Crazy Week on BBO and in New York City

I logged in to BBO randomly and saw this notice. What is Crazy Week? I’m not sure. It looks like many robot tournaments that normally cost money are free this week. It’s a way to get people to try out robot tournaments who haven’t already tried them out. I believe these are the unpigmented ACBL day longs, meaning they are not the Support Your Club robot tournaments that give you black points.

Indeed, back when I did lots of robot tournaments, there were 3 different types or daily robot tournaments – the Just Declare, MPs and IMPs. For the ACBL Daylong tournaments, I believe they are all 12 boards, Best Hand, Advanced Robot, and Human Declare. There might not be a Just Declare that gives ACBL masterpoints, so it’s only IMPs or 3 types of MPs.

Edit: It seems there is some fine print. “Offer not available to all players.” So perhaps not everyone is seeing this promotion.

Crazy Weekend in NYC

However, even more crazy is this weekend. It is New York City’s standalone silver point sectional! The ACBL Unit, aka Unit 155 aka GNYBA aka the Greater New York Bridge Association, is subsidizing various events. Make sure you register early to get the discounts. If you are need teammates for the two-session swiss on Sunday, email teams@gnyba.org

Information below excerpted from the Bridge and Games website:

A VERY SPECIAL GNYBA/B&G EVENT #3.
Sunday afternoon, April 10th…Two-session Bracketed Open Swiss.
Game time will be 10:00 am. Lunch about 2:00 pm. Ending around 6:00 pm.
Four morning matches. A break for lunch at the club. Then three afternoon matches.
Cost for the two sessions with lunch: At the door…$50 per person/$200 per team.


***GNYBA SPECIAL: If you register and pay for your team online through Bridge Winners by midnight, Thursday, April 7th, you’ll save $40 per team. You’ll pay only $160.


The link for registration is https://bridgewinners.com/tournament/view/gnyba/

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Advisory Council Meeting Number Three, Spring 2022

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.

From the Spring 2022 Management Report

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.

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NYC Silver Points with Early Bird Discounts

The Unit is happy to offer 3 unique changes to earn silver points, all subsidized for those who pre-register early enough. Each event is part of an ACBL sanctioned sectional or STaC tournament and pays more generously than a normal club game. At last, this is the long-awaited NYC sectional.

Sunday April 3rd, 1pm: 0-500 swiss teams
(single-session, 50% early bird discount)

Friday April 8th, 1pm: open Pairs
(register by emailing jenksbetsy@gmail.com)

Friday April 8th, 6:30pm: open IMP Pairs
(single-session, 50% early bird discount)

Saturday April 9th, 1pm: 0-750 Pairs
Saturday April 9th, 1pm: Open Pairs
(register for either by emailing jenksbetsy@gmail.com)

Sunday April 10th, 10am: Bracketed Teams
(two-session with lunch included, 20% early bird discount)

The link to pre-register for the three subsidized events (and also to see who has already registered): https://bridgewinners.com/tournament/view/gnyba/

Each event will be held at Bridge and Games, the club at 177 East 87th Street. To accelerate the return to face-to-face bridge, the unit is covering a significant portion of the costs for those who pre-register early in each event. In fact, the limited 0-500 swiss on April 3rd is half off, but only if you register by Thursday night.

Also, the Sunday April 10th swiss is the first two-session, face-to-face bracketed swiss held in NYC in many years. For the past decade or two, anyone who wanted to earn silver points while playing bracketed teams had to make a trek to Woodbridge or Allendale. And while it’s true we are excited to see Allendale making a return on April 29th and April 30th, their current flyer only has pairs events. They have omitted the usual Sunday teams (I wonder why). That’s ok, though, because NYC folks have GNT Flight B that weekend…

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Reno Day 11: Team Rosenthal Wins the Vanderbilt

A top tier New York City based team won the Vanderbilt teams event on the 11th day of the Reno Spring 2022 North American Bridge Championships. President Joann Glasson presents the Vanderbilt trophy to captain Andrew Rosenthal, Boye Brogeland, Aaron Silverstein, Chris Willenken, Christian Bakke, and Jan Jansma.

The Vanderbilt is one of the most prestigious events of the year, which began with 48 teams in a 7-day long knockout tournament. The Rosenthal team defeated a difficult field of world class teams with higher seeding points, including many professionals with many international championship victories.

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Reno NABC Day 10: Team New York City and Long Island

The District 24 Goldner and President’s Cup NAP contestants rallied just before the 1PM kickoff to this year’s Flight B and C national finals.

