All GNT KO Matches Scheduled

Let’s give all the advancing captains in Flight A and C a huge round of applause. Every first round KO match seems to be scheduled, most of them in February!

Flight A Semi Finals

First, the early bird award goes to Dziekanski vs Jonas-Silver, the Flight A wild card match. Because we had 10 teams in the opening round of Flight A, we split the field into two groups of five, one led by defending champion Trabulus and the other led by defending finalist Chang. Each group advanced the top two teams, and the 3rd place team from only one of the brackets would advance as the wildcard 5th team. Team Jonas-Silver narrowly beat Boge by less than a Victory Point (39.95 vs 39.31), allowing the wild card to play a heads up wildcard KO for a chance at the semi finals.

They quickly scheduled and played their 48 board match this week with Dziekanski, prevailing with a final segment comeback: down by 7 IMPs with 12 boards to go but then pulling it together for +8 IMPs to end the match 50-42). Not advancing is Maya Jonas-Silver, Jack Latta, David Yoon, and Randi Edelman, who win 13.33 gold points each and the official 5th place spot in this year’s District 24 Flight A.

Team Dziekanski will play Team Chang in a 48 board match on Wed night 2/28 and Friday night 3/1.

On the other side of the bracket, free from any wild card match, Team Ekinci will play Team Trabulus over 48 boards on March 7th in a straight afternoon and evening same day match (a good simulation of the daily 52 board KOs during the GNTs at NABC). EDIT: This match is not yet 100% confirmed, they might still try to do it over 2 days, stay tuned.

Will we see a rematch of Trabulus vs Chang this year in the finals, or will Ekinci or Dziekanski push through? Teams that reach the finals will receive 30 gold points and a blue ribbon qualifier for the Mini Blue or Blue Ribbon Pairs at nationals.

Flight C Quarter Finals

We already wrote about the Flight C Trophy Wars, or Battle of the Countess vs Inter-Club Cups. Oratofsky vs Moscow will take place on 2/29, Thursday night at Honors.

The other match is Team Smirnov vs Team Diederich, scheduled for Sunday, 2/18 for 30 boards. Captain James Diederich took first overall during the Gellas Newcomer Pairs event held at the Midtown Hilton in October 2022. Teammate Thierry Bonnet that year also won the Helen Shanbrom Ace of Clubs masterpoint race in District 24. That year both face-to-face and online black counted towards the same Masterpoints race, the final year prior to the Ace of Virtual Clubs separation in 2023.

Opposing captain Ivan Smirnov was the winner of the GNYBA silver point Rising Stars cup in June 2023 with a big 69% afternoon session to beat fellow Flight C quarterfinalists Oratofsky and Soloman. Ivan’s teammates Stephanie Chamberlain and Sheri Elowsky also have their own GNYBA tournament victory: they won the overall 1st place award during the final Saturday Gold Rush of the Astoria Regional, which won pure gold points and an invitation to the Red Ribbon Pairs in Toronto NABCs.

The winner of this match faces off against Opening Round group winners Team Li, who received a bye along with Team Rockoff during the quarterfinal KO round.

Paying KO Round Card Fees

New this year, we are piloting accepting credit card payments for the KO round. You will no longer need to pay the hosting club, which was previously a messy process where teams give cash to the club director, who may or may not know the correct amount to charge you.