What’s next? On Sunday March 7 at noon is a unit game at the San Jose Bridge Club honoring our Ace of Clubs/mini-McKenney winners for 2003. Our sectional is coming up on April 2-4. More details will appear elsewhere in this paper or in the next issue.

Lynn Yokel (lyokel@sprynet.com, 408-374-4669) will be starting new lessons for beginners and intermediates in April.

Rita Tingley is taking over the Wednesday morning game. It has a new start time of 11:00 a.m. Hand records will be available. Stop in to play and congratulate Rita on her engagement to Bernie Bertonis.

Looking back, January was a busy bridge month. Many unit members achieved success at the Monterey regional. Everyone named placed first in their event or stratification: Ed Barlow in one two-session senior pairs, Bill Langlois in another, Dan Turkus & George Humphrey in their senior stratification. Mike & Janet Sullivan won in the 299er pairs. Don Nemiro won in the Flight A pairs and on a Swiss team.

Winning their stratifications were Swiss teams including Chien Fan, Chingling Jim Tseng & Norman Wang; also Shirley Foreman, Rekha Nirula, Jane Casciano & Phyllis Reinhardt; also Stan Batiste, Katarzyna Wesolowska, Judy Travis & Joel Koransky; and Sathya Bettadapura, Tien-Chun Yang & Fang Wu.

I have to catch my breath. On winning knockout teams were Rose Meltzer, also Tania Moalem & Dana Brown, also Zbigniew Bieszke, Chester Jahns & Andre Kowalczyk. With all this success in major events, you can see why I don’t have the space to report on side games.

I think you’re a winner if you went to play in the Hawaii regional. I hear the weather was too nice for bridge. Maybe next year, I keep telling myself. Fran Dickman’s Swiss team took first.

At the San Francisco sectional, Gary & Jan Soules took first in the two-session pairs. First in their strats were Li-Chung Chen, Boris Ginzburg & Eugene Vodkin, with a section top to Tania Moalem

At the Livermore sectional, Ed Barlow placed first in the two-session pairs. Strat tops along the way went to Bill Langlois, Gary & Jan Soules, Shirley Foreman & Rekha Nirula, Bob Ritz & Mike Cailean, Mansoor Gowani & Michael Migdol, Will Watson, Stephen Tu, and Jim Hayashi. Winning their Swiss brackets were Lynn Yokel & Steve Chen, Richard Jacobs & Eric Yang, and Zbigniew Bieszke, Chester Jahns & Andre Kowalczyk

Gigi Spinazze staged another popular wine and cheese unit game, ably assisted by Lynn Yokel. 16 tables of players polished off almost that many bottles of wine. A pair from another unit walked off with first overall. First in their strats were Jeff Hack & Jo Cooley, Derek & Teddi Fiero, Bob & Nancy Ward, and Donna Webb & Benjamin Fleishman. Watch out, Neal. Donna is coming on strong.

Take a look at the changing face of our website at sjbridge.org, where you can find old columns under old stuff. If there’s any missing from this column, let me know at rayyuenger@starband.net or 408-379-7717.