National bridge president takes card game seriously

Published 5:00 pm Monday, September 19, 2011

SEASIDE – It seems like a long way to drive – nearly 19,000 miles – to play a game of contract bridge, but then Craig Robinson takes his bridge seriously.

The president of the American Contract Bridge League must like the game, as well. He made a vow to play 100 games in 100 days.

“Notice,” he said, “there’s no word consecutive’ in that sentence.”

But, Since April 17, he has traveled from the East Coast to the West and to Ontario, Canada, to play with a few of the bridge league’s 165,000 members.

For his 95th visit, Robinson visited the Seaside Duplicate Bridge Club Friday.

The visit made Sue Kroning, club president, very happy.

“It’s very exciting for us to have him,” she said. “We’re one of the smallest units in the organization.”

Although two league presidents have visited local tournaments, none have come to a regular club meeting to sit and play a game of contract bridge, she said.

The Seaside club has 105 members from the Washington peninsula to Manzanita. On Friday, Robinson played with Jerry Leenerts, of Chinook, Wash. as his partner. Leenerts, considered one of the club’s best players, took the visit calmly. But, he finally admitted, partnering with the league president was a “big deal.”

Perry Smith, who, with his wife, Penny Smith, rounded out the foursome, was a bit more impressed. “We don’t have one show up every week,” he said.

Of the previous 94 games Robinson had played before hitting Seaside, he had won 30.

“When you consider that you’re playing with somebody you haven’t met, that’s not too bad,” he said.

Of the 100 clubs he plans to visit, 80 have invited him. The others, he said, he has or plans to “just barge in.”

“But everybody seems happy to see me,” he said.

In Seaside’s case, he called Kroning and asked if he could join the players for the afternoon.

“I rarely get a day off from bridge,” Robinson said. “Sunday is my day off. But if I’m traveling and I don’t play, then I have to play a double-header the next day.”

Except for a short break at home in Philadelphia after 44 stops, and a trip to Canada for national tournaments, Robinson has been traveling pretty much nonstop. In Oregon, he played in Eugene and Portland before heading to Seaside.

After Friday’s game, Robinson planned to turn his car north, toward British Columbia. He’s not sure which club will be No. 100.

“I plan to go home and think about where I’ll go,” he said.

The league is growing about 1 percent a year. Although the average member’s age is about 69, Robinson met a player who was only 81/2 years old in Houston.

“He not only plays bridge, but he’s a good player,” Robinson said. “He figures to be the youngest Life Master, and he has a year to do it.”

Richard Jeng of Johns Creek, Ga., was 9 years, 6 months and 12 days old when he broke the record in 2009 as the youngest Life Master.

Although he hasn’t broken any records, Robinson has been playing since he was 7 years old.

“I was watching my mother play bridge, and she bid two spades, and I told her she didn’t have any spades,” he said. “She thought I’d better learn the game.”

While he might not have been Life Master quality then, “I was the best 7-year-old player on the block,” he said.