[PPDVBC] Summer bridge? Let's talk. News from Mojo

I'm sending this to my players of all experience levels to open a discussion about how things are likely to change in the coming months. We're getting closer to summer ... bridge clubs are opening ... people are getting shots. Jane and I are now fully vaccinated and starting to make travel plans. Nothing exotic -- we're planning a 5-6 week US road trip after Memorial Day, and a Hawaii trip at Labor Day. We have friends and family scattered around the country who we'd like to visit. We love long days in the car with music and countryside. The San Marino Club (nee "Women's Club") is about to undergo a major renovation. The local unit has a large quantity of "stuff" stored there, and there's a project to evacuate and store as much as we feel needs to be preserved. They're planning work parties on the 15th and 19th, but I'm still awaiting details of if we can get into the building, when, and how many people. (Want to help? Let me know.) The renovation to the historic club building does preclude reopening the San Marino Bridge Club for several months.  :( Meanwhile the Arcadia Bridge Center is open with a five game a week schedule (reservations required). Tom Lill doesn't yet have a date for opening the La Fetra club, and I haven't heard about plans to reopen Downey Whittier. This "temporary" project, the virtual bridge clubs, that began to keep local bridge alive while we were all at home, is about to morph into something different. I expected the online club attendance to plummet when we were able to do something better, but I believe I was mistaken. We love the ability to join a bridge game with familiar faces without having to leave home and find parking. The virtual club system has to change, though. Right now it's enforcing a walled garden that's based on 2019 club attendance. This frozen-in-amber online club doesn't make sense as we get more distant from that time, and the concept of a "home club" becomes ever more fluid. One thing that has to change is the elevated masterpoint awards for the virtual clubs, along with the awarding of black points that were intended for in-person club play. If the ACBL Virtual Clubs suddenly dropped the masterpoint awards to, say 80% instead of the current 150%, and online play were strictly "unpigmented" points, would anyone care? Some will, some won't. Open players who are just looking for a good game are going to play in the biggest games they can find. Newcomers will want to play with the friends they meet and know from bridge class. Online bridge was vigorous before 2020, but now it's massive. Here's one thing I couldn't do in 2019: I could not in good conscience recommend a place for my new bridge students to play and practice bridge online. (Have you ever dropped in on a table of strangers in the Casual side of BBO? The behavior is horrible!) Now I can offer curated sanctioned games for bridge newcomers on BBO, and I can offer excellent social games using RealBridge from the UK. So what am I to do this summer? Is there a future for the Pasadena Pomona Downey VBC? I won't be teaching from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but players wanna play. I've had offers from large virtual club pools in various parts of the country to join with them while I'm away, but that doesn't appeal. There are other directors who I can call on to help run games while I'm away. Either way I believe that the game schedule should be trimmed come Memorial Day. I want to find a way for the new players to get into the "All-Western 99er Nite Club" and other available novice/intermediate games. That has proven problematic for silly reasons. When we make it back home, I want to start hunting for a Pasadena location to open a part-time face-to-face teaching club with a few games a week and a low-overhead location. I don't believe I'll have the customer base I might have had when I was planning a full-time location in Old Town. I'm expecting to have a hybrid in-person bridge club with an online class and game schedule for new players: the Pasadena Bridge Club and "BridgeMojo Online" or something like that. Comments welcome! Mojo P.S. Teacher of the Year nominations close on April 15! Do you know a great teacher? See page 33 of the April /Bridge Bulletin/. :) -- Morris Jones, Monrovia, CA BridgeMojo <http://bridgemojo.com> Old Town Sidewalk Astronomers <http://otastro.org> Mojo's Blog <http://mojo.whiteoaks.com>