[lcsmw]

I started playing rubber bridge around 1960 with my best friends family. It was a friendly game with ghoulies on passed out hands.
I started playing duplicate when points were on pieces of paper and there were only black points. At some point I let my ACBL membership lapse. In 1969, I was in the air force and resumed playing in tournaments with pick up partners including a national in Atlanta. In 1978, I taught my wife to be how to play and our partnership lasted over 30 years until she developed health issues. I was less than 5 gold points from life master. I quit tournament play and started playing Bridgebase games with a robot partner for I believe 29 cents. When she quit playing online games, I let my ACBL membership lapse. I played in the first ACBL national, played my best bridge and won a fraction of a gold point.

She died in 2022. Going to bridge tournaments was our vacations. Reno was our favorite with the last game of the year on new years eve. It attracted top players from all of the country. As a memorial I went to the Reno regional in Sparks. Before then, I posted here, the tournament website and even signed up at the partnership desk. Physically, playing bridge requires some effort and I hoped to find a partnership before playing. By the time I had a partner, the tournament started and we had not completed our convention card. I asked the person at the partnership desk what was going on and the answer is almost everyone has a partner. When In Atlanta, I played in a lot of events easily finding a partner. With the internet available, I found that the partnership desk was how you found a partner. I let my ACBL membership lapse see I wasn't playing in ACBL events.

I decided that I would try to develop a partnership on Bridgebase that could migrate to live bridge. Rejoined ACBL and found that I was starting all over again. What I also learned is that tournament Bridge players are old. My wife and I were some of the younger players and in Reno at 77, I was younger than most. The other thing I learned is that older players have favorite conventions and don't like to be outside their comfort zone and our far less flexible than in the past.

Lastly, there are so many more colors of points. ACBL recently had a promotion on Bridgebase that awarded gold points on inexpensive games. I played okay in a few and won more gold than the BB national with a $40 entry fee. At this I decided I was done with bridge other than using it as brain stimulation/time wasting and generally free games.

[mycroft]

Congratulations. Making Life Master is an accomplishment, one you should be rightfully proud of.

There are people who say that sarcastically. I am not one of them.

Now you make your choice - is bridge a game you play for fun, or one you want to get good at? Even ignoring the people here who think that "good" == "International Master+", i.e. MLB-quality; you can be a lot better at the game if you are willing to put in the work (Frankly, even the lower end of "good" in those people's eyes can, and maybe even they can).

But it is work - and if that is not fun, or if that is just not what you want to do with your life, then fine.

Because there may be "higher grades of LIfe Master" to go for (with all the weird colours of points and timing and...), but what really matters now is "what you've won, and with whom". And if you are going to continue to improve, those are the results you are aiming for, not "X gold points and Y silver". And "what you've won" can be as little as "beating average in my club, more often than not" (frankly, it could even be "beating average in my club"!) - or it can be "the Mid-Flight Pairs in Penticton", or "CNTC-C Champion" (okay, if you're not Canadian, that one's out for you), or even higher.

But alternatively, if it is "have a pleasant day out with my friends twice a week", or "spend a bus ride playing with robots" or "kitchen bridge with the mahjongg group on off days" - more power to you. I certainly have decided both "I will do my best to win with the constraints applied every time I play" and "I am not going to work on my game all that much, because the demands on my bridge time lean in (at least three) other directions"; I have also decided that "it's okay to be below average if we have a bad game, not going to have nightmares about it, or spend three hours the next day deconstructing *every dumb decision*". I will never be a top-class bridge player. I have accepted that. But I enjoy the game (even the "at least three other directions", most of the time) where I am, and that's the important point.

You don't have to be me. You don't have to be anyone else, either. I really hope that you find a way to make this game a positive part of your life (and it would be nice if you pay it forward, too, but that's not necessary). The only true way to lose is to stop playing.