American Discovery Trail: Bridge Break

This is a very good hand

There is not so much to see this week on the trail, and I will not finish another milestone, so I will write a bit about the pursuit that has been consuming a lot of my time lately: playing bridge.

Regarding the walking though, I just checked a projection for when I might finish, and at a fairly aggressive pace of 140 miles per month, I am 28 months from the endline at Point Reyes. So, this will take a while, and meanwhile, I will be happy with hitting milestones along the way.

In January 2023, I joined the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) and began playing for master points, which are given out in ACBL-sanctioned games, if you win or place. ACBL has its own quest for players - it is called Life Master. Like my trek across America, the quest for Life Master is a years-long pursuit with milestones along the way that are not really significant achievements on their own, but they are steps on the way to getting the whole thing done. I have already passed Junior Master, Club Master, and Sectional Master, with Regional Master in my sights before year-end.

To get the Life Master designation, you need:

At least 500 masterpoints

75 of the 500 have to be black (Black points are no problem - I will have 75 sometime this summer.) Black points are awarded for club games - all other colors come from tournaments.

75 have to be silver. I have 8.82.

50 have to be gold; I have 0.16. The gold requirement will probably be the toughest to achieve.

100 have to be gold or red. So you can have 100 gold and no red, or 50 gold and 50 red, or anywhere in between. Gold points are harder to get than red. I have just over one red point right now.

Along those lines, I have played at three tournaments so far this year, and I will be playing in two more during the next two weekends. That means I have six days coming up when I will not be counting my steps, so my bridge pursuit gets in the way of my walking pursuit sometimes.

In my quest for Life Master - and yes, I am on that quest - I am making good progress. Last year I got 40 points - a lot, really quite a lot for someone just getting started. For points in club play, I was first in Washington State for anyone starting with 0-5 points. This year I am second in Washington in the same race for people starting with 20-50 points, and I have over 30 points total for the year already. You can see though that it will take a long time to get to 500 points - at least five more years most likely.

I have a few good regular partners now, something I was lacking most of last year. They include a relatively new, very good partner with whom I will play in a tournament Friday. A couple of weeks from now, I will have results from two more tournaments and maybe a better idea of where all of this is headed.