More ACBL Gold Points: Oct 15-18 Fall Into Bridge

Posted on October 15, 2020 by Lee Lin

The second last online regional for 2020 begins tomorrow, with the usual stratified two-session pairs events each day, as well as many single-session side game series and newcomer games. And for those who like team games, stay tuned. In fact, check your email and this website in the next few days…

Here is a link to the Fall Into Bridge ACBL Schedule

Attempting The Side Games

This time around, the regional will be very different for me. Instead of my usual mid-flight and super mid-flight games, I will be trying the side-game gambit. As I mentioned, I recently switched to Asia hours, which makes a two-session event during US hours especially hard. Instead, my partners have agreed to play the 9:15pm ET side-game series, conveniently allowing me to play it as a morning game when there is a 12-hour time difference.

Technically, my series is the “Howling Wind Side Game Series”, and I appreciate the creativity from the tournament organizers. However, most of my partners just call it the 9:15pm side series. Hope to see folks there! Based on the past few regionals, the side game series is actually very hard to win – many world class pros seem to play it. I’m hoping the 1500 and 500 strats give me some relief.

Quick Primer On Side Games

A side game series combines your best two sessions by matchpoints percentage to determine overall award eligibility. For this regional, all side series are exactly 4 sessions, horizontally stacked at the same time from Thursday through Sunday.

Each starting time is a separate series. Your performance from 10:15am session does not impact your 2:15pm session. Instead, you need to play at least two of the 10:15am sessions to qualify for the overalls. If you play all four, you have a slight advantage, because you have four chances and they take your best two sessions.

Individual Performance Not Partnership Performance

Also, overalls are based on INDIVIDUAL performance. You can switch partners throughout, if you use the same partner each time, you should win together. However, if you play four sessions with two different partners, you might get a 65% and 40% with one, and a 63% and 50% with another. You would almost certainly win gold points because only the two best sessions count. However, your partners would not, unless they also played more sessions with other partners.

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Team Milman Wins GNT Flight A

Posted on October 9, 2020 by Lee Lin

We realize we left everyone in suspense for the GNT Flight A finals in our last four-flight GNT update. As a reminder, GNT Flight A is open to all District 24 residents as of September 2019 who had fewer than 6000 masterpoints, and uses the ACBL Open Chart for allowed methods and conventions (Flight B uses Basic+, and Flight C uses Basic).

Congratulations to Igor Milman, Oleg Rubinchik, Albert Shekhter, and Florin Neamtu for winning the 2019-2020 GNT-A Season. Each player will receive 40 gold pigmented masterpoints and a blue ribbon qualifier. Under the current CoC, defending champions also receive favorable seeding for next year.

For placing 2nd, the team of Bill Dinner, David Joseph, Dina Schechter, and Bart Cirker will each receive 30 gold pigmented masterpoints and a blue ribbon qualifier.

Normally, the winners would have represented New York City and Long Island in the national finals! However, due to the Montreal 2020 NABC cancellation, we will hold a new GNT District Final for next year. We welcome all teams to compete again!

More On Defending Champions and Favorable Seeding

In practice, the District GNT conditions of contest intentionally minimize the importance of seeding. However, there are cases where seeding matters. When exactly 8 teams show up, the conditions call for a 3 round KO in the championship flight. In all flights, when there are exactly 10 teams or 12+ teams, the teams are split into two groups of equal strength, with either 2 or 4 teams surviving in each group.

How do we determine groups of equal strength? For the championship flight, the director in charge and GNT coordinator formed a seeding committee that was familiar with the approximate strength of each team. In the lower flights, the director in charge and GNT coordinator seeded teams by team avg masterpoints. Seed 1, 3, 5, etc were in group 1, and Seed 2,4,6 etc were in group 2. However, when there were an odd number of total teams, the last seeded team was placed in group 2 (therefore, group 2 eliminated more teams after Day 1).

The GNT Committee for the 2020-2021 will review seeding rules and adjust as appropriate. Ideally, seeding would have zero impact by holding a full round robin in the opening round. However, full round robins require a match between all teams in the field, and squeezing in too many rounds into one day is impractical – either the day drags on too long or the rounds are too short. The national finals has 25+ teams on the opening day, and they choose an 8-round swiss with no playbacks to seed 16 KO survivors. We will discuss the pros and cons of each method in greater depth over the coming weeks, and we welcome feedback!

