On becoming a "life master" at bridge

I finally got my the last 1.5 "gold points" (see below) needed for me to achieve the Life Master designation with ACBL.

Just to be clear: the significance of this achievement in the wider world is like this:

The ACBL put in "masterpoints" of various colors decades ago to get money out of the game ... some people will cheat for masterpoints, but many fewer than might have been expected to cheat when playing for money ...

I've been playing steadily since 2006 ... the game is deep and complex enough that it's still plenty challenging. This "life master" bit is really just a low intermediate step in the bridge hierarchy.

I'm still playing the "strong one club" system I wrote about at the beginning of this blog, and doing well enough with it that a partner and I were using it to score 18th of 87 entries in a national event (the NAP Flight C pairs event in Memphis at the national ACBL tournament this past week.)

So: not significant but satisfying to do that well against tough competition. I'm looking forward to several decades more bridge, learning all the way!