Please note the GNT opening round dates have changed:
Sun Feb 2nd: Flight A (0-6000) and C (NLM 0-750)
Sat + Sun Feb 15th and 16th: Championship Flight
Sun Feb 23rd: Flight B (0-3000)
Recommended KO Date for A/C: Feb 16th
The new dates allow a lot of more flexibility for players who want to play multiple flights. Also, there is no longer a conflict on President’s Day weekend with the New England regional. The following changes are on top of the already radical new GNT and NAP changes.
No Mandated KO Dates for A / B / C
Despite a very split vote after polling many prior year players of all flights, we are NOT going to mandate a 2nd KO date this year, except in the Championship flight which has run the same way for many years. However, we have taken many steps to reduce the chaos of everyone’s favorite “schedule-your-own-KO” phase.
Four Surviving Teams to KO Phase
One major change this year is that only four teams will survive the opening round unless there are at least 16 teams in the field. Last year we saw 14, 12, and 10 teams in Flight B, C, and A respectively. The KO phase allowed half the teams to proceed (everyone gets gold that way), but with no practical way to run a 3-way, we were left giving byes, wildcards, and other somewhat strange round of 8 mechanics. It was a lot of fun, paid lots of gold points, but created lots of chaos.
Once upon a time, the conditions allowed 8 teams to survive when 12 show up to the opening round. The theory was, you would split the teams into two equal groups of 6, who play a round robin with 4 survivors just like in a bracketed Soloway. The problem with 8 surviving from 12 is that 8 teams now need to schedule a KO and the four who lose in the round of 8 get ZERO gold points (just 1 or 2 red points from the opening round match awards). Although we don’t care too much about Masterpoints, the logistics, card fees, and inconvenience of a 4 sessions of bridge giving zero gold seems cruel and best avoided.
Recommended KO Date for Flight A and C: Sun Feb 16th
We highly recommend the surviving captains of Flight A and Flight C to agree to their semi final and final KO match on Sunday, Feb 16th, to be held concurrently with the 2nd day of the Championship Flight GNT KO. We will ensure there is a director present, and most importantly, as long as all 4 semifinal teams show up on the same day, it is possible to have a one-session KO in the morning, followed by a 2-session final in the afternoon.
One other benefit of all four semifinal teams showing up on the same day is that the knocked out 3rd/4th teams can play for 3rd place. In prior years, it simply wasn’t worth setting up another entire day just to compete for 3rd after getting knocked out of 1st and 2nd. This way, the teams who block off the entire day will certainly play the entire day. It also lets us establish a more concrete 1st and 2nd alternate in case the wining teams can not attend NABC.
Playing Up KO Conflicts
If a player is in the semifinals for Flight A or Flight C and also makes the semifinals of Championship Flight, we will need to make a special arrangement to reschedule the Championship Flight semifinal KO or the lower Flight KO. So far this has never happened, but it has come close a few times. Per ACBL rules and general sportsmanship common sense, we could never allow a team to knowingly forfeit from a KO because of a known scheduling conflict in another flight. Instead, our conditions this year will accommodate on the off chance this happens and the two teams involved will simply make their own arrangements.
No More Two Groups in Flight A/B/C, One Big Swiss
If 10, 12 or 14 teams showed up, the preferred format was to split the field into two equal strength groups, then have each group play a round robin. That sounds like a good idea to avoid the randomness of a Swiss (some Swiss gambits about last year). However, splitting the field into two groups creates even more randomness because it requires seeding, which falls on the GNT Committee. We believe players and organizers prefer the randomness of a Swiss over the randomness of two groups for Flight A, B, and C.
Opening Round Number of Boards: 40-52
In prior years, the number of boards in the opening round of every flight was 48-56 boards, allowing for the possibility of 8 rounds of 7 when you have 9 teams. It feels funny even writing that, because nowadays, what crazy sponsor would think 56 boards is a good idea?
Last year, we had another problem – with a group of 6, you only play 5 rounds. The conditions forced our director to choose 5 rounds of 10 as the format. Not ideal for Flight C, when 5 rounds of 9 is perfectly acceptable (and honestly 5 rounds of 8 is sounding tempting).
We are giving the directors more flexibility for the sake of everyone’s sanity without detracting from the quality of the tournament.
