Charity Games to benefit the local area food banks will be held monthly on the dates that had been reserved for our monthly Unit Championship Games.  Game Time: 1:04; Entry Fee: $10, with all the money raised to benefit the local area food banks.  Our first game was held on June 14 and raised $270 for our Unit Charity Fund after the fees paid to BBO, the host site, along with the table fees due the ACBL.  The next Charity Game will be held on July 12th.  

CMBA created a schedule of lessons and guest review of hands to be held at the 2020 Unit Games before Covid19 disrupted face to face bridge.  The Unit Games are now Virtual Charity Games and the lessons are being posted on the website as they would have been given.  Hand reviews will be posted within a week of the Charity Game.  The lessons are intended to give our Intermediate and Novice players the opportunity to review and/or learn basic bridge concepts with the Unit’s teachers and advanced players.  You can direct questions about lessons or requests for additional lessons to Shirley at swagner@fitchburgstate.edu or 978-407-5407. 

This month's lesson on Takeout Doubles by Al Berg is now available on our web site.    To view the lesson, click on the Lessons Tab on the left hand side of the home page. 

We are pleased to announce that the six open clubs of Central Massachusetts – Worcester(Sterling), Cavendish(Auburn), Gardner and Fitchburg(Westminster), Grafton,  and Twin City(Leominster)  have joined forces and will be hosting three weekly games on BBO.

These games will be limited to players that have played in any one of the six CMBA clubs in 2019 or 2020 so you can play among friends from all six clubs.

The 18-board games will be $6 per session and will last approximately two hours.  Games will be offered on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday afternoon beginning Tuesday, April 28^th.  Start time for the games will be 1:04PM.    (Yes, 1:04!  We have been asked to start games at “off-hours” to avoid overload to the BBO system).

Registration for each game will open two hours in advance of the game start time.  In order to register to play, you must be a member of BBO and you must have an ACBL number attached to your account.  To register for a game, Log into BBO, select Virtual Clubs under featured areas.  This will take you to a list of the Virtual Games being offered in the next two hours.  Our games will be listed under the umbrella name Central Mass Bridge with club number VACB236471.  

New to BBO?

To understand how to get started on BBO and answer some frequently-asked questions, click on FAQS re BBO Bridge play in the upper right corner. 

You may contact any of the three directors that will be running these games at any time with specific questions:

Vicki Angus          Text: 509-254-8247     E-mail:  angusvic@aol.com

Shirley Wagner     Text: 978-407-5407     E-Mail:  swagner1942@gmail.com

Tony Keats            Text: 508-826-4720     E-Mail:  max45@aol.com

If you have trouble logging in, you may not be on our “eligible” list and director can add your User ID – message VACB236471 before the start of the game.

Congratulations to John Lukach and David Boulay who placed second in the North American Pairs Event last October at the Mansfield Regional.  District 25 will provide a stipend of $300 to each player to help defray the  costs for their trip to the Nationals in Columbus in March to compete in the Flight C North American Pairs Event.  Good luck to both John and David as they represent our Unit in this event.  

The Annual Meeting was held on Sunday, December 8th, in conjunction with the Holiday Unit Game at the Auburn Senior Center.  At the meeting, the election was held for the Officers and Directors for the CMBA Board.   Following is the slate of candidates elected to serve for the next two years: 

Directors 2020-2021

New Director                   Joe Sackett

New Director                   Al Berg

New Director                   Hema Savla

Director (re-elect)           Carol Seager

Director (re-elect)           Shirley Wagner

President                          Vicki Angus

Vice President                   Denise Bahosh

Treasurer                         Claire McClennan

Clerk                               Shirley Wagner

In addition, Marilyn Chambers, Bruce Emond and Ernie Peabody are current Directors who will continue to serve the second and final year of their terms in 2020.  

The Holiday Raffle raised close to $800 for the Worcester area Food Banks.  Thanks to all who helped our fund raising efforts by purchasing our raffle tickets and attending our special monthly Unit Games along with our Sectional in May and our special games over the October 19-20 weekend.  This was our first I/N Saturday Sectional and on Sunday, our second Memorial Swiss event to honor those in our Unit who have passed over the last year.  

                                                                        THANKS AND OUR APOLOGIES

First and foremost, CMBA would like to thank everyone who attended our Special Weekend on October 19-20.  On Saturday, the19th, we held our first I/N Sectional Event and on Sunday, the 20th, we held our second Memorial Swiss Team event, which was to recognize those 5 members of our Unit who had passed away during the last year.  In December, donations will be made to local area food banks in their honor; the balance will go into our scholarship fund.  Every September, for the last 8 years, we have awarded a number of scholarships to the children and grandchildren of active CMBA members.  We appreciate your participation and attendance at these special games which help to support our activities.   