D24_NAP_B_C
From Left to Right: Lee Lin, Alan Davidson, Monique France, Mee Warren, Marla Lawson, William Nealon, Michael Scwartz, Janie Woo, Silvana Morici, and Rich Morici.
Not pictured but present: Christine Flynn and Deborah Tormey
Photos Courtesy of: Mika Immonen and Pei Lin

Finals Sunday

Advancing to the finals tomorrow are Michael Schwartz playing with Janie Woo and Alan Davidson playing with Lee Lin.

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Reno NABC Day 8: NAP B and C Begins

This week flew by so quickly that we haven’t had time to provide much needed updates. Today is the first day of the Goldner North American Pairs, aka NAP Flight B. It is also the same day as the President’s Cup North American Pairs, aka NAP Flight C. Here are the representatives from our District:

Golden North American Pairs (D24):

Janie Woo and Michael Schwartz
Richard Morici and Silvana Morici
Alan Davidson and Lee Lin
Mee Warren and Monique France

President’s Cup North American Pairs (D24):

Christine Flynn and Deborah Tormey
William Nealon and Maria Lawson

Inaugural 0-2500 Pairs Finalists:

Two days prior several New York pairs entered the first ever 0-2500 Pairs event for the Spring NABC. This is a great nationally-rated event with a strong intermediate field that takes place concurrently with the Silodor Open Pairs. It is also the only 4-session, 0-2500 pairs event that does not require pre-qualification, and pays 55 gold masterpoints as long as 32 tables or more show up.

Congrats to two fully New York pairs who made it to the finals of the 4-session event:
Nikki Hudak playing with Dan Lev
Marla Lawson playing with Bill Nealon

Other events for 0-2500 players during NABC include the Young Pairs, a 6-session event during the summer NABC, the Goldner North American Pairs (requires District qualification), and the Bean Red Ribbon Pairs (requires a red ribbon qualifier). Because of the pre-qualification requirements, the Red Ribbon Pairs and Goldner Pairs pay slightly more gold points than the 0-2500 event.

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NABC Reno Day 3: Competitions and Conventions Committee

The C&C Committee is holding their meeting on Monday, March 14th 2022 in Reno at the Silver Ballrooms. They are responsible for a variety of procedures and regulations around competitions, convention charts, alert procedures, and many other tournament and competition functions.

Tablets for Late Stages of Live Tournaments

From a security standpoint, using a tablet might help prevent types of unauthorized information or cheating that has previously taken place when using physical cards and bidding boxes (even when behind screens).

Uday has agreed to help develop a mode on BBO that could accommodate. It should not require any changes from ACBL technologies in most cases. It is best thought of us running an offline version of BBO with most chat and community features turned off. There are a few cases where a complicated type of team game would require work from the tournament sponsor, and BBO would allow for it.

The motion passed unanimously.

Side note: ACBL is required to use BridgeBase for the majority of events. They had a special waiver for certain USBF events where they used a different platform. The motion to use tablets as a security measure is independent of implementation method.

Event Eligibility Problems

There were 8 pairs that entered the Platinum Pairs who were not eligible (though one pair was asked to join as a fill-in). They all played the first day but then did not play the second day.

One idea is to place software checks for eligibility when attempting to register online (and moving registration for most events online). Other ideas push the responsibility to the player, but ACBL must still provide a way to easily check your own eligibility. It is not as trivial as knowing your masterpoint total. There are many others way to no longer be eligible for events.

Perhaps the printed bridge bulletin could clarify eligibly for each individual player. That is, in addition to the pigmentation breakdown, list various qualification metrics. However, many foreign ACBL members do not receive the physical bulletin. Perhaps instead it shows up in the MyACBL Login page.

The committee did not come to a resolution yet, but a subcommittee will convene and submit a proposal.

Polling Procedures

Right now directors use polling to resolve various disputes when unauthorized information disputes occur. Directors ask several equivalently experienced players what action they might take, but the procedure usually does not provide the polled players with enough context.

Also, often the player polled does not think through the hand as carefully as if he or she actually held the cards and sitting at the table. Players on the committee mentioned they are polled often, and sometimes minutes later are upset with themselves for giving an inaccurate poll response.

Polling came into being because of the words “logical alternative” in the codified bridge laws.

ACBL Directors can provide knowledge of the laws and knowledge of the rulings. However, they cannot provide expert opinions. That is the motivation for polling.

A committee member asked if there should be an appeals casebook to publish various situations, rulings, and appeals in the past. None exists at the moment for cases that result in a resolution from polling.

The committee did not come to a resolution yet, but a subcommittee will convene and submit a proposal.

Charts for Limited Events

This item was added to the agenda on my request. I told the committee two stories and provided to proposals to solve the problem.

First, for Memphis 2019 NABC, I played in NAP Flight C, governed by the Basic chart. My partner and I carefully modified our card to be compliant with the Basic chart (which required many changes from GCC). During the 4 sessions in Memphis, we personally witnessed 3 violations.

