DINKIN TEAM: Baker-McCallum, Levitina-Sanborn, Deas-Palmer, NPC Dinkin

System Information

Deas-Palmer System Summary Form, ACBL Convention Card

McCallum-Baker System Summary Form, ACBL Convention Card

Levitina-Sanborn System Summary Form, ACBL Convention Card

About the Players
(information provided by Lynn Baker)

Lynn Baker

Lynn is a law professor at the University of Texas, and frequently serves as a consultant to other attorneys on issues of legal ethics in mass tort settlements. A graduate of Yale Law School and Yale College, she also holds a degree from Oxford University, which she attended as a Marshall Scholar.

A 13-time National Champion, Lynn’s work commitments largely limit her tournament play to National women’s team and pair events. Of the 35 NABC Women’s Team events that Lynn has entered since playing in her first in Spring 1997, she has won 10 and finished second in 3. She has also won two NABC Women’s Pairs titles and one NABC Mixed BAM Teams championship. In the 2001 Trials, Lynn was on the winning team which, as USA I, went on to finish 5th in the World Bridge Championships (Venice Cup) in Paris, France.

A lifelong athlete, Lynn rowed for the Yale Varsity Women’s Crew and was selected to one U.S. Olympic and three National Women’s Rowing Team training camps during college. An avid downhill skier and runner in recent years, she completed her first marathon in October. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband (and team NPC), Sam Dinkin, their ten-year-old daughter, Mahria, and two tropical fish.

Karen McCallum

A five-time world champion, Karen is perhaps best known for her aggressive and complex "light initial action" bidding system. Although the five-card (non-vul) "McCallum weak 2-bids" (with no restrictions on suit quality or side holdings) are no longer an oddity among experts, Karen saw their promise in the 1970s.

Respected around the world as a bidding theorist as well as a player, Karen has served as a coach of several Turkish national bridge teams (open, women, and junior), and of the Australian open national bridge team. She was the NPC for the Turkish juniors in the 2000 Junior World Championships in Antalya. Karen has been an invited participant in bidding panels in numerous bridge publications in England, Australia, Turkey, New Zealand, France and the US. She has also edited several bridge books, including the best-selling bridge book of all time, Larry Cohen's "To Bid or Not to Bid."

In addition to her great success in women's bridge, Karen has had some memorable experiences in open bridge. She was invited (with her partner, Kerri Sanborn) to play in the 1990 Rosenblum Teams with Peter Pender, Ralph Cohen, Bob Jones, and Mike Smolen, and the team faced a formidable opponent in the round of 16: Bob Hamman, Bobby Wolff, Chip Martel, Lew Stansby, Jimmy Cayne, and Chuck Burger. At the half, Pender's team was down 15 IMPs, and one team member suggested that perhaps "the four guys" should play the rest of the way. But Pender sent in McCallum and Sanborn for the second half and won the match. Pender's team eventually lost in the round of 8 to the German open team that won the event.

A woman of many talents and interests, Karen's primary work outside bridge is creating hand-crafted glass and beaded jewelry, including the piece she's wearing in her photo. You can see other examples of Karen's stunning work at www.eclectica3.com. She is an insatiable reader of all genres, with a home library of more than 50,000 volumes. She also enjoys gourmet cooking and playing the piano. She lives in a 213-year-old farmhouse in Exeter, New Hampshire with her husband of 30 years, Alex, and her calico cat of 25 years, Muddles.

Lynn Deas

A five-time World Champion, Lynn was honored with the ACBL’s Sydney H. Lazard, Jr. Sportsmanship Award in 2004. The award recognizes “those players who exhibit admirable ethical behavior and a strong sense of fair play at the highest levels of bridge . . . over an extended period of time.”

Lynn learned to play bridge in high school so that she could play in college. But when she got to college, she found that almost no one played. Her computer science teacher took Lynn and her partner to the local duplicate club, where Lynn got much of her early bridge experience. She reports that “it was the only club I have ever played in where people arrived an hour early in order to be able to sit East/West. All of the ‘good players’ sat North/South, so the club had to force people to sit North/South.” After college, Lynn entered medical school, but eventually dropped out in order to pursue her dream of being a full-time bridge player and teacher.

Lynn’s World Championship titles include three with Beth Palmer, her bridge partner of 28 years (for more on the pair’s history, see Beth’s bio below). In addition, Lynn was added to the US team for both the 1991 World Championship (where she played with Stasha Cohen) and the 1996 World Championship (where her partner was Juanita Chambers). Both teams were victorious.

Besides playing in tournaments and at her local duplicate club, Lynn enjoys teaching bridge online and doing partnership coaching. Her hobbies include painting, coin collecting, and breeding dogs. Although Lynn terms herself a "small time" breeder, she has periodically found herself tending to as many as 13 dogs. Lynn lives in Schenectady, NY, with her husband Rich Kasprowicz.

