GNYBA Board Meeting Minutes Jan 9 2020

Posted on January 19, 2020 by Lee Lin

We have posted the meeting minutes from the Jan 9, 2020 Board Meeting.

May 2020 Regional

Most players should be interested in the proposed schedule for the May 2020 regional. A full discussion will be reserved for another day – however the tournament will likely feature some variant of the Knock Out In A Day. There will be Gold Rush pairs every day – which means NOT having a flighted swiss day (A/X + Mid-Flight + Gold Rush Swiss). There will be bracketed round robin every day, excluding the featured Knock Outs day.

Stand-alone NYC Sectional?

We are gaining more momentum for reviving a stand-alone NYC Sectional. Everyone in NYC and Long Island knows silver points can require significant travel to obtain. Players who love two-session team events have no silver-point options other than Woodbridge, Allendale, and Poughkeepsie.

We continue to explore options for attempting a weekend sectional, and thankfully a few reasonable options have surfaced. If it works, we could usher in a new era of GNYBA minting silver points without detracting from the STaC calendar.

Not sure why BridgeFinesse suggests a Singapore cruise as a nearby silver point option

December Regional Attendance 2019

The winter regional only saw a slight decline in year-over-year attendance, better than expected given the adverse calendar. In 2018, Dec 26-30 ended with the final day on Sunday Dec 30th. We were concerned Monday Dec 30th, 2019, would not see the same success. Fortunately, Monday saw solid attendance – 5 brackets of round robin, 19 tables in open pairs and 14 tables in the Gold Rush, all taking place alongside a large side game.

Financials

Nothing interesting to report, which is good news. We are a non-profit organization operating at a slight loss of a few thousand dollars against a positive, low six-figure balance sheet. The primary expenses are operating the regional tournaments, including the venue, ACBL director fees, marketing, and hospitality. We also sponsor the lower flight grass roots pairs and teams at NABC with small stipends. All of the board members volunteer their time and energy to keep the ship sailing smoothly.

Posted in Events, Results | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

What Is The Name Of the Sturbridge Host Hotel?

Posted on January 16, 2020 by Lee Lin

First off, huge round of applause to the District 25 folks for quickly dealing with the Red Lion Cromwell abrupt shutdown. Planning a regional takes many months of lead time and planning. It’s amazing that everything will continue as scheduled, at a tried and true location (and a cheaper hotel rate).

So what is the name of the new Sturbridge host hotel? Surprise! The venue is actually called, Sturbridge Host Hotel. For a moment I thought the hotel was named “Convenient Hotel”. Anyway, they have updated the Presidential Regional tournament flyer with the new phone, name, and address of the venue.

Posted in Events | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

New England Regional Moved To Sturbridge, MA

Posted on January 15, 2020 by Lee Lin

Followup to our news that Red Lion Cromwell is no longer hosting the New England Presidential Regional.

It is now at Sturbridge, MA – more information below. For New Yorkers, that adds about 45 more minutes to the drive. But the room rate is almost 20% lower than Red Lion.

Posted in Events | Tagged | Leave a comment

Cromwell Tournament and Red Lion Hotel?

Posted on January 15, 2020 by Lee Lin

Breaking news – a trustworthy source told me that the annual Cromwell regional tournament will no longer be held at the Red Lion Hotel! That conflicts with the email I received from Mike Wavada and District 25 just last week. It also conflicts with the latest tournament flyer and the nebridge.org webpage.

(Edit: Confirmed, Red Lion Cromwell has been knocked out – updated location to be announced very soon).

Edit: The Hartford Courant, WFSB, and Middletown Press report the abrupt shutdown occurred last Friday over some sales tax issues. Also, locals heavily impacted – we wish the best for the town and impacted employees . Updates from D25 coming soon.


Calling The Red Lion

I called the phone number for the Red Lion Hotel Cromwell. No answer twice. That’s not the best sign for a hotel with over 200 rooms. Granted, it was 12:30am Eastern Time, but it isn’t THAT late for what should be a 24/7 establishment (no voicemail either).

We will keep digging to find out more. Maybe there is a perfectly good explanation…

KIKO Format and Monster Knockout

Because we haven’t yet talked about it, Cromwell features both regular knockouts and Knock In Knock Outs. The regular knockouts are called Monster Knockouts, because they traditionally attract a monstrously high number of teams and brackets for a regional event. If you are knocked out Saturday, you can join one of my favorite formats, the choose-your-flight swiss teams day (Gold Rush, Mid-Flight, A/X Swiss).

So what is KIKO? Earlier we talked about the Tarrytown Knockout In A Day held in the upcoming Tarrytown / Westchester regional.

In constrast, Knock-In Knock Out is a two-day event where the first day is a qualifying swiss, and the second day completes a Knock Out with seeding based on the swiss victory point results. Specifically, directors form many brackets of about 8 teams, all with similar masterpoints. The top four teams advance to the next day and play semi-final knockout matches (then finals if they win that).

KIKO solves the two primary Knock Out problems – if your opponent in the first round happens to be a much stronger team, you will get tied last place for losing right away. And problem number two, if you lose in the morning, you suddenly need to fill your day with a single-session event (or go home early). With KIKO, the opening swiss ensures you play All day against most of the teams in your bracket, hopefully reducing some randomness and eradicating the early elimination possibility.

Good Practice for Grand National Teams

All told KIKO is a very exciting and fair format, and closely mimics the Grand National Teams District 24 Finals. For those practicing for GNT, you might give KIKO a try! The NABC GNT finals is also very similar, just at a larger scale. The “Knock-In” is a massive swiss with 1 or 2 teams from each of 25 districts, and then 16 surviving teams enter a knockout.

