Record Breaking GNT-C / GNT-A Attracts 21 Teams!

Be careful what you wish for! We surpassed our goal of 20+ teams. In total 50 teams competed in the opening rounds of GNT-Championship, GNT-A, GNT-B, and GNT-C. Last year there were only 32, a nice 56% increase, mostly coming from B and C. We have reached a golden age of Mid-Flight intermediate players in the district, and the coming KO matches should be very close!

Most Frequent Players?

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean 200 unique people gave up their weekends. Some people played in two different flights, and the true fanatics played in THREE flights (you must be under 2500 MP to hit this achievement). Perhaps there should be a frequent player drawing for GNT’s next year (while we are at it, 3 NAP flights for 3 different days)?

GNT Hat-Trick: Players who gave up 3 weekend days in a row:

Played: Champ, A, B
Allison Rudary
Matthew Rudary

Played: Champ, B, C
Wendy Wen
Qun Yang
Luke Robison
Nikki Hudak
Adam Siegal
Frank Dinoff
Katherine Todd
Lee Lin

Correlation or Causality?

Perhaps it’s just correlation and we are fooled by randomness. Or maybe it takes a certain self-selected kind of person to do it. But it’s also possible that getting beaten up by world class pros actually helps us get better! All of the players who played three flights have qualified into the knockout rounds!

Allison Rudary, Stephannie Culbertson, Rachel Moller, and Matthew Rudary narrowly missed qualifying in the Championship Flight quarterfinals by 2 Victory Points. No problem, they are now Top Seed in the GNT-A Semi-Finals. If anything about this photo looks familiar, Allison and Matthew were also winners in their Group of 9 for GNT-B.

A Multi-Flight Problem?

So for the people who are entering Knockouts , please try to be extra accommodating to the other team and each other. It’s just very hard to find a weeknight or weekend for 8 busy people. For those in multiple flights, you have it extra rough. And of course, be sure to talk things out with your teammates over the various scenarios – you can only go to Montreal and play in one flight, but the remaining teammates can potentially augment the team and swap in eligible players, including those eliminated from other teams.

District 24 GNT-C Results

With 13 teams showing up, the seeding committee used the age old “sort-by-masterpoints” method. The only hiccup was a team of 5 provided their total without notifying the director they had 5 (you are supposed to report the total normalized to four players, and if that is too complicated just give the sum and the number of players to the director).

As with GNT-B, there was one Group of 6, and then a Group of 7, each with four survivors.

District 24 GNT-A Results

Team Photos? Bios?

If anyone knows anything about any of the GNT-A or GNT-C Teams, please let us know. We are actively seeking team photos and short bios! For now, we can only briefly discuss a few of the familiar faces.