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Snow birds are beginning their migration and heading for their Bridge clubs with the largest one in Austin at the Mower County Senior Center. Duplicate Bridge is played on Tuesday and Wednesdays, at 11:30 a.m.

Tuesdays winners with four and a half tables playing:

First place, Vandy Newman and Ron Peters; second place, Bill Momsen and Larry Crowe; third place, Barb and Orrin Roisen; fourth place, Gail Schmidt and Millie Siever; fifth place, Teresa Baldus and Harriet Oldenberg.

Wednesday winners with six full tables:

First place, Barb and Orrin Roisen; second place, Gail Schmidt and Dave Ring; third place, Tom Flaherty and Stan Schultz; fourth place, Bonnie Fritz and Loren Cleland; fifth place, Barb Rofshus and Paul Hanson; sixth place, Caroline Higgins and Connie Johnson.

Players come from Austin, Rose Creek, Albert Lea, Mason City and Northwood, Iowa. Players range mostly, if not all, in the 70s through high 90s in age. We have a few players whom we consider experts, yet we all admit to “still learning.” An article in the ACBL magazine titled “Lessons Learned,” by Michael Berkowitzs mentions the art of declarers concepts in bidding and says “count your winners and losers, analyze the opening lead, watch the signals from the opponents, count the missing suit, assess the trump split  and especially consider the opponents bidding or not and count their points.”

Our experts do all of that and most of us try to emulate them. Bottom line is that it is what keeps the older generation coming back to duplicate bridge plus we are big on Common Sense.