We have 18 teams registered for the first GNT weekend, with 8 teams in the open flight and 10 teams in Flight B. Because we have crossed the required threshold, we are eligible to send two B teams to the district finals.
Also, ACBL ruled that the GNT District Finals will pay the full masterpoint amounts, not the 20% reduced amounts due to online play. Flight B first place pays 33.5 gold points, and open flight pays a ton more (not that they need more).
Prelim Schedule:
Saturday 22nd Qualifying stage
Open (8 teams). Round Robin
7 rounds of 7 boards (49) 50 min per round 10 minutes break 1 hr lunch break
District 24 will hold District GNT finals online. Winners in each flight will advance to the national finals, also held online, in late July 2021. Fees are $60/session per team, with all teams ensured at least one full, two-session opening round.
The event is open to teams of 4-6 players. All players must be members in good standing of the ACBL and meet residence and flight-specific masterpoint / rank restrictions.
For the 2020-2021 season, GNT eligibility for location, masterpoint limits, and Life Master rank are all based on August 6th, 2019 records. In all flights, a member’s principal physical residence as of September 1st of 2019 shall establish District residency. A player who moved between September 1, 2019 and September 1, 2020 may elect to compete in either District (but not both). New ACBL members who joined after September 1, 2020 may use their current District residency.
The Championship Flight is open to all such players, Flight A to those who had fewer than 6000 masterpoints, Flight B to those who had fewer than 2500 masterpoints, and Flight C to those who were non-life masters and had fewer than 500 masterpoints.
A player may participate in 2 flights of the event as long there is no conflict in the initial rounds as scheduled. However, once a team advances to the final KO phase in any flight (or semi-finals of open flight), none of the players may participate in any other flight. For example, if a Flight B team advances past May 22nd and May 23rd into the finals on June 13th, none of the players will be allowed to join a Flight A or Flight C roster. The team will not be allowed to forfeit their KO in order to join other flights.
Format
a) The First stage of the District Final will be knockouts, round robins, or swiss at the discretion of the Coordinator and the tournament Director.
b) Head to head KO ties will be broken by a six-board playoff. Round robin or three-way KO ties will be broken per current ACBL general conditions which can be found at www.acbl.org.
d) NUMBER OF BOARDS. Every knockout match in the championship flight will consist of 48 boards. For Flight A, B, & C, the final knockout match will consist of 48 boards, while earlier rounds will be 24 boards if single-session and 48 boards if two-session. The exact format depends on the number of teams entered and will be determined by the Tournament Director using Appendix A as a guideline.
Participation Requirements
Each member of a team must play 50% of the boards per knockout match. During the swiss or round robin stage event, each player must play in at least half the rounds, rounding down.
If the team receives a bye for any portion of the event, then all members of the team are deemed to have participated for that portion.
Convention Charts
At the District and National Finals, the Basic Chart applies to Flight C, the Basic+ Chart applies to Flight B, the Open Chart applies to Flight A, and the Open+ Chart applies to the Championship Flight. Players are responsible for ensuring their agreements abide by the appropriate chart. The director-in-charge and GNT Committee may unfavorably adjust the results of any board in which a pair or team used disallowed methods, or even disqualify the offending team in extreme cases.
Arrangement of Matches and Security
a). All rounds will be played online using Bridge Base Online, following standard ACBL conventions for swiss, round robin, or knockout matches.
b). The director in charge will determine required security protocols for all rounds. For knockout rounds, players should be prepared to maintain a connection with a virtual screen mate opponent using Zoom, a live phone call, or other video chat software. Typically, North and East are one set of screen mates, South and West are the other set.
Note: Masterpoint awards assume at least 4 sessions played in the flight – if there are fewer than 4 teams, the director in charge may shorten the event. Also, masterpoint awards above represent a 20% reduction from face-to-face District GNT finals, because the event is held online and awards gold and red mastepoints, per ACBL Board of Directors motion 20S2-02.
Today the ACBL Board of Governors is doing its first ever remote livestream. Here is the link embedded below. Nothing TOO exciting should be discussed, but you may see several of the folks representing you.
