Greater St. Louis Bridge News

News from Greater St. Louis Unit 143

Editor:  Sheryl Finkenstadt, St. Louis MO   sheryl@finkenstadt.com

When you take liberties with your system or play, you are the one responsible for the result -- no matter how moronic partner's subsequent bid or play.

Unit 143 hosted a “Youth Pairs” at the recent St. Louis Sectional. Nearly eight tables of middle-school bridge players traveled from central Illinois to play in the Youth game on Saturday, May 17, 2008. The Unit provided pizza and pop for their dinner after the game. Trophies were won by:

   First Place:  Tierney Hammer & Madison Bushue (73.21 %)

   Second Place:  Laura Reimers & Blake Huelskoetter (65.48 %)

   Third Place:  Michael Goldstein & James Ritz (60.71 %)

Charity games during the first week of April at Bridgehaven collected $304 for Backstoppers, Inc.

It's the event played around the world! And in St Louis. The Worldwide Bridge Contest sponsored by the World Bridge Federation was held June 6 & 7 at Bridgehaven. The Friday and Saturday games were separate events, and Bridgehaven made the Saturday contest just a tad more special by hosting a potluck dinner before the 5:45 pm game time.

Club Corner

ACBL tournament director Donna Coker runs three weekly club games at Olivette Community Center in the St. Louis area. Her efforts with the Intermediate/Newcomer players have been notably successful. The Thursday morning game is dedicated to I/N players. With two sections, 0-99 & 0-199, it regularly has more than 13 tables each game, and sometimes as many as 17.

Donna has been working steadily for the past four years to encourage new players to play duplicate and, of course, to join the ACBL. It is interesting to note that more than half the membership of Unit 143 has fewer than 100 MPs, whereas the national 50th percentile is 200 MPs.

Donna also directs the monthly Unit championship game called “8 Is Enough,” which usually has more than 22 teams playing.

Membership

Unit 143 now reports 1,077 members, with the following distribution of ranks:

Rookie: 222

Junior Master: 105

Club Master: 131

Sectional Master: 102

Regional Master: 121

NABC Master: 59

Life Master: 69

Bronze LM: 113

Silver LM: 106

Gold LM: 30

Diamond LM: 12

Emerald LM: 5

Platinum LM: 2

Congratulations to Unit members who advanced in rank during the past two months: