Happy New Year! If time really flies when you’re having fun, I hope your last year flew by. For me, some hours at the bridge table seemed like minutes, while other minutes seemed like hours.

Watch for another unit game on Saturday, January 25th.

As I write, the Phoenix nationals are continuing. Here are partial results through the second Thursday. Rose Meltzer & Peter Weichsel were 15th in the two-day Life Master Pairs. Rose’s team was 9th in the open Board-a-Match. On winning knockout teams were Shih-Ming Shih, Ray Yuenger, Judy Fisher & Bonnie Beardsley, Faye Parsons, Lynn Yokel & Steve Chen.

The Phoenix site was quite nice. Spacious rooms for playing bridge and plenty of them. I saw a number of unit members in passing between the playing areas in three different venues. Four sessions of bridge daily were available for those with stamina or insomnia.

Looking back, at the Diablo Valley sectional, earning stratification tops were Chingling Jim Tseng, Mindy Foos & Stephen Tu. Winning in their respective Swiss team brackets were Tien-Chun Yang, Peter Sun, Jeffrey Hu, Kou-Ping Cheng, and a team including Stephen Tu, Melinda Foos, and Steve Chen, which earned 120 out of 140 possible Victory points. Shih-Ming’s team also won.

Frank Lowenthal had a section top in the Wine Valley sectional.

At the Oakland sectional, strat tops in pair games went to Lynn Yokel & Ron Siegrist and Ray Yuenger. First in their Swiss strat and second in the open field were Richard Jacobs, Hiram Shen, Leon Lee, & Eric Yang.

In the North American Open Pairs district final, in flight A Ed Barlow finished 4th and Diane Shannon finished 6th. In flight B, T-C Yang & Fang Wu finished 3rd and Sathya Bettadapura finished 4th. In flight C, Michael Migdol & Michael Abrams finished 2nd and Ray & Maxine Lubow were 4th. Congratulations to the Michaels for winning a trip to Philadelphia.

If you want me to report more, let me know what to say. Corrections, comments and news are welcome at (408)379-7717 and rayyuenger@starband.net. Old columns appear under “old stuff” at www.sjbridge.org.