We also would like to apologize for not being able to post the results immediately after each days’ events due to a number of technical problems that were eventually resolved.

Another issue that we had on Sunday related to the buffet luncheon that was provided; we did run out of some items.  Although there was plenty of deli meats and cheese left, we did run out of bread and some of the sandwich salad fillings.  We had a much better turnout than we had anticipated which contributed to our underestimating the luncheon items needed.  Although there was plenty of other food, including breakfast items, various snacks and desserts, some players did not have the opportunity to make a sandwich.  For this we sincerely apologize. 

Again, thanks for coming to support our special weekend; we will make every attempt to ensure these types of issues do not happen again at our future tournaments

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CMBA awarded three $1000 scholarships to the childeren and grandchildren of CMBA members at the Swiss Team Unit game on September 8, 2019.  Click on the News Page on the top left to view this year's recipients.     

At the Unit Game on April 7, the Ace of Club and Mini-McKinney Awards were presented to the winners for 2018 for Unit 113.  In addition, two players (Bruce Emond and Harris Jacobs) who achieved Diamond Life Master Status were also recognzed.  For a complete listing of the Award Winners for 2018, click on the News Page in the upper left hand corner.

Front Row: Shirley Wagner, Denise Bahosh, Candy Matthew; Second Row: Bruce Emond, George Byers, Harris Jacobs; Last Row: Leslie Malkiewich and Larry Hanerfeld

On March 30th at the Worcester Bridge Club, Eric Xiao, a young boy of 10, playing with his Dad, won his first ever Masterpoints.  He recently joined the ACBL and is the youngest player in CMBA; Eric started playing duplicate bridge with his Dad only several weeks ago.  Congratulations to Eric and continued success at the bridge table!

CMBA has just donated a total of $2000 to the following local area food banks and food pantries:  Worcester County Food Bank; Rachel's Table; Montachusetts Veterans Outreach Center; Gardner Community Action Center; Pilgrim Congregational Church in Leominster; Grafton Food Bank.  These charities provide help to the local towns we play in and where most of our players reside throughout the Central Mass area.  Approximately $1300 was raised from our special Memorial Swiss team event that we held in October in memory of those players who passed away this past year; the balance was raised from the sale of the raffle tickets that were sold for the Holiday Gift Basket that was given away in a drawing held at our Holiday Unit Game on December 2nd.   Thanks to the generous support of many of our players at all the local clubs throughout our Unit for purchasing the tickets that made this Holiday raffle so successful.  In fact, we decided to add two additional prizes - five $10 scratch tickets for a second prize and five $5 scratch tickets for a third prize since we had exceeded our goal of $500.   THANKS AGAIN FOR YOUR SUPPORT THROUGH THE PURCHASE OF THE HOLIDAY RAFFLE TICKETS WHICH ENABLED US TO INCREASE OUR DONATION TO $2000.  All the members of CMBA should be proud of this accomplishment.  HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL!!  Keep on playing and see you at the bridge table soon.

At the January Unit Game on January 13th, CMBA honored Delia Jean, who has run the Gardner Bridge Club for over 25 years; she has been instrumental in keeping bridge alive for the  players in Northern Worcester County for these many years - our thanks and kudos to Delia Jean!

CMBA held it's annual meeting on Sunday, December 2, 2018, in conjunction with the monthly Unit game at the Auburn Senior Center.  The sole purpose of the meeting was to elect seven Directors to the CMBA Board for a two year period from January 1, 2019 through December 31, 2020. The following slate of candidates was unanimoulsy approved:  Vicki Angus, Marilyn Chambers, Bruce Emond, Claire McClennan, Charlotte Rowlands, Denise Bahosh* and Ernie Peabody*.  Congratulations to these Directors and their willingness to serve for the next two years.  

* denotes new additions to the Board

On Sunday, October 21, CMBA held a special two session Swiss Team event in memory of CMBA members who have passed this year - Nancy Brown, Charlie Burack, Jim Culhane, Syd Dorfman, Donna Johnson, Dr. Rashmi Patwardhan and David Reine.  We want to thank everyone who attended - the excellent turnout helped to make this event a success.  We raised approximately $1300 which was donated in early December along with an additional $700 to 6  local area foodbanks in honor of these deceased members.   Again, we want to thank all the players who came out to support this worthy endeavor.     

At a  special meeting which was held in conjunction with the Unit Team game on June 3rd, the revised Bylaws of the Central Massachusetts Bridge Association were unanimously approved.  Thanks to all who came out for this special meeting and to participate in our Unit Swiss team event - we had 17 tables which was a great turnout and one of our best attended Unit games.  We will be having another Swiss team game on Sunday, October 21st which will be a two session event.  More details will be forthcoming as the date approaches.  

