Greater St. Louis Bridge News

News from Greater St. Louis Unit 143

Editor:  Mary Dolan, 10806 Charlton Way, St. Louis, MO 63146     dolanmary@sbcglobal.net 
 

“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run."

 -- Babe Ruth 

Upcoming Regional Tournament

From August 19-25, 2013 all roads lead to St. Louis, where the annual Gateway to the West Regional will be held at the Renaissance Hotel, 9801 Natural Bridge Rd.

The 2013 tournament features five Knockout events, two 2-session Gold Rush events for players up to 750 masterpoints, as well as two 2-session A/X Pairs events.

Check out details of these and other events by displaying the flyer at the ACBL website:  http://tournaments.acbl.org.

Bridge “home runs” from Unit 143

• Milt Zlatic attained Emerald Life Master. This milestone requires over 7500 masterpoints, including at least 500 gold or platinum points and at least 1500 silver, red, gold, or platinum. See Milt’s picture below as member of Unit 143’s website design team.

• On June 22, 2013 at Bridge Haven in St. Louis, husband and wife team Krzysztof and Dorota Jarosz had a 79% game.

   2012 Unit 143 winners Ace of Club (masterpoints earned at club games)

   2012 Unit 143 winners Mini-McKenney (masterpoints earned at club and tournament play)

A Look Back

Do you remember life before the Internet? Do you remember duplicate bridge before computers?  

To celebrate both the 10th anniversary and one-millionth visitor, Unit 143’s website design team published a “look back.” Following is an extract. For the complete article, see www.unit143.org.

The earliest version of a Unit 143 website was spearheaded in 1997 by a visionary board member Beth Fay and unit member Corina Iukovici.

The current incarnation dates from 2003. Credit goes to the website design team pictured here (left to right): Jennifer Luner, Helene Siegfried and Milt Zlatic. 
 

“Fifteen years ago, the Unit’s corresponding secretary wrote newsletters which were copied and mailed to members every few months. The news then was limited, and not very timely.

Unit 143 boasts an impressive website that showcases duplicate bridge in Unit 143. The site recorded 1,000,000 hits in 2012; it averages 9,500 hits per month; the club Results page averages 7,500 hits each month. Four to five PM and seven to eight PM are the two hours of the day when most Unit members visit the site.

Our most popular, or most frequently visited, pages are:  daily and tournament game results, the Home page, the Unit on-line directory, the Ed Schultz Unit Champion race, the Ace of Clubs and Mini-McKenney races, and tournament information and schedules. 

We have found that our members regularly hit three to four pages per visit: usually the home page and the results page almost daily. The club schedule page serves a large number of people confirming game locations and start times. Members tell us they like to see photos of themselves and other Unit members. They also like the publicity about winners anytime, anywhere, and the ongoing information before and during our Regional in August is important to them.

Our library "reference" page also gets a lot of use. It’s a collection of links to a whole host of bridge sites. Sheryl [Finkenstadt] told us, “You could get lost forever in this fascinating material” and she frequently did get lost for days browsing bridge sites on the web linked from our site. We added many of her favorite links in the Library to not only the ACBL but, as Sheryl liked to call them, to ‘Other Cool Places to Visit on the Web.’ Playing bridge ethically also was important to her, and so we created the Active Ethics page.”                                            

We take our website for granted. We look up game results and compare scores. We check game schedules and receive notification about special events. We find out about members’ masterpoint milestones. We read members’ obituaries. We post comments.

We take it all for granted, not realizing the time and talent required to develop and maintain a website like this. From one who is enjoying the ‘fruits of their labor’, to the Unit 143 website design team, thanks a million.