The stream will continue for about 2 hours. As always, the Board of Governors meeting is somewhat misleading. It is not really a board, and it does not govern. It’s primarily a group designed for two-way communication between the ACBL national level and the district membership. In many ways, it most closely resembles the house of representatives, whereas the Board of Directors is the senate.
As a reminder, a lot of Board of Governors information can also be found on the ACBL website BOG section.
Brief Summary (Not official meeting minutes)
Opening remarks by Doug Couchman – thanks everyone for coming, reminds everyone on ground rules. We will also later in the meeting discuss whether Saturday evening ET is a reasonable time to hold these meetings moving forward.
Jeff Jones gave a summary and answered questions regarding online cheating procedures and their cooperation with BBO on the matter.
Georgia Heth gave an overview on why 2021 will be very different than 2020, and filled with plenty of uncertainty and opportunity.
Counsel Linda Dunn updated everyone on the outstanding lawsuit between former ACBL tournament directors Peter Marcus et al vs ACBL, regarding exempt vs non-exempt status. Should directors be paid overtime? More information about the case on BW.
Several members had questions and comments for Linda Dunn about the lawsuit about the financial implications of the lawsuit. Although not all details could be provided on the lawsuit while still in litigation, the legal fees has cost $160K beyond what was covered by insurance.
Peyton Dodson reported on the financial health of the organization. The annual audit has been concluded and financial statements posted on the ACBL website. The original budget from November 2019 projected $330K in net gaming income. After quick pivots during the beginning of the pandemic, ACBL earned $2M a month in revenue and ended the year with a net $2.2M of gaming operations. The 2021 budget is approved and projects net gains of $748K, primarily from online activity. The budget currently does not project meaningful financial impact from face-to-face play.
Doug Couchman reports on activities from the Board of Directors (that’s the Senate, not this group, remember). One large set of changes included changes to the ByLaws, which among many things reduces the 25 Districts into 13 Regions. Pertaining in particular to the Board of Governors, the 1st and 2nd Alternate positions for each districts are no longer actually alternates moving forward.
AJ Stephani answered a question about the why 1st and 2nd alternates are no longer considered necessary. However, there is a transition period for the rest of 2021. One major reason is that all Board of Governors meetings will now be on zoom, a total of 6 per year (3 general and 3 special). In the past, Board of Governors meetings were held at NABCs, but even when face-to-face bridge resumes, we will likely continue to use Zoom meetings.
[Note: For District 24, which incudes GNYBA, the District Director is David Moss, the 1st Alternate is Jeff Bayone and the 2nd Alternate is Lee Lin. There are also three other members on the board of governors in our district: Diana Schuld, Uday B Ivatury, and Silvana Morici].
A series of motioned were made and voted on by the voting members in attendance. Normally this would be done via paddles in a physical room during NABC. Today we used Zoom polls. The first motion passed agreeing with ByLaws changes for the Board of Governors.
A prior motioned discussed talking about changing the name of the Board of Governors to something more descriptive. However, we have decided to continue calling the entity the Board of Governors.
Two more motions were proposed revising changes to the way the Board of Directors and Board of Governors cooperate. Both motions failed. However, some members note a past frustration with Board of Governors motions not passing at the Board of Director level and without sufficient communication from the Board of Directors. Others notes the communication falls to the Board of Governors chair, and that the current chair has done an excellent job.
A motion was proposed to direct the Bridge Bulletin to periodically publish a list of members currently suspended, banned, or on probation. This motioned failed. Some members pointed out that the ACBL already publishes a list of members CURRENTLY under discpline (although not a historical list).
Once again, District Director David Moss updates all of us on the latest happenings with ACBL, our unit in Greater New York, and our neighboring unit 242. In the quarterly letter, he announced the dates for our greatly revamped District GNTs, the latest with the GNYBA league, updates from the national branch of ACBL, and some important bridge milestones from those in our district.
In addition to providing us live entertainment and commentary during the GNYBA Final KOs, David Gurvich offered the following analysis and thoughts on some key boards. All of the boards can be found at the KO leaderboard.
For the finals of the GNYBA Winter League I had the pleasure of commenting during the match between Bianchi-Koeppel on Vugraph. I’d like to thank Adam Grossack(nevereast00 on twitch.tv) and Ron Smith for commenting as well. Adam handled all the technical details while producing the twitch stream. I also want to thank David Moss and Katherine Todd for getting me to do this(not a threat).
