Amazingly, the Advisory Council is meeting for a 3rd time in March 2022, but for a very important reason. The first meeting was a pre-NABC Reno meeting, to discuss the Board of Directors agenda items in case the constituents of the Advisory Council members wanted to opine or intervene prior.
The second meeting occurred on Sunday morning, March 13th, in Reno physically as well as on Zoom. However, there were a few technical issues for those who joined via zoom, in particular audio from the hotel was not feeding properly to the zoom call. Those joining remotely were unable to participate fully. This seems to be entirely the hotel’s fault, unfortunately, and they had previously given assurances and tested the day prior. However, sometimes technology has ways of failing us when least convenient.
So this is neither a special meeting or a formal meeting. However, it is important because it is a makeup from the normal meeting during NABC. The only practical difference is that the meeting is not mandatory. That is, missing the meeting does not jeopardize a member’s standing on the Advisory Council.
In Attendance From District 24
From our District today, we have David Moss and Lee Lin attending. We were both at the live meeting in Reno, so we have a good idea of what to expect and where there are areas for debate. In particular, we expect questions about privacy and marketing to ACBL members, robots making a pervasive appearance in virtual club games, IT issues in general, and NABC websites that conflict with the NABC.
Remarks from AJ Stephani
Some changes are in the works for investigating and detecting cheating online. As a quick teaser, we should all look for an announcement in the next week or so. It is the result of Marty Hirschman and others on the anti-cheating committee.
Remarks from ACBL President Joseph Jones
Reno was a success by table count. There were 6200 tables in Reno up from 5000 in Austin. At the end of the tournament, some players tested positive for Covid, and he encourages everyone to fill out the post-Reno surveys whether or not you had Covid issues. ACBL will use survey results to rework their policies for safety.
ACBL is still bottlenecked by the massive IT projects.
Q&A: Peter Marcus from D25 asked about online regionals. Why does ACBL continue to host online regionals when face-to-face bridge is suffering? Also, could ACBL allow units and districts to hold online tournaments?
Answer: At this time, it is a management and board decision to centralize online tournaments with ACBL instead of with units and districts. But perhaps that can change in the future.
Q&A: Brett Kunin from Unit 140: Has the positive COVID cases changed ACBL’s masking policy for future tournaments?
Answer: ACBL follows CDC guidelines and does not try to be smarter than the CDC on the issue. That said, Joseph was surprised to see a relatively small percent of players wearing masks. It’s obvious most players do not want to wear masks while playing. He personally did not wear a mask for most of the tournament, but did towards the end of the week as more cases came out.
Q&A: Steve Moese from D11: What is the latest number on tournament attendance?
Answer: Tournaments are down about 50%.
Discussion Items from Advisory Council Chair
Doug Couchman gave a quick recap of some of the Board of Director meeting motions. It was similar to the prior recap in Reno.
Q&A: Steve Moese from D11 mentioned face to face clubs are struggling, and right now there is not a level playing field versus online bridge. Half of all the clubs are operating now versus 2019, and the table count dropped from 2 million to 500,000. Some suggestions: make virtual clubs award white points (a new pigment), so that only face to face clubs pay black points. Eliminate robot and fast pairs that pay pigmented masterpoints. More black points should be required for each rank, including life master and grand life master. One suggestion: 200 black points for life master instead of the current 75. Online alliance have a disproportionate amount of power and should be curbed. Here is an excerpt from his written piece, sent before the first March 2022 Advisory Council Meeting.
Allow tables from online and in-person bridge to complement table counts used for masterpoint awards overall. Reduce the online total tables by proportional board count. e.g., 18/24, or 18/27*. Devise an acceptable approach for multi-club alliances. We feel strongly that an alliance should not have a disproportionate advantage in table count adjustments. Some ideas to spark discussion:
a. Each member of an alliance separately claims additional tables played in the alliance
online game by one of their original accept list players (difficult to manage). When
claiming additional in-person tables, alliance members must list the player numbers of
their online players to be added to the in-person game.
b. Cap the maximum number of additional tables that can be boosted at 30.
c. Allow the online game to boost its table count by tables from all members run in-person
by members of the alliance at the same time.
Restrict players from playing online when there is a championship regional in their District or a championship sectional in their Unit. Do this by deleting any MPs won playing online when a tournament is underway. This would not include online sessions started after the in-person tournament day has ended. In-person midnight games do not bar players from playing online.