1NT-(2D) showing an unknown major is disallowed in Basic.

Opening 2NT showing both minors but a hand that could have less than Average strength is disallowed in basic.

Opening 1C strong and artificial and responding 1H artificial and game forcing is disallowed in Basic, because it is not a game forcing response at the 2-level or higher.

We called the director in each case and received a fair resolution. However, there must have been countless other violations when players were unaware they were harmed (and unaware they made any violations).

All three of the examples were allowed in the General Convention Chart, which previously governed a wide range of events from 99ers all the way to fairly high levels where Mid Chart took over. The former Limited Chart only applied to 0-20 events!

I urged the committee to propose that Basic Chart only govern events with a limit of 299, or brackets where every team has a masterpoint average below 299, instead of the current 750. The ACBL cutoff for intermediate / newcomer events is 299, which is appropriate for the Basic Chart, while events such as NAP, GNT, and Gold Rush will use Basic+.

Initially, Danny Sprung motioned to change Basic Chart to cover 299er and below, while using Basic+ for the events and brackets from 300-2500. However, ACBL Staff cautioned that we should not make incremental changes to the chart rules each quarter. The committee should carefully consider any other related chart changes such as the Basic+ cutoff, whether Basic+ should apply to GNT B and NAP B, and other matters such as charts used in bracketed teams. Then, any and all changes should be made once and not made again.

We will circulate a motion between the committee via email and vote soon.

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NABC Reno Day 2: Advisory Council General Meeting

Today is the Advisory Council General Meeting held during the Spring NABC. Because of the fast-paced nature of this meeting, we will be live updating as information comes. It is a hectic combination of important information, interesting news, but also quite a few complaints. As the 2nd District Alternate to District Director David Moss, I am here as a voting member representing our district, complete with my green voting paddle. Also in attendance from our Unit: David Moss and Uday, veterans of the Board of Governor meetings.

General Items

Financially ACBL is doing well. Year 2021 ended with a net operating income of $2.6M. The ACBL balance sheet has increased to 5x since 2019, from $2 million to $10 million.

About 1000 face to face clubs operating

Reduced the online virtual club point multiplier

membership down 7%

tournament attendance down 50% pre-pandemic

Austin was a success from a player outlook but lost money

Reno has a large block but will likely still lose money

ACBL IT is still in crisis. 90% of the department is built from scratch with new hires and outside contractors. The technology is old and onboarding the new software engineers has not been easy.

Discipline is a challenge because of increasing volume of cases. In recent years all of the cases were from online play. A member from the Advisor Council mentioned he has seen 4 different convicted cheaters at Reno. Why?

IT Crisis

Another member asked about the IT Crisis and why the ACBLScore overhaul has been in development for over 10 years. Many members of IT have turned over in the past few years representing the vast majority of the department. ACBLScore is a priority and is part of ACBL’s proprietary software that runs a wide variety of tournament, game, and club functions.

Another problem is ACBLScore has not been updated to reflect many of the masterpoint changes passed by the board years ago. For example, the Strength of Field changes were not yet implemented.

Ongoing Lawsuit

The primary pending litigation is the lawsuit between Peter Marcus and various ACBL tournament directors and the ACBL about unpaid overtime payments when directors worked more than 40 hours a week.

Currently, ACBL owes about 9 people about $11,000 (total to all 9), as well as the legal fees totaling $225,000. This was the final judgement of the district judge on February 8th 2022, however, the plaintiffs appealed the decision and the case does continue now on appeal.

Bruce from District 21 asked how much was paid to ACBL attorneys, how much was covered by insurance, and whether they met the deductible. Answers: definitely met the deductible, insurance covered first $150K of legal fees. After hitting $150K, ACBL started paying the remainder of the fees. They have paid to date $250K above and beyond the $150K. Handling the appeal will likely cost $30K.

Privacy Policy

A member asked why private information such as email, phone, address, and lifetime masterpoints should be seemingly accessible to 3rd parties who do not need access to it. The general council advised the room of the ACBL privacy policy and strict mandates on how various parties who can access the data must only use it for ACBL purposes.

Updates from Advisory Council Chair from Board of Directors Meeting

If a player who’s masterpoints and eligibility is within the official limits, such as 0-10K events, but the player has won international champions and titles, should he or she be allowed to compete in limited events? This issue has been referred to the Competitions and Conventions committee.

Should there be a table count or masterpoints reduction for robot partnerships in online club games? There was originally a proposal to lower the table count for games that had an excess of robots players. However, the issue seems far more complicated than originally planned. This issue has been referred to the masterpoints committee for further review.