Segment 1, Board 10
Let’s get to the boards. There weren’t many large swings in the set with only 3 boards of 10+ IMPs and a final tally of 61-51 over 40 boards. Board 10 of the 1st session produced a game swing after a transfer sequence placed South on lead but I think board 11 was more interesting.
Segment 1, Board 11
Board 11 ended with a laydown slam played in 3NT and 4NT for a push. The auction for Bianchi ended in 3NT when both North and South were conservative in evaluating the hand. South clearly had a maximum for the minimum shown. I have sympathy for North bidding only 3NT(having seen what they open).
Koeppel had a slightly different auction but stopped in 4NT. I feel that the more natural auction could have reached slam. Despite having only 13 points South should accept the invite. The AKJ10x of hearts is clearly worth more than 8 points, the club K is gold. For slam you need controls and tricks more than points and this hand supplies that.
Segment 1, Board 20
Board 20 shows how many pairs that open light have agreements to avoid getting too high. In contrast to board 11 Bianchi gained by stopping in 2H. 9 tricks are available but the play isn’t clear and it’s nice to have an extra level for any bad guesses. The 2H rebid was alerted as limited because they play gazzilli. South was tempted to invite but fought that off after a lengthy hesitation. There were some questions about what gazzilli is during the match from spectators and I thought I’d give a brief explanation.
The basic idea is that all very strong openers go through 2C. 1S-1NT-2C shows either 18+ or 11-14 with 5S+4C. Other simple rebids at the 2-level all show weaker range hands. Hands that are in between minimum and 18 bid above 2S. Responder bids 2D to show enough to force game opposite 18+ with other calls showing less. I don’t recommend gazzilli unless you are willing to have some long discussions with partner about the meanings of later calls.
Segment 1, Board 13
Board 13 in the 1st set gave South an opportunity to bid the unusual 2NT after a 1H opening by East. Double dummy 2NT is the correct call. Partner has a double fit and 4H makes by dropping the singleton HK offside.
This is not a call that I would be brave enough to make vulnerable. The suit quality is awful and the 2 aces provide defense. The bid also reveals everything about my shape. Assume a normal singleton spade lead against 4H(this happened at the other table). Declarer innocently took a heart finesse and could have been -2 had South gotten a ruff. With a 2NT overcall declarer knows the spade lead is a singleton and that South is 55 or better in the minors. A strong declarer would suspect that the HK is not onside when South is looking for a ruff. We don’t want to think how bad being in 3mX might be when North is 5422.
Segment 2, Board 6
Board 6 in the 2nd set again gave South the chance to overcall 2nt and both tables took advantage. The suit quality is excellent and opposite 3 keycards slam might have play(most of my partners beg me to be less diligent in looking for slams). The problem with bidding 2nt here is that an uninspired partner won’t know that 4H is the right call with Jx in hearts and Kxx in clubs. AHA! you think to yourself, I’ll bid 3H over 3C and clue partner in. That’s exactly what happened to the Bianchi pair at one table. Not a great success once doubling started. At the other table Lynne Koeppel passed 3C and gained 8 IMPs when her partner went -3 undoubled.
But what can we do? The risk of missing 4H or even a slam is clear. A normal plan might be to overcall 1H and plan a 2nd call if the auction doesn’t die.
One of my partners advocates a 4H call here, especially at favorable vulnerability. I’m not a big fan but I can’t argue against the effectiveness. The odds of getting doubled are low and there are all kinds of opportunities to gain. The opponents may bid and go for a number, you might get a club lead, partner might have 3 keycards and you are cold for slam. Here you are likely to be -3 undoubled and would do 8 IMPs better.
In a GNYBA League first, the KO finals offered a live Twitch video stream from expert commentators David Gurvich, Ron Smith, and Adam Grossack! Hundreds of kibitzers tuned in for a 40-board final that remained within one game-swing for the vast majority of the match.
