BBO Hall of Fame - Robert Adams, BBO: rja
Hi, I'm Robert Adams, the player behind username: rja.
I was born in Cleveland Ohio in 1948. I was a real estate lawyer in Atlanta until my retirement in 2012. After retiring, I became a director at my local bridge club (one of the biggest clubs in the country) until COVID hit. I am half French (my mother was a French war bride) and have spent many happy vacations there, especially in Paris.
I first started playing bridge at age 13. I joined my high school bridge club as a Sophomore and we played socially to learn the game. We also played against other high school clubs. And then I was introduced to duplicate bridge. And that's when the addiction began. I probably played at the local duplicate club once a week. In those days there was no electronic scoring, no card duplicating machines, no automatic reporting of points won. None of the games were stratified. Also, point inflation had not set in yet. Typically my partner and I would win .04 or .11 or even .25 points. On a great day we might win .50 points. The director would give us a small printed form where she indicated the points won. When I collected enough fractional points to equal 1 point, I would send the little pile to the ACBL. Slowly but inexorably I accumulated 50 points! I thought I had won the Spingold! During college and law school I stopped playing to concentrate on more important things (girls), I moved to Atlanta after law school and started playing social bridge with a group of like-minded friends and we played one a week for many years. But the duplicate addiction had never left so I started playing competitively. Over the next few years I worked my way up the ACBL rankings and made it to Diamond Life Master. I had no burning desire to get to the next ranking but then, in 2005. I discovered BBO. Now I was really hooked. I could play competitive bridge without leaving the comfort of my Barcalounger! At first I played the ACBL sponsored games with different partners but then I discovered the bot games. I was in bridge heaven. Now I could play competitive bridge (for BBO master points) at any time and without the need of finding a partner. Twenty thousand points later I'm still enjoying it as much as my first day on line.
Do I consider myself one of the BBO greats? Absolutely not. Getting into the top of the rankings is a matter of persistence and patience. I usually play 4 games each day.
On days that I'm feeling particularly frisky I play 5 games. Some days I do very well (maybe 30 points) and some days not so well. On the bad days I tell myself that the next day will be a 30 point day. A couple years ago (when I was playing more than I am now), I managed to become a King (there are only 30 kings in the BBO rankings). I think that was the best moment in my BBO life. For the period of time I was a King I felt I was at the top of my game!
To play well in BBOland you must be able to concentrate at a very high level for an extended period of time. At age 77, I feel that playing on BBO is keeping my mind sharp while I'm being entertained in the comfort of my home. That's a pretty special combination. To those just starting off playing bridge I would give them the following advice: Bridge is a very, very tough game to master but it still can be enjoyed by beginners and experts alike. My opinion is that there are two kinds of bridge players – bad ones and worse ones. Your goal should be to become a bad player. You'll never reach a level of perfection so just shuffle the cards and enjoy the game!