At the Buffalo Fall Sectional last year, the good Dr. Saleh Fetouh greeted me with the news that he had just reached 10,000 master points. If all of his points are properly aligned, that would make him a Platinum Life Master. Or maybe a Grand Life Master, if he's won in a high-level event like the Bermuda Bowl.
It's highly unlikely that I will ever reach that exalted level, even at the rate of 1,000 points per year, like Saleh in 2024. Even the next ACBL level, Sapphire Life Master, will take 3,500 points. And not just any points. It would take 700 silver, red, gold or platinum points, half of them gold or platinum. That's a tall order. I have only 102.89 gold points and no platinum points whatsoever. I'd have to become a tournament rat to get those.
However, I'll give a little cheer when I reach a little bitty milestone this year – 3,000 points. In tournaments, that's the dividing line between the A and the B stratifications. Since I usually play with partners with fewer points, I might still be in B if those games where the directors average us out. If they don't, we'll be swimming with the barracudas.
In truth, in my current state of skill and the time I can devote to playing this best-of-all-possible games, I'll be happy to chalk up a couple points a month, like I did in 2024. Lo and behold, that's happened already. At our first two Friday games at the Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., club, my Canadian partner Selina and I finished second and third overall, 66.82% and 58.68% respectively, good for 1.21 and 0.73 points.
Add to that our single online excursion into Okbridge, where we saw all the same folks we saw last time we played there in October. It can be a tough crowd, so we were overjoyed to finish sixth out of 33 pairs in a 12-board ACBL game with 57.21%. That got us another 0.54 of a point.