Final Score
Lynne Koeppel, Mustafa Cem Tokay, Okay Gur, and Gokhan M Yilmaz won the match 61 to 51, coming back from a tiny 2 IMP deficit at the half. The team had finished 3rd during the regular season 5-round swiss, which qualified them into the semi final KOs.
Congrats also to Ettore Bianchi, Leonardo Cima, Alessandro Gandoglia , and Giacomo Percario. They won the regular season with a commanding 73.08 Victory Points after five rounds (next highest was team Davids+ at 62.62). They also took second place in the post season.
In the first segment – Adam and David introduce the teams. And at 18:31, we hear from District 24 Director David Moss. He explains the origins of why we created the GNYBA Winter League, describes the format, and drops some hints about an upcoming season 3. Adam later asks if New England might someday put together a similar league. David’s response? The GNYBA league is open to everyone! In fact, team New England won season 1. Later on, another local pro “dlev60” briefly joins the conversation.
Ron Smith joins us in the second segment as an official commentator. At 1:18:34, the pros walk us through one of the crucial boards in in the 2nd set. With the same contract, similar auction, and analogous low club lead, +630 vs -200 gave 13 IMPs in a very tight match.
Special thanks to Katherine Todd for chairing the GNYBA league committee and successfully spearheading our first GNYBA live Twitch stream! And of course, kudos to Adam Grossack and friends for hosting and taking Twitch bridge to the next level. Follow all of his streams at https://www.twitch.tv/nevereast00
Groups B, Group C, and Honorable Mentions
Last weekend we also concluded our group B and group C finals. In group B, Eric A Hendrickson, Paul G Gutterman, Andrew Caranicas, Richard D Lawson, Robert Schachter, and Mark I Krusemeyer won the knockouts and qualifying in 4th place during the regular season. Keeping the tradition of non-NYC teams winning, they are a team of university professors from Minnesota.
Congrats also to Philip Lentz, Jeffrey Rothstein, Thomas G Rozinski, and Grigoriy Blekherman won the Group B regular season and took 2nd in the KO. Lentz and Rothstein are Unit 155 board members who executed a successful gambit during the semis. They have already put us on notice that they will return next season.
In group C, Laura J Schisgall, Stanley Sterenberg, Stanley Tuhrim, and Betty J Mintz also won both the KO and regular season. They defeated the Greenwitches, who join us from… Greenwich, CT. I have played alongside them as teammates, even winning a bottom-bracket cash prize at the Hilton years ago. Also, it is possible one member of the LSSB Quartet is the original source of the Red Lion-Cromwell-gate.
From neighboring Long Island, Bill Dinner, Mark A Leibowitz, Bart Cirker, Dina E Schechter, David G Joseph, and Jack A Lipson made the group A semifinals in both season 1 and 2. We always welcome our friends from Unit 242, which includes Nassau and Suffolk counties. ACBL District 24 is the combination of their unit and GNYBA, and you will see many GNT and even NAP grassroots teams that mix and match players from both.
As for for the GNYBA organizers, both of our teams also made playoffs for both seasons. David Moss, Andrew Rosenthal, Katherine M Todd, David Gurvich, Jacob Freeman, and Jason Chiu won 2nd in the Group A regular season. Meanwhile, Scott Mcdermott, Alan P Davidson, Lee C Lin, Adam F Siegel, Aaron Liebhaber, and Vladimir Kolbun won 3rd in the Group C regular season.
From all of us at the GNYBA league, thank you for playing and we hope to see everyone back for season 3 – stay tuned and start gathering your teams!
We held our GNYBA Winter League semi-finals on this quiet Saturday night, in order to avoid conflicts with the all-important Valentine’s Day. However, we livened up the BBO party with a live vugraph broadcast.
Eventually several dozens of people joined from around the world, all strangers to me, in order to watch the featured KOEPPEL vs DAVIDS+ match – and it was a close through the very end! Well done on all sides. In Group A Lynne Koeppel, Mustafa Cem Tokay, Okay Gur, and Gokhan M Yilmaz will move on to the finals and face Leonardo Cima, Ettore Bianchi, Alessandro Gandoglia, and Giacomo Percario.
Group B Gambit Success?
