So you want to be a Life Master?                 

By Teri Atkinson 

District I/N Coordinator 

You’ve started playing duplicate bridge in the last year or so. Your game is improving. You’ve joined the ACBL. And you have enough time to play more than once a week at the club. You are what the ACBL calls an I/N player (which stands for Intermediate/Novice). 

So you think about becoming a Life Master. Don’t wait to get those colored points. Start planning now, when you have between 10 and 100 points. Pace yourself - try and match the black points with colored points. 

Go to sectional tournaments.  

Try to get to at least one sectional a month - that’s where you earn more points than at a club game if you place, and they will be silver. The Vista Sectionals, Adventures in Bridge in San Diego and some of the units in the greater LA area have 99er events, and most have at least a 199er or 299er event. That means the game is limited to players that don’t have more than that number of points. You will find that the training you have gotten at your local club will serve you well in competing against players from other clubs. 

You will be nervous the first time, but remember, everyone played in their first tournament once. 

Get another pair and play in the Swiss Teams. In a Swiss Teams event, you and your partners play the same team for six to seven boards. The team that does the best wins the round and advances to play against better teams.  

Even if you don’t place at the end of the day and win points in the tournament, you will get silver points for each round that you win. We call them “pity” points or “attendance” points. 

Team games are fun and they are “shuffle, deal and play” events as opposed to computer generated hands. You will need to pace yourselves when playing in a team game because you are probably not accustomed to playing for such a long time - 49 to 56 boards. 

Go for your gold early - at 

 regional events 

Many aspiring Life Masters make the mistake of getting to 200 points without any gold, then they get enough points (300) to make Life Master but they are short gold and/or silver. 

he easiest way to get gold points is to assemble your team and play in the Knockout events at the regional tournaments. Knockout events play like Swiss Teams except that you play 24 boards against one team and the winner knocks out the loser and advances. 

We're lucky, as we have a minimum of six regionals a year within easy driving distance. The Knockouts are bracketed, which means you will be playing against opponents that have approximately the same number of points that you have. Normally the lowest bracket at a regional has teams where the total player points on the team are less than 1000. 

If you knock out the first team and advance, then you are playing to go into the semi-finals, which means if you win the second time you will end up at least in third or fourth place for some gold points. 

The lower brackets don’t pay as many points and usually they are half red/half gold or two-thirds red/one third gold. 

If you missed your opportunity to earn gold in San Diego, you are still in luck. Two regionals within easy driving distance are coming up soon: The Long Beach Regional will be held June 27 to July 3 at the Westin Long Beach, and the Orange County Regional will be held September 5 thru 11 at the beautiful Westin Costa Mesa. 

Good luck, have fun, and get that Life Master.