Format for GNT Opening Round D24

Hopefully by now everyone knows the dates for the 2020 Grand National Teams opening round in District 24 (New York City and Long Island). If you don’t, check out the GNT flyer one more time, it’s this weekend and next weekend, depending on which flights you play. More fun if you play more flights with more teams.

So once you’ve decided to sacrifice an entire weekend day, what is the format? That’s actually a VERY complicated question, and it depends on the number of teams.

The Registration

First off, don’t show up at 10:58am. This is a hectic event for the one ACBL director who needs to collect payment, fire up the software, AND determine the format for an unknown number of teams. The venue also runs their normal club games and lessons, so there are just lots of bridge players running around asking where they need to be, and the answer could be three different places on two different floors.

If you are playing in the Grand National Teams, go to Honors Bridge Club well before 11:00 and go to the 12th floor to register your team for GNT. It helps to know the masterpoints of your team members, but a seeding committee can override the usual masterpoint seeding.

The Format

Here is where things get tricky. The number of teams that show up drastically changes the format of the event. You’ll play close to 50 boards for the day, but how is it done? We have to dig all the way into Appendix A of the GNT D24 conditions of contest.

When 7 teams show up, it looks like a standard round robin. Everyone plays 6 matches of 8 boards each, comparing scores every 2 rounds (just like in a 3-way). But if a team shows up last minute for 8 total teams, the event becomes an 8-team knockout for championship flight (A/B/C still do round robin). Add a 9th team we are back to round robin, but things get crazy at 10 teams.

Seeding Extra Important With 10

With 10 teams, the director, perhaps with help from the seeding committee, must separate the teams into 2 groups of 5 teams. In each group, the teams play a round robin of 12 board matches, only within your group. Two teams from each group continue to semifinals where 1st place of each group plays 2nd place of the other.

No Swiss Formats – Round Robin Only

Of course, once the 11th team shows up, we are back to round robin! Note the conditions never call for a swiss. The luck factor in swiss is undesirable, so all 11 teams would presumably play against the 10 other teams in shorter matches (5 board matches?).

Two Groups AGAIN – More Survivors

What if we hit 12 teams? Oh boy, we are back to two groups of 6 teams. Each group plays a round robin with 10-board matches, but now we get 4 survivors per group (only 2 eliminated). A total of 8 teams move onward to a Knockout “Round of 8.”

Importance of Seeding?

Truth is, there is always going to be plenty of luck in any bridge tournament. We try to minimize the obvious sources unfairness – the two teams deemed strongest should not be knocking each other out in the first round. Similarly, the two groups should be relatively balanced – it should not be obvious that one group feels easier than the other.

In many ACBL events, seeding is done entirely on masterpoint averages, but we DO have a seeding committee for at least the Championship Flight event. The conditions also say that a team with a majority of members on the prior year’s District winning team will automatically get the favorable top seed (does that require 4 out of 6 members, or can 3 members of a team of 6 form a team of 4 to get it?).

But as we all know, upsets happen all the time, so maybe seeding and format just doesn’t matter a whole lot. In the end, to prevail you’ll need 50 or so boards of smooth sailing (or bumpy sailing by your opponents). Try to have fun!