In Group B, season leader LENTZ opted to play against the 3rd place team BETTER THAN OK ON A GOOD DAY (who were the Season 1 swiss winners). The gambit paid off, as LENTZ will advance to the finals, as well as THE FROZEN TUNDRA, who originally finished the regular season swiss in 4th. Tune in next Sunday to watch Philip Lentz, Jeffrey Rothstein, Thomas G Rozinski, and Grigoriy Blekherman play against Eric A Hendrickson, Paul G Gutterman, Andrew Caranicas, Richard D Lawson, Robert Schachter, and Mark I Krusemeyer.
Group C New York vs Connecticut
In Group C, both 24-board quarterfinal matches saw heavy IMPs swings, grossing 240 total IMPs across the both matches (yes, we play common boards with Group A, but apparently uncommon contracts and play). My team, team MCDERMOTT, lost to the GREENWITCHES while THE LSSB QUARTET knocked out season 1 winners THE NMFERs. I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing team GREENWTICHES consisting of Sharon Phillips, Fern M Lindsay, Cathy Dann, Kathy Markby, Nell W Otto, and Lindsay Ormsby have some members from Connecticut – welcome and congrats! They will face Laura J Schisgall, Stanley Sterenberg, Stanley Tuhrim, and Betty J Mintz (definitely New Yorkers).
All 28 teams showed up on our special Saturday evening round 5, to avoid conflicts with any potential sporting events tomorrow. Although the season is over, we continue for two more weekends with our semi-final and final KOs. We hope to see you playing or spectating.
In each bracket, the top team will choose whether to to play the 3rd or 4th place team. The 2nd place team plays the other. Check out who made the playoffs on the leaderboard.
Fastest Players Shoutout Round 5:
I am told we focus far too much on who plays quickly, so we will keep it brief and speedy this time. The fastest players this week is a tie, between Frozen Tundra and Stanton, as well as Glubok vs Frogs. This is the 2nd week in a row of speedy play for the Frogs!
Once again, we are super lucky to have a hand review from one of our own NYC world class pros. For those who played Sunday night, there were quite a few good slams, at least one tempting but very bad slam, and most importantly, some hands misplayed by even top notch declarers.
Review Of Select Hands, by David Gurvich
There were a few hands that were interesting for various reasons and one in particular that might bring back memories of Justin Lall. Bonus points to everyone who either knows or guesses the board.
Board 3:
I like this board because numerous declarers misplayed it. Most pairs either got to 4H or 3NT by East after a 3D preempt was doubled by West. 4H is trivial in the play and merely requires guessing to lead a heart to the K instead of finessing for the Q. 3NT is more interesting and requires some planning.
Most pairs in 3NT received a diamond lead. All the declarers who won this trick should go down 3 when the clubs are unfavorable. Some made with a popular misdefense of not rising with the heart Ace, leaving partner to a guess.
The correct play requires some foresight. With the 3D preempt there is an excellent chance that clubs don’t break and diamonds are 7-2. If clubs don’t break we need 2 more tricks. There are 2 lines which require different plays at trick 1. 1)The heart A is with the preemptor. 2)The heart A is not with the preemptor.
Option 1) Win the opening lead, cash 2 clubs finding the bad news, finesse for the heart Q. That line is fine if your opponents typically preempt with a good suit and side A at favorable vulnerability. Mine don’t, which leaves…
Option 2) Duck the lead, win the diamond continuation (pitching hearts from dummy), cash CK and duck a club when the suit fails to break. On the heart return rise with the K. This combines three separate concepts for declarer. Plan the play before playing to trick 1, scissoring the opponents’ hands, and an avoidance play.
Board 12:
Most pairs reached a 4H which requires careful defense to beat. Many tables received the lead of the SK when partner overcalled or opened spades. To guarantee a set, either a small diamond or 2nd spade followed by a diamond must be played, though there are many landmines available.
A typical defense was SK followed by 2 more rounds of spades ruffed high. After drawing 2 rounds of hearts and stripping spades and clubs, declarer has to decide how to endplay East. The holdings where it is possible to make are KQ, KJ, QJ or singleton honor. Kx when the defense fails to unblock is also possible but usually requires cashing the DA early.