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Team Merlo Wins GNT Flight B

Posted on October 5, 2020 by Amy

The two teams remaining teams in the Flight B District Finals completed their final 52 board knockout last week. This marks the end of the entire 2019-2020 GNT season for our district!

Congratulations to Stefano Merlo, Jin Hu, Jordan Lampe, Chris Moh, and Robert Forster for winning the 2019-2020 GNT-B Season. Each player will receive 33.5 gold pigmented masterpoints and a blue ribbon qualifier. Under the current CoC, defending champions also receive favorable seeding for next year – but the new GNT committee will review seeding rules.

For placing 2nd, the team of Norman Trabulus, Charles Bilich, Barry Walfish, and Robert Kuhnreich will each receive 25.13 gold pigmented masterpoints and a blue ribbon qualifier.

As with Flight C, normally both teams would have represented New York City and Long Island in the GNT national finals during the summer NABC, with the winning team receiving a $1000 travel subsidy. However, with Montreal NABC and the national finals for 2020 cancelled, the district plans to run a new tournament for 2020 and 2021. All teams will be eligible again for next year to play in Flight B, even if the players now have over 2500 masterpoints. We hope to see many returning teams as well as new players – stay tuned for details.

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Team Liebhaber Wins GNT Flight C

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Amy

The two teams remaining teams in the Flight C District Finals played their final 26 board knockout last weekend, completing the 2019-2020 GNT season for non-life masters with 0-500 masterpoints.

Congratulations to Aaron Liebhaber, Adam Siegel, Lee Lin, and Frank Dinoff for winning the 2019-2020 GNT-C Season. Each player will receive 20 masterpoints, half gold half red, and a red ribbon qualifier. Under the current CoC, defending champions also receive favorable seeding for next year – but the new GNT committee will review seeding rules.

For placing 2nd, the team of Damon Suden, Anthony Chiocchi, Mary Ann Oehlerking, and Marla Lawson will each receive 15 masterpoints, half gold half red, and a red ribbon qualifier.

Normally, both teams would have represented New York City and Long Island in the GNT national finals during the summer NABC, with the winning team receiving a $1000 travel subsidy. However, with Montreal NABC and the national finals for 2020 cancelled, the district plans to run a new tournament for 2020 and 2021. All teams will be eligible again for next year. We hope to see many returning teams as well as new players – stay tuned for details.

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GNYBA Board Meeting 2020-09-22

Posted on September 26, 2020 by Bill Sigward

The GNYBA Board of Directors met on September 22, 2020. Go to the meeting minutes page for this and all prior board meeting minutes.

In Attendance (by ‘Zoom’)

V. Apter, J. Bayone, D. Garber, B. Gellas, J. Hu, U. Ivatury, P. Lentz, F. Levine, S. Levine,
L. Lin, Mark Mariaschin, J. Meyers, G. Miniter, R. Moller, D. Moss, A. Parrish, A. Rhodes,
A. Rudary, W. Sigward, A. Silverstein, K. Todd, N. Trabulus, J. Wank.

President’s Report
B. Gellas began with two ACBL-related items:

ACBL has announced they will not sanction in-person tournaments thru at least
February 2021 (regional tournaments). This decision does not restrict local bridge
clubs from opening or operating, if they choose to do so.

ACBL may begin to limit the number of regional tournaments that are held in a
calendar year. However, the ACBL will not interfere with 2021 tournaments a
particular district has already contractually scheduled. As a practical matter, it will
be in 2022 and beyond that the new limitations may be imposed. District Rep D.
Moss stated that there is ongoing discussion at ACBL on this topic, and there is a
sense that there are too many regionals being held. Due to pandemic-related
cancellations, the GNYBA at present has no future regional tournaments scheduled.
Tournament Report

Bonnie requested S. Levine to update the Board on the status of our tournaments and
relationship with the Hilton. Steve reported that we have successfully cancelled the
November 2021 Regional, with no financial penalty. In addition, the Hilton has agreed to
return our $13.5 thousand deposit which they have been holding following cancellation of
the May 2021 Regional. (The deposit is expected to be returned within the next two weeks.)
Steve also reported that GNYBA remains on very good terms with the Hilton; and that at
present we have no contracts in place with anyone.

Secretary’s Report / Nominating Committee Balloting

The Secretary reported results of the recent balloting to create the five-person Nominating
Committee which will develop a slate of candidates to work on the GNYBA Board in 2021.

