San Mateo Unit 498               January 2025 

Happy New Year to all Unit 498 Members and Friends!

May 2025 be a year filled with health, happiness, and lots of bridge!

Our new Board has been planning plenty of bridge games and events for 2025.  We hope you’ll read through for information on our Club, Unit, and Sectional games and tournaments, as well as on our revamped Mentor/Mentee program.  All this bridge will culminate at the end of November with the NABC being held in San Francisco.  We’re fortunate to have this National tournament back in our area and look forward to plenty of participation by our Unit 498 members.

Meet your 2025 Unit 498 Board

December Holiday Lunch and Unit Game

Eighty merry players enjoyed our Holiday Lunch and Unit game on December 14th.  In addition to bringing a festive ending to the year, it gave us a chance to thank Janice Carter for her leadership and accomplishments as Board President.  We also thanked retiring Board members Danna Sorenson, Past President and Barbara Lewis, Membership coordinator and leader of our Longest Day fundraising efforts.   

Kai Eckert, coming off lots of bridge-related travel and a birthday celebration at the NABC in Las Vegas, did a great job organizing the afternoon and Jennifer Kuhn excelled at directing such a large crowd.

In the actual game, we had some impressive results and scores.  Carl Ebeling and Debra Martinez were first overall in the Open Division, sitting E/W.  The N/S winners were Wendy Benveniste and Debbie Weinstein.  Other pairs finishing in the points were (N/S) Fred Chasalow and Janice O’Brien; Roger Dewes and Patricia Wong; Bob Gleason and Pete Goldsmith; Gretchen Schmeeckle and Carole Anne Gennaro.  E/W’s top finishers behind Carl and Debra were Genie and Jeff Reynolds; Mary Bates and Sandra Tilch; and Lucy Ballard and Kathryn Barnard.

The 499ers had some healthy competition as well.  Allan Abrams and Donna Jang took the top overall and N/S spot, while Nancy and Ken Hoeck tied with Madhukar Mehta and Molly Roff for first in E/W.  Anna Brown and Sylvia Warnes; Carol Lashman and Leslie Braker; and Karen Leonardini and Helen Kishi also earned points.

Mentor / Mentee Program

This year we will be kicking off our mentor/mentee program with an in-person game at The Villa on Wednesday, January 29th.  We hope that many of our more accomplished players will be interested in meeting and mentoring some of our newer club members.  To entice more people to play we will be having pizza and salad before the game, and if that is not enough encouragement, instead of having the mentee pay for both the mentee and mentor, they will just be paying for themselves and the mentor will play for free!  More information will be coming out in a separate email in the next couple of days so please keep an eye out for it.  If you already know you want to play, great!  Email Kit Morse at kitunit498@gmail.com to get on the list! 

2025 Events for Unit 498

One of our Board resolutions this year is to get more players, family, and friends involved with the game we all love.  Unit Game coordinators Leslie Braker and Eileen DiGiorgio hope you’ll join the Unit Games throughout the year and especially our first one on Saturday, January 25th.  We will serve lunch at 11:30 followed by the game at 12:15.
Please pre-register using this link:  Register Here

If you want to play but don't have a partner, please get in touch with  CarlEbeling498@gmail.com, who will be running the partnership desk this year.

Tournament coordinator Carol Lashman has scheduled a busy 2025 with two Sectionals and two NLM Sectionals planned.  Mark your calendars for the first of these on March 8-9 at the Palo Alto Bridge Center.  This weekend event is open to all experienced ACBL players and will award Silver masterpoints.  On Saturday, you may participate in the morning, afternoon, or both sessions.  Sunday games are Swiss Teams events, requiring players to play both sessions.   

See the full event flyer on our Unit 498 events website.

Our Villa-based Unit 498 Clubs — the San Mateo Bridge Center run by Raad Bunni and Jennifer Kuhn’s Peninsula Duplicate Bridge Club — offer a variety of weekly games and lessons open to everyone.  Both Directors try hard to match up single players.  You can contact them through the Unit 498 website to learn more about their games.  Any new player in one of Raad’s Tuesday or Friday noon games plays for free on their second visit.

Membership and Outreach director Jeanne Urich has grand plans to encourage both new and existing members to get to the tables more often.  She’s busy brainstorming ways to bring new players into the fold.

Thanks to Carl Ebeling for adding “Partnership Desk” to his list of responsibilities.  He will be finding the best way to match partners up for all levels of our games.

Jeanne, Carl, and all the Board members welcome your input on how best to grow our Unit.  Please feel free to contact them with your thoughts or questions.

In Memoriam — Janice Nakao 

Shortly after competing at the NABC in Las Vegas, Janice Nakao passed away in a car accident. Janice was a founding volunteer for SiVY (Silicon Valley Youth Bridge) and spent hundreds of hours mentoring for both SiVy, as in the above photo, and Unit 498.  Janice was a force at the bridge tables, having achieved the rank of Sapphire Life Master in 2019 and ending the year with more than 4000 masterpoints.  Her recent accomplishments included winning mixed pairs at the All Western Championships in August, a first and second place finish in Open Bracketed teams at the Ventura Regional in November, and a third place finish in Bracketed Round Robin Teams in Las Vegas in December. She and her husband Tom Quinlan, a former National Tournament director who passed away in 2018, were a phenomenal partnership matching their consistently good results with grace and good humor.  Besides bridge she loved golf and practicing Tai Chi.  She will be missed by many. 

Monterey Clambake Regional Bridge Tournament

Ring in the New Year by joining your bridge friends in Monterey for some ocean air and sunshine.  District 21 will host the popular Monterey Clambake Regional tournament on January 6-12, 2025 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel & Spa.  Please click this link for the Monterey Regional Flyer for more information. Hope to see you there!

The 2025 Board of Directors

Please feel free to contact any of us with questions or suggestions.

President               Lauren Rosen
Vice President       Kit Morse
Treasurer              Rita Armstrong
Secretary              Carl Ebeling
Director, Tournaments    Carol Lashman
Director, Unit Game Coordinator  Leslie Braker
Director, Unit Game Coordinator  Eileen DiGiorgio
Director, Membership and Outreach  Jeanne Urich
Past President       Janice Carter

Please visit our Unit 498 website, for more news on new members, rank advancements, results and schedules for our Unit and Club Games and more.