By Mary Ewing
ACBL District 19 Club Unit 437 now runs Everett’s only sanctioned duplicate bridge game. The charge per game is $8. There are no membership or age requirements in order to play. Each game starts promptly at 7:30 p.m. every Wednesday at the Everett Plaza Retirement Center, 2204 12th street. Players are asked to arrive by 7:15 so the director can set up the necessary number of tables and choose the movement (Howell or Mitchell) that will be played.
The first Wednesday of each month is a team game at which each table’s first North/South pair’s total score for the evening is added to the total score of that table’s first East/West pair. The scoring method uses stratified pairs — a method that divides all of a game’s pairs into two or preferably three approximately equal groups, based on how they rank in accumulated master points. This prevents winners from the highest group from taking all the master points.
The club’s annual membership meeting occurs during the Unit’s December Christmas party. Every sanctioned member in the local area and his or her guest is invited to this pot luck, which is popular probably because the club provides a prime rib and/or turkey entre and alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.
As Carl Gipson Duplicate Bridge Club member Sue Rewak’s guest, I was able to attend the Dec. 3 Christmas party at Everett’s Knights of Columbus Hall. Beginning at 1 p.m., 49 people from the nearby Puget Sound area, Federal Way, Vashon Island, Stanwood, Mount Vernon, Anacortes and Island County showed up. An hour of socializing was followed by dinner and the election of three of the club’s six directors to two-year terms. At 3 p.m., after 13 people left to watch the Seahawks game, a nine-table free-sanctioned game was played.
I went to this Christmas party hoping to meet bridge players I might be able to talk into coming to our Tuesday game. Many of the people I spoke with said they’d happily attend our game if it was sanctioned. Stanwood snow birds Art and Jackie Hutton agreed to try us out when they return north in April.
I did meet Marla Patterson, who is Unit 437’s president. She tells me she has players who’ve quit the Wednesday evening game because night driving through Everett’s traffic quagmire is too stressful. I told her our game desperately needs more players. Unit 437 currently has 131 ACBL members! Is it possible that by working together both clubs can come up with good ideas that will benefit their memberships?
For information about our Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday games, call Mamta, 425-789-1106, or George, 425-422-7936.