The following Board Members were selected for the Committee:

Bonnie Gellas
Lee Lin
Gillian Miniter
David Moss
Adam Parrish

The two alternate members of the Committee will be: Amy Rhodes and Allison Rudary.
District Representative Report

D. Moss updated the Board on developments at the ACBL –

The ACBL’s ‘Future of Bridge’ Task Force concluded that the future would feature a
strong emphasis on on-line bridge; with face-to-face bridge accorded relatively less
importance. David stated the ACBL Board did not react well to the latter finding.
More to follow.

There have been no announcements regarding the scheduled NABC in St. Louis in
March 2021. The same is true for the Providence NABC in July 2021.

David stated that whereas not much has been done with respect to 2021 GNT’s, we at
GNYBA should assume there will be a GNT at Providence and proceed accordingly.
One key issue is whether our GNT should be face-to-face competition, or conducted
on-line (we will “wait and see” for now). David also expressed his thanks to A.
Rhodes for her terrific work managing the pandemic-impacted 2020 GNT’s.

Financially, the ACBL is doing fine; however, the future holds challenges. Among
them is the fact that membership in ACBL has been declining, and has declined
further since July of this year. As a result, there is a need to stabilize or reverse that
trend. Getting more people to play on-line would help.

Creating a group to promote bridge would also help. In subsequent discussion, A. Parrish suggested that holding an on-line New York event would be something worth trying; and the NYC bridge community might respond well to some kind of organized team event for New York participants. U. Ivatury volunteered to look into the feasibility of GNYBA
sponsoring such a team-oriented NYC event.

Other Business

Announcement was made of the result of the recent election for the District’s 2nd-Alternate
position. The winner was GNYBA Board Member Lee Lin. Lee will thus become a voting
member of the ACBL’s Board of Governors, and will also serve on the ACBL’s Master-point
Committee. D. Moss commented that Lee was one of two people he knew who best
understood the intricacies of ACBL master-point awards. Congratulations, Lee!

Next Board Meeting

The next Board Meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 20th.

Respectfully Submitted by
Bill Sigward,
Secretary of the Board September 24 , 2020

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All For One Gold Point Week Speedballs

Posted on September 21, 2020 by Lee Lin

I was excited for the special Gold Point Week for virtual clubs, less so for the points and more because it would bring back the extra special evening speedballs. In fact, we have stratified speedballs now:

Late night session:
 There will also be three late-night $10 18-board speedballs:
  0-499 starting at 9:00 pm. 
  0-1,250 starting at 9:05 pm.
  Open Game starting at 9:10 pm.

No More Speedball Love?

During the last silver linings week, the 9:30pm speedballs were incredibly popular and fun. As many of you know, I’m currently on Asia hours and these games are pretty much the only ones that fit my schedule.

Alas, for some reason, Day 1 does not bode well for the evening speedball. With 5 minutes to go, there are no entries in either All For One or the Alliance Game. Maybe it’s time to start hiding the number of entries, otherwise the appearance of a lack of critical mass makes people drop out?

But The Evening 0-1000 Game Was Huge

Turns out there was a big game, it just started 2 hours prior. An impressive 23 tables in the 0-1000 Gold game. Once again, we have a party in the James game. I wonder, how do we carry some of that energy over to the speedballs? Maybe the 9:30pm start time was actually better, because anyone who finished the evening game had a chance for a redemption speedball?

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Colony Club Wins Interclub 2019-2020 Playoffs

Posted on September 15, 2020 by Lee Lin

The Inter-Club Bridge League finished their 2019-2020 season today with a 5 round BAM playoffs. Congratulations to Kristen Swenson, Hee Jung Moon, Kitty Stanton, and Anna Haas representing the Colony Club, winning the playoffs with a score of 15.5 boards.

Final Playoffs Standings (Top 6 out of 19):

Colony Club
Harvard Club
University Club
Cosmopolitan Club
Regency Whist Club
New York Athletic Club

Shortened Season with Virtual Finish

Although the pandemic cut the regular season short by 2 matches, the league proceeded with playoffs qualifying the top 6 out of 19 teams from the season. Normally, the prior year winning club would host the playoffs event (University Club). However, like all things post-Covid, the league migrated from paper travelers to BBO, skipping the Bridge Mate phase entirely.