SECTIONAL TOURNAMENT - MAY 5-6

Our Spring Sectional was held on Saturday and Sunday, May 5th and 6th.  We want to thank everyone who came to play along with many of the members from the Central Mass Bridge Association that donated food items and helped with the work involved in running this tournament.   At our Swiss team event on Sunday, we had an International team of students who finished first in C.  The team was comprised of Jonathan Baumel, a sophomore at Harvard, Lucy Zhang, a freshman at MIT, and two high school students who were visitng from Czechoslovakia, David and Premsyi Vavra.  Additionally, Zach Grossack, a junior at Tufts, and Harrison Luba, an 8th grader from Lynnfield Middle School, also competed on different teams.  Harrison's team placed 5th overall.  Above is a photo of these 6 students who played in the Swiss Team event from left to right, Zach Grossack, Lucy Zhang, Premsyi Vavra, Jonathan Baumel, Harrison Luba and David Vavra.     

Profits from this event will help to fund our scholarship awards and our annual charitable donations.  We hope you will join us for our some of our upcoming monthly Unit Games.  We will also be holding a full day Swiss Team event on Sunday,  October 21st,  in place of our Fall Sectional.  Stay tuned for more details about this special day and event.    

The Biennial Meeting for the Central Mass Bridge Association, Unit 113, was held on December 3rd at the Auburn Senior Center in conjunction with the regularly scheduled Holdiay Unit game.  At the meeting, the slate of Officers and Board Members as proposed by the Nominating Committee was unanimously elected for the next two year term which begins January 1, 2018 and ends December 31, 2019.  For a listing of the newly elected Unit 113 Officers and Board Members, visit the News Page.   

 A NEW PAGE REFLECTING SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENTS AND NEW LIFE MASTER MILESTONES  HAS BEEN ADDED - CLICK ON THE CMBA PLAYER ACHIEVEMENTS NEWS ITEM ON THE TOP LEFT OF THIS PAGE TO REVIEW THESE ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Winners of the Round Robin Swiss Event on September 8, 2019:  Anand Lele and Chuck Greenslit on the left; Naresh Mehta and Harris Jacobs on the right.

Winners of Bracketed Swiss Event:  Paul Babineau, Shirley Wagner, Mary Lou Famulare and Alan Cooperman

N/S Winners of August 11 Unit Game: Jean and Al Berg

E/W Winners of August 11 Unit Game:  Marilyn Chambers and Jeff David

Winners of August 11 Unit Game - 299er Section: Second Place - Jerry and Myra Resnick; First Place winners: Denish Bahosh and Paul Samuels 

The winners North/South at the April 7th Unit Game:  Jeanne Martin, Mark Aquino with Director, Vicki Angus.

Winners of February Unit Game - Section A:  Jeanne Martin and Bonnie Luks

Winners of the February Unit Game:  Stephen Powers and George Byers.

Winners -  East/West: Chuck Greenslit and Anand Lele; North/South Tony Wolf and Bruce Emond 

Winners of 499er Game - East/West: Robert Waite and Dorothy Murphy; North/South: Sharon Uusitalo and Sharra Canan

Winners of December Unit Game - Open Section North/South: Lorraine Konisky and Inger-Lise Kilcoyne.   

Winners of 499er December 3, 2018 Unit game:  Kathy Aberizk and Denise Bahosh

Winners of the November Unit Game: North/South - Mark Thompson and Bob Casey; Co-winners East/West - Bruce Emond and Tony Wolf.  The other co-winners East/West, Harris Jacobs and Tim Pettus, were not available for the photo.

WELCOME to the Central Mass Bridge Association, or CMBA Web Site. CMBA is Unit 113 of the ACBL, American Contract Bridge League. Membership is open to all Central Massachusetts contract bridge players who enjoy this challenging, competitive and mind-stimulating card game.

The greater Worcester area has several games a week at five locations. Click on the CLUBS in Unit 113 in the upper left hand corner for a list of all weekly games and locations.

OTHER GAMES -In addition, games are sponsored monthly by the Unit and are held at the Auburn Senior Center, 4 Goddard Drive, Auburn, Ma 01501. One or two of these may be two-day Sectional tournaments. See schedule to the right.

NEWCOMERS are always welcome at CMBA bridge games. Some clubs provide partners if a player arrives 15 minutes before the scheduled game time; or call the club contact, listed in the club section, to ensure that a partner can be provided. DUPLICATE BRIDGE is similar to party or rubber bridge games. Most games are stratified which allows players of similar experience to compete with one another playing the same cards in each session.

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦   If you have any suggestions or comments regarding the information on the CMBA Web Site, please contact Bruce Emond, bae17@charter.net. ♠ ♥ ♣ ♦