I must take the opportunity to comment on the masterpoint system. I played duplicate for about 25 years without ever becoming an ACBL member because of my contempt for masterpoints.

I come from the chess world, where a player’s ranking changes with every game. It goes down as readily as it goes up. I now play bridge regularly with a partner who has about 1500 masterpoints, but he is 88 and declining. His game rarely evidences what would be expected from such a point total. My game is not as sharp as it once was, yet my point count continues to grow. The system rewards attendance, willingness to travel and expend money at least as much as it does skill. I have no solution to this, but it needs to be fixed. As a handicapping system, it is a total failure.

Dave Lubeck

Englewood Florida