NABC Websites – in the past ACBL put together a website to give details about the NABC and districts would also put up their own websites. A prior motion proposed that districts would not be allowed to build websites that competed with the ACBL NABC website. The motion was NOT passed (my personal opinion: the only reason this was an issue is because the ACBL NABC Reno website was inadequate or broken for several weeks – moving forward this likely won’t be a problem and districts should still be welcome to advertise and build functionality separate from ACBL’s site).

The Board passed procedures for replacing a regional director should he or she become unavailable. The motivation came from the unfortunate news that the Regional Director for Region 6 passed away on February 25, 2022, with no existing procedure in place.

The chair mentioned several new committee changes, including that Lee Lin has moved from the masterpoints committee to the Competition and Conventions Committee.

Motions for Reconsideration to the Board of Directors

Someone motioned that the electronic devices policy needed reconsideration. About 7 voting members of the Council voted to reconsider the electronic devices policy, with quite a few more opposed (no official tally given).

Members from the District including Providence, Rhode Island mentioned they were the developers behind provnabc.org as volunteers who spent hundreds of hours working on the site. They were particularly offended by the motion to stop local organizations from establishing their own websites.

Other Odds and Ends

Some may remember the prior discussion on coffee and danishes at these meetings. I’m happy to report there was coffee. Someone mentioned they saw no danishes, but it was not an issue for those of us who stayed at the Hyatt Place Reno, complete with free breakfast.

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NABC Reno Day 1: Big Apple Making a Big Impact

So it’s not really Day 1 of the NABC. Officially March 9th was the first day, which kicked off the Flight A NAP tournament. However, this is the first day for a large part of the NYC crew and the first we will be reporting daily happenings.

Joel Wooldridge and Kent Mignocchi Win NAP Flight A

The North American Pairs is one of the two premiere grassroots events each year (the other being Grand National Teams). The event comes in 3 different tries or brackets. The President’s Cup is for non life masters with 0-500 masterpoints, also known as NAP Flight C. The Goldner North American Pairs is for 0-2500 players, also known as NAP Flight. The most prestigious of all is the Baldwin North American Pairs, previously known as the North American Open Pairs, aka NAP Flight A.

The event is a 4-session pairs event, with 3 pairs competing from each of the 25 districts. This year, the winners are Joel Wooldridge and Kent Mignocchi from Unit 155. If that wasn’t enough, they also led on the end of Day 1 of the extremely prestigious Platinum Pairs event.

Featured In The Daily Bulletin: Anthony and Damon

Front page of the Daily Bulletin

Hat tip to Nikki Hudak for calling out this very cool article about our prior year D24 GNT Flight C champions (along with Mo, Benjamin, and Margot). NABCs are a great time to explore new types of games and unique events. A 4-session limited to 0-10K players certainly qualifies as a game you won’t find at most clubs, sectionals, or regionals. But it is one of the unique events during the Spring nationals, and one of the few events per year that pays both platinum and gold points (10% platinum). It also does not use the general masterpoints formula; it is one of the events the masterpoints committee designates as having an “arbitrary award”, paying the overall winners 63 gold points and 7 platinum points.

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Upcoming 2022 NYC Sectionals and Regionals

The cat is out of the bag. ACBL just granted our Unit and District a few tournament sanctions, and amazingly some members are already inquiring about them! It seems the “Find a tournament” section on ACBL.org attracts a decent following. See below for items on the docket:

Royal STaC?

You might have missed it because it happened during the Omicron scare, as well as the bomb cyclone that shut down our local club on Saturday. However, for those who braved the elements, we held a very successful special STaC Mon-Fri in conjunction with several other neighboring districts. The prize in each game paid 25% gold, 25% red, 25% silver, and 25% black points. For example, 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 on one of the days.

Regular STaC – Mar 28th – Apr 3rd

This is going to be a little more special than a normal silver point STaC. The GNYBA Tournament committee, along with Bridge and Games, will be cooking up some special events during this STaC. If all goes well, we might even get a 2-session bracketed swiss game.

Downgraded Sectional?? April 8th to April 10th

I’ll admit, even I’ve never heard of this one until recently. Don’t let the name full you, it’s actually a very cool format that allows GNYBA to hold a silver point sectional using the same directors that we are all used to seeing at the club. It’s a very economical compromise that ACBL allows as long as our table count does not exceed a certain threshold. In the past, we had trouble hosting a sectional given the extreme expenses required in finding a venue and scheduling ACBL directors.

Hilton regional, October 6th – Oct 10th

This is exciting. We are finally bringing back the Midtown Hilton Regional. Instead of holding it between Christmas as New Year’s Eve, we managed to book a new slow in early October. Hopefully that appeals to a larger crowd, as the previous schedule made for inconvenient and expensive travel (and drove our non-bridge playing relatives crazy).

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