The Big Apple Winter Regional is only 4 days away! Last week, the board met and discussed a few minor adjustments and improvements over prior years. You can read the full minutes if you are curious.
Name Change
Previously we called it the Edgar Kaplan Winter Regional. This is the first year we are calling it the Big Apple Winter Regional. There must be a story there – but I don’t know it. The Spring regional has always been called the Eastern States Regional.
Coffee Vouchers
The host hotel unfortunately does not allow the hospitality committee to supply our own vats of coffee to players. Instead, we provide some hidden coffee vouchers throughout the sessions. In the past, we had a randomization algorithm that tries to give everyone in attendance an even chance at winning a voucher. For this tournament, only players playing in the active session are eligible to win – the vouchers might even be hidden in certain random boards – another reason to double check you have 13 cards!
Picking a Newcomer Gift
Deciding on an appropriate welcome gift for Intermediate / Newcomer players is always challenge. The budget is very limited and spans a wide range of playing skill: 0-100 masterpoints include those who have never played an ACBL sanctioned duplicate game! At the other end of the spectrum are “up-and-coming” intermediate players with over 200 sessions under their belt.
The board decided on a practical gift of $3 in entry fee credits, given to the first wave of newcomers to play in the regional.
Somewhere in this 0-100 band we will also crown the eventual winners of the Countess Cup on Friday Dec 27th (the budget for the Countess Cup trophy is an order of magnitude more than the I/N gift).
Stratification Averaging vs Higher Player
We all know that in a Gold Rush event, no player may have over 750 masterpoints. But when you determine A/B/C stratifications within the event, do you use the average of the pair of the higher player of each pair?
For the Winter 2019 regional, we are making no changes (average of the pair).
Starting the Spring 2020 regional, stratification for pairs events will be based on the player with the most Masterpoints in the pair. For example, if a pro player with 3000 Masterpoints partners with a student having 800 Masterpoints, whether they end up in A/B/C is based on the 3000. Not the average of 1900.
How about in A/X and B/C team swiss events? For Bracketed Teams, there are no strats, so nothing to discuss. But for the larger swiss events, will the strats still be team average, or highest player of the 4 (or 6)? We shall clarify next time!