Board A Match

Bridge Base has only limited support for Board-A-Match. For those who haven’t played it, it’s an interesting mix of team play and matchpoints. You have a team of four and face off against another team of four across two tables with common boards. So far that’s just like swiss or KO that we know and love.

But instead of scoring it as IMPs, it’s scored like matchpoints – with only one other pair in the field. For any board, you either win, lose, or tie, for a score of 1, 0, or 0.5. Every board is either a top, bottom, or push (and sometimes the results at your table are inconsequential). More than ever, every overtrick matters, as well as the 10 or 20 point differences we so often see with -100 vs -110, or +430 vs +420.

Unfortunately, a few blown overtricks can lead to an unrecoverable loss

Limited BBO Support For Teams

It’s been on our wish list for a while – better support for team games. Right now scheduling multiple rounds of teams is very cumbersome – all 8 people must be online and ready to play, each round requires another setup session, and there is no good way to chat with all the players prior to the game starting, between rounds, or after the game ends. There could be many more casual team games played with just a few minor changes.

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Bridge Adventures: Face To Face Bridge In Taipei

Posted on September 7, 2020 by Lee Lin

As with some of our other Bridge Adventures posts, we search across the country and international world for interesting games. Today, we report from Taipei, over 7000 miles from New York City, to confirm that face-to-face bridge still exists. I was very fortunate to partner with Honors alumni and Taiwan resident Maggie Huang!

Taipei Bridge Club

If you happen to be in Taiwan itching to play bridge, head to the Chinese Taipei Contract Bridge Association’s International Bridge Center. They play at 1:30pm on Wed, Fri, and Saturday, as well an evening session Wed. There was no lunch buffet, or any snacks for that matter. Fortunately, card fees are about $5.50 USD, and $2 for “members” or students 26 and under. With such low prices, you can craft your own lunch buffet from the nearby 7-11, or the numerous food establishments across the street.

Face-To-Face Bridge

We played 13 rounds of 2 boards, with one sitout. Unlike ACBL and JCBL in Japan, they don’t use BridgeMates for scoring – it’s a tablet about the size of an iPad mini. They also have seemingly no stratification. All 14 tables were in one big open game, and no one seemed to care about masterpoints.

How Did It Feel?

Amazing. After touching cards and bidding boxes for the first time in 6 months, I’m confident physical clubs will make a triumphant return. The thrill of the game came rushing back, and I definitely drew strange looks from partner and opponents taking a photo of the moment.

Opponent asking about 3C. Good thing it wasn’t Wolff, because my mandarin is far too weak to explain

I prefer we don’t migrate to tablets or weird technology substitutes at the club. Remember our old friend the Stop card? I even had a chance to use it twice: once before making a weak jump bid, and once for fun because my RHO was about to open out of turn. Try doing that on BBO!

One last observation. Taiwan is famous for popularizing strong club systems, but we only ran into one precision pair in the session (the very first round, too bad we hadn’t discussed psycho-suction). Maggie assures me there were others lurking around.

How To Get There

It’s hard to find, so your best bet as an English speaker will be to type the address into Uber. 106臺北市大安區忠孝東路三段217巷7弄7號B1. It ‘s also not immediately obvious you are in the right place unless you can read the characters outside – the first English signs and bridge graphics appear on the banner at the basement level.

Is It Safe?

As of 9/8/2020, the island of 23 million people has only officially confirmed 494 cases of Covid-19 and 7 deaths since the outbreak. Unfortunately, entry is quite restricted and so far, bridge visas are not a thing. Even those who can legally come will need to undergo a strict mandatory 14-day quarantine.

While visiting Asia regularly is not a practical solution to our bridge cravings, we can remain inspired that the game is alive and well. One day, it will be safe again to play face-to-face bridge in New York City. When the time comes, we will cheer the reopening of our physical clubs, while retaining All For One and the great convenience of online play.

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Surprise! You Might Be Eligible Again for Your GNT Flight

Posted on August 31, 2020 by Lee Lin

Clearly the 2020 pandemic disrupted everyone’s plans and lives. In our humble corner of the GNYBA bridge universe, Covid-19 struck just as we reached a euphoria from seeing record-breaking attendance for GNT Flight A/C and GNT Flight B.