Beth Palmer

Beth has been an Administrative Judge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for 22 years, hearing complaints of employment discrimination. Prior to becoming a judge, she was a lawyer in private practice. Admired in the bridge world for her judicial temperament, Beth has generously given of her time throughout the years to serve in numerous administrative positions with the USBF, ACBL, and the Washington Bridge League.

Beth began playing bridge in law school in 1977 and her first serious partner was Bill Cole. Two years later, she played with Bill at the Norfolk, Virginia, nationals and her team made it to the round of 16 in the Vanderbilt. Lynn Deas reports that “Beth was the talk of the tournament, won more than 100 masterpoints, and made Life Master.”

Beth formed her partnership with Lynn Deas in 1981, an astonishing 28 years ago! Playing a strong club system from the beginning, the pair played in their first World Championships in 1982, when they were both just 30 years old, and finished 2nd in the Women’s Pairs. They have played on three victorious World Championship teams as a pair (1987, 1989, 2002), and have finished second (1982), third (1994), and fourth (1990) in the World Women’s Pairs.

Away from the bridge table, Beth enjoys reading and sports, but her primary interest is her daughter, Julie Pettis, age 13. Beth has served as Julie’s Girl Scout troop leader for six years and coach of her basketball team for three. Beth lives with her husband, Bill Pettis (“Buffalo”), and daughter, Julie, in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Irina Levitina

Irina is the only person in the world to win world championships in both chess and bridge. A six-time World Champion in bridge, she is currently the top US woman in the WBF Masterpoint rankings.

Especially well respected for her declarer play, Irina was one of 34 world-class players (including only 4 women) invited to participate in the World Par Contest, a declarer play competition, held in connection with the 1998 World Championships in Lille, France. In finishing 14th overall (and first among the women), Irina placed ahead of such stars as Benito Garozzo, Chip Martel, Steve Weinstein, and Zia.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Irina was first taught chess as a young child by her father. By the age of 18 she was a member of the Soviet team and was the top woman at the chess Olympiad. At age 18, Irina also took up bridge, introduced to the game by Simeon Furman, her chess teacher (and Karpov’s) at the time. Immigrating to the US in December 1990, Irina co-founded the International Chess Academy in Teaneck, NJ, in 1997 (you can read more about the chess school and Irina's chess career at www.icanj.net).

When not teaching chess or playing or teaching bridge, Irina enjoys reading (especially mysteries), logic puzzles, and watching ice hockey. She lives in Hackensack, NJ.

Kerri Sanborn

Inducted into the ACBL’s Hall of Fame in 2007, Kerri is a six-time world champion. She has won at least one World Championship in each of four consecutive decades, a record of “longevity at the top” equaled only by Bob Hamman. (Indeed, one wonders if anyone in any competitive endeavor outside of bridge has, or could, come close to that record of sustained excellence.)

Although (because?) her parents played bridge, Kerri swore she never would. But, she finally succumbed during her sophomore year at Miami University in Ohio, and played her first local duplicate with her father. She soon moved to California, where she credits many experts for helping her during her early years as a player: Mike Shuman, Harold Guiver, Mike Smolen, Hermine Baron, Harold Kandler, Rhoda Walsh, and, most significantly, Barry Crane.

Kerri’s first victory at the world level was the 1978 Mixed Pairs in which she and Barry Crane bested a world-class field by an astonishing margin of 5 boards. During her highly successful 14-year partnership with Barry, she was responsible for buying his coffee (2/3 of a cup, black) and filling out the convention card, while he handled the travel arrangements. Kerri’s five subsequent world championships were won in partnership with Karen McCallum (1989, 1990, 1993) and, most recently, with Irina Levitina (2002, 2006).

A full-time player beginning in the early 1970s, Kerri changed careers in 1988 when she began trading options full-time on the floor of the American Stock Exchange. She retired in 2001. An avid golfer, Kerri is treasurer-elect of her ladies’ golf league. She lives in Stony Point, NY, with her husband, Steve.

Sam Dinkin, NPC

Sam is an auction consultant who has assisted governments and corporations in buying and selling over $100 billion in electricity, cell phone frequencies, and various natural resources. A graduate of Caltech, Sam obtained a PhD in economics under Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith at the University of Arizona. Sam’s grandmother introduced him to 7-card stud poker and to mah jong as a child, but he didn’t take up bridge until college. Although he was just learning the game, he published a “Bridge with Sam” column in the Caltech student newspaper that was so popular that it was continued as “Bridge without Sam” for years after he graduated. Sam was selected to represent the US in the 1993 Junior World Bridge Championships in Aarhus, Denmark, but has played only infrequently since. His hobbies include strategy games of all sorts, running, and anything having to do with the exploration of outer space. He is married to Lynn Baker.