This week gives everyone a rare chance to win gold, silver, red, and black points all from the comfort of your favorite New York City face-to-face club. It is Royal STaC week, which means all games pay more points, and the game at your club will be combined with the same game at many other clubs in other units and districts to form a huge prize pool. All points awarded, whether overall or just in your section, will be paid as 25% gold, 25% silver, 25% red, and 25% black. The payout amount also uses the tournament formula, which is more generous than a normal club game.
Where and When to Play?
In Unit 155, you can officially play at any of these clubs and sessions to gain the benefits of the gold, red, silver, and black point special payouts. In practice, the largest game for Manhattan-based players will be at the 177 East 87th Street club (Bridge and Games, formerly Cavendish). There is a daily afternoon game at 1pm (Mon-Sat), a 0-750 game on Monday and Thursday evening at 6:30pm, and a Wed evening open game.
Technically, you may also play at any club in any of the participating 4 districts nearby. But we hope to see you in New York City!
Origins of the Royal STaC
As a recap, in year 2022 ACBL began experimenting with creative ways to celebrate the re-opening of our face-to-face clubs. There wasn’t as much excitement around the normal silver-point STaCs, aka Sectional Tournaments at Clubs. Some blame it on the pandemic. Others say silver points became less rare thanks to the various source of online silver point weeks. Regardless, despite all of the new online bridge tournaments, most people agree gold points are still not easy for newer players to obtain.
Originally, the name was going to be the “Rainbow STaC”, given the four different pigments of colors awarded. However, in the end the name Royal STaC prevailed.
More Royal STaCs Coming
How did it go? We know the first few Royal STaCs went quite well. Almost exactly a year ago, our own Unit 155 pair Mindy Fleder and Florin Neamtu scored a 70% game to win over 16 Masterpoints in a game of 110 tables during the Royal STaC.
Other units reported similar surges in face-to-face club attendance, and ACBL decided to continue and expand the experiment. In fact, in the upcoming New Orleans Spring 2023 NABC board of directors meeting, the board will vote on a motion to expand the Royal STaC allocation to 4 times per year, up from 2 times per year.