Since I don’t like guessing when deduction is available let’s see what information we have. On the 3rd round of spades West typically pitched a diamond. After drawing trump we know that West started with 22 in the majors and 9 cards in the minors. Psychologically, it’s much easier to pitch from a 5-card holding than a 4-card holding. As a defender with Jxxxx and KJxx would you pitch a diamond or a club? That means we can assume that West is 2254 and East is 5215. Once we make that assumption playing for East to have a singleton honor becomes a certainty.
Board 19:
4S was the normal contract. A few pairs went down immediately when played by North on the lead of the HA followed soon by a heart ruff. Many pairs made when played by South on the lead of the CK. What went wrong?
In our match the C3 was played at one table and the C8 at the other. At both tables declarer ruffed and tried to sneak a spade through with a fake finesse, playing the SJ from hand. At one table West rose with the SA and shifted to a heart while the SJ held the trick at the other. Who misdefended?
The C3 is a clear misdefense, even though partner is expecting an attitude signal there will be no other chance to signal for a heart shift. I would play the C10 but at least give partner a chance with the C8. On the other side, ducking the SA will only gain in 1 case and requires that partner holds the SQ and declarer is 6520 with the HK or HA. With fewer hearts declarer will be able to pitch down to doubleton heart (9xx opposite AKQx drops J10). If declarer doesn’t have HK or HA, winning the SA and getting a ruff is obvious.
Board 20:
7S is excellent, somewhere between 70% and 80%. From the results it’s clear that the grand is difficult to bid with most pairs that bid 7S essentially guessing what to do. There was only 1 pair that didn’t, Warren Chang – Stephen Jansen.
Most tables started with 1D-2C to show the GF and longest suit. Stephen chose 1S and had an easy road to 7S after Warren raised to 3S and exclusion keycard was applied. While 1S might run into difficulties on other hands it made the auction much easier here. A trivial example of a problem with 1S is opener rebidding 2D. 3C is artificial and clubs will frequently not be shown unless getting to a slam.
A simple auction might be 1D-2C-2H-2S-3S, then exclusion and 7S. The problem with that auction is when partner has an inadequate number of keycards and you are forced to play either in 5S (off 3 keycards), 6S on spade finesse (if lucky) or 5NT. A few pairs had an auction where they made a slam try and partner bid keycard. That allowed them to bid 6H but partner still had no clue how high to go.
The main problem is that opener has no way to show some extra values over 2C using standard methods. Here is a reasonable standard auction to 7S: 1D-2C-2H-2S-3S-4C-4D followed by 5H exclusion. If opener takes control with keycard instead of 4D the auction goes off the rails and should stop in 6.
Currently, the GNYBA League does not award ACBL masterpoints. We only award a small quantity of fame and glory. Should it and could it award points? That’s a question for ACBL to answer someday in the future.
Would paying points be helpful to the league? In other words, would it have a meaningful positive impact on participation? And would we need to change the way we run it? We would be curious to hear from all players whether it makes a difference (both the points and modifications to how we run the league).
Fastest Players Shoutout Round 4: Frogs Versus Hinterland
This round fastest player shoutout goes to Jordan Lampe, Christopher Moh, Ralph Buchalter, and Jeff Roman vs Anita Heitler , Don Heitler, Tom Bishel, and Brian Ross. Both tables finished in 97 minutes, and 12 minutes faster than the next closest team. That is extra impressive given The Frogs play a transfer-oriented symmetric relay system, with a strong club! Here is an example board of all the alerting that must be explained, starting with a strong club opener and opponents passing throughout.
1H (natural 2nd seat open, limited to 15 HCP) 1N (game forcing and artificial) 2C (2-suited with minor) 2D (tell me more) 2S (5-5 red suits) 2N (tell me more) 3C (shortness in spades) 4H (signoff, slam unlikely)
EDIT: An earlier version featured Board 16, however Board 11 is more representative of some of the system features.
NOABC Victories
Katherine Todd (0-5000 Teams Champion)
Zia Mahmood
(Open KO semifinals)
Joe Grue
(Open Pairs 4th)
Team Liebhaber
(0-1500 Teams semifinals)
GNYBA League Nov 2020
Season One Results Team New England
Better Than Ok On A Good Day
Team Sam
