JANE: In duplicate bridge in North America, when you do well in a game sanctioned by the American Contract Bridge League, you earn masterpoints. They're how the League keeps track of your experience. They're not a rating, exactly. A player with a thousand points has mostly played a lot of bridge. But they add up over the years, and every bridge player knows their number.

JACK: To the hundredth of a point.

JANE: To the hundredth of a point. Points come in colors, depending on where you win them:

• Black points at club games like our Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Small amounts, a fraction of a point for a good game.
• Silver points at sectional tournaments, which are the small weekend tournaments in your area.
• Red and gold points at regional tournaments, which are bigger and draw from several states, and at the national championships.

As your total grows you move up through the ranks, from Junior Master on up. The one everybody wants is Life Master. You need 300 masterpoints for it, and some of those have to be the colored kind, which means you can't get there just by playing at your club. You have to go to tournaments and do well there too.

JACK: Jane made Life Master in 1994, at a regional in Ohio, the spring before I retired. She played that one with her friend from the hospital, not with me, because I had a cold. I have never fully gotten over this.

JANE: He's been very gracious about it.

JACK: I am at 291.02. Nine short of 300, and short on silver besides. Here's how this year has gone:

JANE: He'll pass 300 by Christmas at the rate we're going. The silver is the hard part. There's a sectional in Phoenix this fall and we're going.

JANE: Our first sectional in Arizona. It was in a hotel ballroom with forty-some tables on Saturday, and the air conditioning set to about sixty degrees, so bring a sweater if you ever go.

JACK: The events were stratified, which means you compete against pairs with about the same number of masterpoints. Jane's points put us in the B group, along with most of the other club players.

JACK: Friday afternoon we could do no wrong. Friday evening we could do no right. I'll take the blame for the evening; I was tired and I opened a 14-count one notrump, against our own convention card, and it cost us a top. Rule 3.

JANE: Saturday was steady. Sunday we played Swiss teams with Dorothy and Sterling from the club, our usual Wednesday opponents, and it was the most fun we've had at a bridge table since we moved. We lost our first match by a lot and our second by a little, and then we won the next five.

JACK: If you've never played a tournament, go to a sectional. You don't have to be an expert. Most of the people there are just like us: club players who want a weekend of bridge and a few silver points. Nobody bites. Well, nearly nobody.