Special Rules for 2020-2021

ACBL will create special conditions for the 2020-2021 season of GNT, and the latest draft suggests several key modifications. First, districts who completed their GNT district finals for 2019-2020 may opt to send those winners to the Summer 2021 GNT National Finals.

That’s big news – it means those districts might cancel their 2020-2021 district finals entirely. In some cases, it might be the most practical decision, avoiding a face-to-face tournament or moving the tournament online. However, GNT is one of the most exciting grassroots events that units and districts hold each year (North American Pairs being the other grassroots event). It is quite a big sacrifice.

Fear not, GNYBA and NSBA fully intend to hold a fresh 2021 Grand National Teams district contest. We aren’t yet sure of the format, dates, or medium – for now stay tuned.

Eligibility Changes For 2020-2021 – Uses 2019 Masterpoint Level

Normally, you would be eligible for Flight C if you were had fewer than 500 masterpoints AND were not a life master prior to August 6th, 2020. However, for this season, the plan is to use the 2019 cutoff date! Why? It’s because of the graduation buffer.

Graduation Buffer – September to July

It reminds me of chapter in the Malcolm Gladwell classic, “Outliers”.

Every year, the Flight C national finals always have players who crossed the 500 mark by hundreds of points. The masterpoint cutoff begins in August, but Summer NABC occurs almost a full year later the next July! Some very active NLM tournament players can win over 200 points during those 11 months. Last year District 24’s mini mckenney winners Nikki Hudak, Tim Archdeacon, Matt Gordon, and Ruth Fleischmann earned 235, 336, 446, and 452 points respectively in the under 500 brackets!

Those in charge must have felt the 2019 cutoff is the only fair way to equalize districts. You have the same pool of players, regardless of whether your district opts to use 2020 winners or run a fresh 2021 contest. Every district has the same graduation buffer. It also means next year will have a larger buffer than usual – some players might be halfway out of Flight B by summer 2021 NABC!

Good News – More Chances To Play

Honestly, most of us are not outliers and will neither play pro hockey or professional bridge. We just want to have fun, and the best news of all is that anyone who missed their last chance to be Flight C due to the pandemic might get one more shot.

The same exception applies to the higher Flights B and A. But realistically, by the time you have over 2500 points, you probably already hit your Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours. Imagine that – the equivalent of 5 years of playing bridge as a full-time job. And when I get there, I’m sure I’ll still be making many of the same dumb mistakes.

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Record Breaking Virtual Vacations Gold Rush – 737 Tables

Posted on August 27, 2020 by Lee Lin

Today begins the 3rd online gold point regional. The early support your club games drew so many players that pairs needed to register 90 minutes early to secure a spot. In April, the first online gold point regional was so popular that BBO crashed for many. The June regional was also super successful, at 552 tables for the kickoff Super Gold Rush session.

Are The Games Still Big?

Short answer, yes. We still have large demand, and mostly concentrated in the Golden Sunshine Gold Rush Pairs. A whopping 737 tables competed!! Logistically, the tournament ran as two separate 360 table games. But that was simply a software load balancing (and director load balancing?). The ultimate overall results treat it as one combined event.

How About The Non Gold Rushers?

The High-Tide Top Flight Pairs game had 89 tables, which is an improvement from Strawberry Ice Cream Open Pairs at 79 tables. By the way, I know there exist some naysayers, but I applaud whoever comes up with these event names. You gotta appreciate the creativity and attempt at keeping to a fun theme.

The Sandcastle Mid Flight pairs had 138 tables, compared to Blue Butterfly Mid-Flight in June with only 90 tables. Excellent news so far – the games are larger for all stratifications, and concentrated mostly in the gold rush. As we write this, with 5 minutes to go before 5:15pm, the evening schedule Gold Rush already has over 500 entries (250+ tables). It seems morning is more popular among the gold rushers (so you should do evening if you can!).

How Much Do You Get For Winning a 737 Table Gold Rush?

What is the prize? We expect it will be 24.98 gold for first overall of 737 tables. Why is it less than the 552 table game from June? Because June was a SUPER Gold Rush, with a masterpoint limit of 0-1250. It pays about 10% more than a normal gold rush. Which just goes to show, even though the game today had 33% more players, the prize increase was minimal.

Unfortunately, the way the masterpoints formula works for large games, we all get more points by splitting into separate, smaller games. Especially once the table count crosses 60 when the marginal entry adds increasingly less to the prize pool.

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