh, Dennis, we’re not nearly good enough to go there,” she would answer, each time I suggested it. I was 14 when she made a bet that she shouldn’t have made. I won, and she HAD to play duplicate as a result. We came in average in a 9 table game, and there was no stopping me. “We ARE TOO GOOD ENOUGH,” I shouted in victory for several weeks. So I dragged her back, where we placed third; and the resulting “.03 fractional master point slip” became my passport to a lifetime of duplicate bridge, friendships, challenge and fun..

Now, at age 81, I find tournaments inconvenient to get to, expensive when I do get there, and not as much fun anymore as club games with longtime friends.  I got old, I guess. But elderly desire for comfort does not mean loss of a desire for challenge.

My advice to recruiting young people to bridge is this: Young people most passionately love, most vividly remember, and most stubbornly cling to the wonderful things in their lives that they have discovered for themselves. Given self-discovery, they OWN it. So introduce bridge, enthusiastically model your own love for the game, and then leave materials they and their friends can learn from strewn tantalizingly in their path to trip over and discover for themselves.

Making Sapphire Life Master is not so much a milestone as a challenge: “You ain’t diamond yet, mister,” it calls to me each time I sit at a bridge table. And fortunately, I have had five longtime friends who have sat regularly across the table from me: Helen Anglemire, Gena Hartlieb, and Lu Jenkins of Rockford, the late Clarence Willging of Freeport, and Kay Korte of Woodstock. I enjoy the bridge, but I TREASURE these friendships. Without friends, bridge becomes something dusty in a book.

My other passion is opera. I have spent 8 seasons as a member of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Adult Lecture Corps. And served for three years on Lyric’s Chapters Executive Board. My 5,000 opera recordings occupy much of my time away from the bridge table.