Dear faithful bridge players, We are going to have an open IMP game on Sunday, Sept 13 at 3:20 PM. Who wants to play? Who needs a partner? Last Sunday we had 5 tables in the open game and 13 tables in the concurrent 499er game. First place earned 2.7 mps. So please let me know if you want to play this Sunday. This month we are featuring our Tuesday night director, Bob McBroom: Bob learned bridge from his father. He did not get to play much until he went into the Peace Corps in Ghana, West Africa to teach high school chemistry. There he taught three other volunteers in the town to play. After the Peace Corps, he returned to California where he married Kathy Flynn. They went up to Davis and both started graduate school in chemistry at UC Davis. They learned to play duplicate in Sacramento and Davis. Davis had a small game, usually about four tables or so. Occasionally Chip and Jan Martel, multiple world champions, would play to tune-up before the world championships. After graduate school, Bob started a job in Anaheim working for U.S. Borax. There Kathy and Bob played in the Santa Ana club and various tournaments and became life masters. Bob also learned to direct there. After the birth of their first child, they stopped playing. In 1993 they moved with Bob’s company to Santa Clarita. Bob taught his son Alex to play and they played a few times in Rand Pinsky and Kathy Swaine’s club but he never really caught the bug. After about a twenty-year hiatus, they were finally able to play again and started playing in the Valencia Bridge club. They have been playing online for a few years, so the move to BBO was easy for them. Bob also directed a few games locally so the move to directing for the Virtual Club seemed interesting. Bob mostly plays with his wife, but another favorite partner is Dave White, our director with all the wonderful jokes. Bob retired from Borax in 2007 when the company moved to Denver, but he teaches chemistry part-time at College of the Canyons in Valencia where his wife is also a full-time chemistry professor. --