Bridge isn’t life… but I know people who might disagree, and sometimes I might too. A great deal of my life has been devoted to bridge — to teaching, directing, administering, and (thank goodness!) playing.

ACBL Service

I currently serve on the ACBL‘s Bridge Committee and its Laws Commission. I’m a past chair of the Masterpoint Committee, where I wrote the original proposal to build a strength-of-field measure into ACBL’s tournament masterpoint calculations (a newer, related version has since been implemented, though that one isn’t mine), and I was twice chair of the Advisory Council (formerly the Board of Governors). Closer to home, I’m on the board of the Adobe Bridge Club in Tucson.

Bridge Resume

I first played in a home game starting in 1995, but really took the game up in 1998, playing in church-basement games in rural Pennsylvania. About a year after I began I worked as a tournament assistant at a local sectional (The Seven Cities Sectional at Cross Creek, near Titusville, PA), which led to me getting hired as a part-time tournament director. I directed tournaments in the Pittsburgh/Buffalo/Cleveland area (Districts 4, 5, and 11) and then later in Texas and Oklahoma (Districts 15 and 16) — thirty or so tournaments, all of them regionals or sectionals. I stopped doing that in 2002; I preferred playing.

I did a great deal of club directing and eventually helped manage a club in Arlington, Texas, for about three years, though I was not formally the manager.

From the beginning I traveled to tournaments regularly. My first NABC was Fall 1999, in Boston; I’ve attended about 30, and I still go to most of them. Most of my early play was with pickup partners, which is great for one’s game… and also for learning patience. I have played in everything from newcomer games to the Spingold and Reisinger.

I haven’t won any major events yet, but I represented District 16 in the Grand National Teams (flight C), getting all the way to the final match. What a disappointing loss… but that was also probably the single most exciting event in my bridge career and it helped hook me forever on the game. I think the GNTs and NAPs are two of our best events for promoting our game.

I was involved in some of the appeals casebooks back in the early 2000s, but never got to the level of credited “expert panelist”. I do love the intricacies of bridge law (but I’d like our laws to be simpler for all but the highest level play, and have suggested a hybrid system to accomplish that).

I then took about a dozen years off when life intervened, but came back to the game and soon became interested in governance: first my unit and district boards in the San Francisco Bay Area (Unit 502, District 21), and since moving to Tucson, District 17 (Unit 356), where I’m on the board of the Adobe Bridge Club.

I teach bridge classes and lecture at tournaments, and I play both for fun and professionally. I’m a Sapphire Life Master.

Non-bridge background stuff

  • I operate my own private tutoring business, specializing in graduate admission exams (the LSAT, MCAT, GMAT, and GRE); I’ve been tutoring since 2001.
  • I’ve held a variety of other jobs, some of which involved management (I once had 200 employees) and others of which required a lot of spreadsheet and other data work, but I think working as a waiter prepared me better than either of those for directing at bridge tournaments.
  • My undergrad degree is in math and economics. The math was useful for Masterpoint Committee work; the economics isn’t good for much except knowing when TV pundits are oversimplifying. I also attended Berkeley Law School and clerked for a federal judge, but never practiced law.
  • I have one son, now an engineer. Single parenting had a lot to do with some of my career choices because teaching afforded me flexibility I needed. (He used to sit in my classroom playing with Legos.) No, he doesn’t play bridge, but it’s not for lack of me trying.

Most importantly: I love bridge.