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 A Brief History of Duplicate Bridge In The Mountain Home Area

This is by way of a memorial to those who came before us..
and a salute to those who preserved the tradition of duplicate bridge in our area..

It will be divided between those years before an ACBL sanction was obtained, and those after such event.. records do not exist of duplicate played in homes, although such games were certainly important in developing the base of players..

Duplicate bridge first appeared in the Mountain Home area about 1962, when Marge Harnad (McCormac) organized the initial game at the Town & Country Motel at 145 S. Main in Mountain Home.. unfortunately no record has been preserved of the players participating in that initial contest.  From there, the game moved to a room in the North Arkansas Power and Light Co.. thence to the Chamber of Commerce room.. and finally to the Sizzler restaurant on Highway 62 before sanctioning..

In those early days, Vivian Boyle was the area’s only accredited director and was responsible for making rulings.. The “working” director was responsible for setting up the movement, calling the rounds, scoring the results.. and was elected annually for this “honor”.. Lynn Sahlin frequently filled this post..

While several “long ago” players still participate.. notably Marge Harnad (McCormac), Margaret Joyce, Alberta Keneipp and Evelyn Hirsch.. a roster of some others of our predecessors is as follows...

In 1988, the group numbered 109 somewhat regular players and was outgrowing the Sizzler accommodations.. Dale Wagar located our present Ramada accommodations..
Jerry Conkling became a certified director, and the two of them obtained our current ACBL sanction.. Dale became a certified director shortly thereafter.. and both shared the duties..

This was the time before computerized scoring.. on completion of each game, the first order of procedure was to matchpoint the travelers.. several players knew how to matchpoint and were able to assist.. next we had to enter each matchpointed score on the recap sheet.. then you added the matchpoints for each board to check the matchpointing was correct.. then you added the 27 or 28 boards for each player to determine the raw matchpoint score for each.. then, if you had an odd pair you factored the direction playing the fewer number of boards (dividing each raw score by 1/6, 1/7, or 1/8 and adding back into the total scores of the direction playing the fewer boards).. and finally, totaled all the matchpoints to see that it came out to the correct total.. (since it frequently did not.. you started hunting for the error (s).. and it was often pitch dark outside by the time results were known).. masterpoints were issued in the form of paper slips, which were submitted to ACBL intermittently by the players..

Fortunately, we often had Lou Nail, a math whiz , who could add 14 rows of 28 whole and half digits and total all rows and columns while any of the rest of us were getting ready to try..

The following is a roster of the players of the sanctioned era who no longer grace our tables..

Irene Burbick passed the certified director exam and sanctioned a club with Marge Harnad (McCormac) at The Meeting Place in Bull Shoals, which many of us enjoyed for a number of years.. before she moved to Mountain Home and took over the Club Manager chores from Dale..

Gary Timmerman joined us in the early sanctioned days.. and brought the Two Over One bidding system to Mountain Home with a series of classes.. at the time he had over 700 masterpoints, when the most of us were looking forward to 5..

Dale Wagar served on the Unit Board for many years, followed by Linda DeSoto and Billie Supeter when the Club was moved from District 10 to District 15..

Harold Anthony replaced Jerry Conkling as a proprietor for a time.. when Harold moved out of town and Jane Wagar died, proprietorship was transferred to Irene Burbick and Jerry.. Blaine Ferrell has served admirably as Club Manager since that time..

The above may well contain inaccuracies or errors of omission, which will be corrected as they surface..

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