Should NAP and GNT Both Have Four Flights?

We all love the grassroots events, the North American Pairs (NAP), and the Grand National Teams (GNT). These events begin at the local level playing against familiar faces at the District finals. Then, winners advance to the national finals at the NABCs. More importantly, these events are extremely welcoming to newer players, more than any other national event.

NAPs are pairs games and GNTs are the teams equivalent. However, there is an awkward lack of parallelism: GNTs have 4 flights, Open, A, B, and C. NAP only has 3 flights: Open, B, and C.

Why Is There A Missing Flight?

Last night the Competitions and Conventions Committee discussed the discrepancy and what should be done, if anything. Either NAP is missing a 0-6000 flight, or GNT has an extra flight.

From 1985 onward, both NAP and GNT were in sync. There were three flights in each, called A, B, and C. Then, in 2001 GNT spawned a fourth flight in between A and B. Rather than call it Flight A- or Flight B+, the four flights became Open (aka Championship), A, B, and C. NAP did not receive the same change, creating a discrepancy that has lasted 22 years!

Not Enough Players in Most Districts?

One objection to four flights in NAPs is simply that most ACBL Districts do not have enough players to support it. New York City and Long Island are fortunate to be part of one of the larger Districts with a total of 5000+ active members, all contained in a reasonably small geographical area. I realize Great Neck to Manhattan may seem far, but imagine trekking from Maine or Connecticut to attend a District GNT event in Massachusetts.

Many ACBL Districts simply don’t have the density of players; some already combine all three flights, with Open, B, and C players all playing together in one game (which somewhat defeats the purpose of Flight B and C playing among their peers). Sometimes all players who show up for a certain flight by default can advance to nationals. Can we really support a 4th flight?

On the other hand, it’s not clear that a 4th flight results in a dilution or distribution of the other flights. A new 0-6000 NAP-A could actually attract pairs who otherwise wouldn’t have played at all. For example, the players who know they won’t win in the open flight but have a fighting chance in a 0-6000 field. Also, those of us in D24 love playing multiple flights. We might see lots of players play both 0-6000 and 0-2500, or both Open and 0-6000.

Too Many Grassroots Tables at Nationals?

It could be a budget and logistics problem for ACBL during NABCs. Right now NAP-Open allows 3 pairs per District, NAP-B and NAP-C each allow 4 pairs. If we have a new flight also sending 3 pairs, that’s 14 pairs total, or 28 players from each District! That is significantly more than the 16 players required for all four flights of GNT (1 team per Flight in most cases).

One remedy would be to scale NAP-B and NAP-C down to 3 pairs each, therefore we only have 12 pairs per district, up from the current 11. Better yet, similar to the GNT attendance threshold, we could have an NAP attendance threshold where Flight B and Flight C may only send the 4th pair after crossing an 8-table attendance threshold.

Skill Discrepancy More Demoralizing in KO Events?

Subtle but true — a KO event is far more demoralizing when one team is clearly stronger than the other. You often see a team concede before all the boards are finished in a KO. However, a 4-session pairs event such as NAP is short and sweet. Even if you are on the weaker half of the field, you have plenty of company. Perhaps for this reason, it was important to have a Championship Flight for GNTs, where the field is truly world class. For pairs, there is no problem, we can survive 2 boards a session against Joel and Kent.

NAP and GNT Flights Today:

There have been some tweaks over the years to account for Masterpoint inflation, but otherwise the 3 and 4 flight system has been stable. Today they are:

Flight C: Non life masters with 0-500 points
Flight B: 0-2500 points
Flight A: 0-6000 points, only for GNTs (does not exist for NAPs)
Open Flight: All eligible players in the District

Over the coming months, there will be continued discussions within the ACBL Board and various committees. If you have an opinion, write to gnt@gnyba.org, or your favorite board member. For the Competitions and Conventions Committee, your D24 representatives are Franco Bessagio (voting member) and Lee Lin (non-voting member). We feel D24 has plenty of interest in adding the 4th NAP 0-6000 Flight and certainly wouldn’t want to lose any of the GNT flights.

GNT Dates for 2024

As a reminder, District 24 GNTs will be held face-to-face at 110 East 55th Street, 6th Floor, at 11am ET each of the following days:

Championship: Saturday Feb 24th + Sunday Feb 25th
Flight A (0-6000): Sunday, Feb 4th + Complete all KOs by Apr 14th
Flight B (0-2500): Sunday, Feb 25th + Complete all KOs by Apr 14th
Flight C (0-500, nlm): Sunday, Feb 4th + Complete all KOs by Apr 14th