The Soloway KO Teams also incorporated two days of swiss “Knock-In”. The main benefits are knockout brackets are no longer seeded by masterpoints, but through the swiss knock-in day. It allows teams with lower masterpoint totals a better chance to progress, because they aren’t stuff playing top pros in the first round!

Posted in Events | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Anyone Prefer The Old Club Results Format?

Posted on January 14, 2020 by Lee Lin

As a software guy, I know it is very difficult to make significant interface changes that please everyone. Some faction of users will complain about something the old system did more effectively. We always hope the new features heavily outweigh whatever complaints crop up. People come to appreciate the new design, and then all is good.

ACBL Live For Clubs?

That said, what does everyone think about ACBL Live for clubs? It certainly is better for tracking individual performance, as I can quickly find all of my games and results going back to last May. If I happened to be the result-stalking type, then I could also look up other players just as easily.

Here is what isn’t ideal about the new interface:

  • It is noticeably slower regardless of internet connection
  • It is not as efficient for recapping all concurrent games
  • You need to click on other each section to see all the results
  • For board recaps, it’s much harder to see what people did in other sections
  • It does not mention whether your award is section or overall, and which stratification, the old (SA) (OB) etc.
If the open game had sections A and B, you start off only seeing section A. If there is a 0-750 concurrent game, you won’t even see it without clicking to a different file

All told, there are clear benefits to the new ACBL Live for Clubs. But there are cases where I wish for the old mode – unfortunately that may no longer exist. What does everyone think?

Posted in Results, Software | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

New York City 2020 Key Event Dates

Posted on January 13, 2020 by Lee Lin

Allendale Sectional Apr 17 – 19

Big Apple Spring 2020 Regional May 25 – May 30 (Flyer)

Posted in Events | Leave a comment

Ways To Practice Bridge Solo?

Posted on January 12, 2020 by Lee Lin

For those going to Allendale this weekend for yet another NJ sectional, good luck!

We are back from our travels and jet-lagged for quite some time. That means no 2-session events for me, and no driving. Even the usual Honors evening circuit will be a stretch. But it gives plenty of time in the odd hours of the night to practice alone.

How To Practice Alone?

There are plenty of ways to sharpen your game without a dozen tables of opponents, and possibly even without your partner! There is a crowd that enjoys reading books, and the monthly bridge bulletin has excellent columns for developing and advanced players.

For those who want a more interactive experience, almost everyone has their own favorite online lesson set. I happened to get my start using Audrey Grant’s BetterBridge interactive lessons – and I still pay for my subscription years later!

Enter BridgeBase

The big game changer is BridgeBase. Some people absolute hate playing bots for various reasons, others love it and play too much. The most common objections are that players who score well against bots know how to trick the bots with strange bidding plays. Next most frustrating, defending with a bot partner means receiving seemingly random carding signals, with almost no regard to your carding. One last objection is that playing with bots is generally not free – but it’s only $1 a week to fill your table with 3 basic bots!

A No Bidding, No Carding, Free Technique

Get it while it lasts – you can actually play 100% for free, for as many boards as you want, all day and every day, and you never have to learn how to bid or defend with a bot.

Log into BBO, click on Challenges, and try Challenge a Robot. You can set it to Just Declare mode, and try your best for free against the Basic bots. In fact, I recommend keeping a running tally of your results over many short matches against the bots, again with Just Declare mode turned on – hat tip to Jordan Lampe for the idea.

As soon as your 8 boards are complete, you get a comparison against the robot opponent. Try enough times and most players will lose – but at least you can review the boards to see what the bot did differently! Uday once reported that the Basic bot beats 91% of humans, and the Advanced bot beats 98% or so.

Is the Challenger Opponent Also Basic or Advanced?

The one question where I’m still unclear – when you pay the extra $0.25 for an advanced bot, it certainly applies to the defenders at the table (and your partner if it were not Just Declare mode). But how about the other table, with your bot opponent? I have a suspicion that even without paying the premium, your opponent is an Advanced bot playing against Basic bots, but I could be wrong. Can anyone confirm?

Posted in Software | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Knock In Knock Out + KO in a Day

Posted on January 8, 2020 by Lee Lin

Two upcoming regional tournaments offer some variant of knockouts that guarantee all registered teams play for the entire day. Traditionally, a knockout means that once your team loses, you no longer need to play, your overall points have already been determined, and you no longer owe further card fees (you pay per round, and keep paying as long as your team keeps surviving).

The Knockout Problem

Some consider knockouts one of the more pure forms of bridge. I’m not sure why everyone uses the word “pure”, but it sounds like people refer to minimizing luck, maximizing skill, and most importantly reducing noise from an unpredictable field.

When you register for a traditional knockout, you initially pay for only one round. Directors place you in a bracket of up to 16 (these days usually 9). You play one match of 24 boards against one other team and see who has more IMPs at the end. The winning team survives and pays for the next round. If you had a three-way, probably two teams survive and pay (which is why brackets of 9 is a magic number). Win four rounds and you are the overall winners.

There are two problems. First, you commit to two days (four sessions), which not everyone wants to do. They created compact knock outs that are only 12-board matches which tries to solve the problem, but those tend to be even less popular. The bigger problem: it’s hard to plan your playing schedule. If your team loses the morning match, you either take the afternoon off or scramble into some one-session event that isn’t very satisfying (some teams catch early trains home).

Introducing A Solution: KIKO / KOIAD

Tarrytown and Cromwell have solutions. They are called Knock In / Knock Out, and Knock Out In A Day.

Instead of a bracket of 16, you are placed into a bracket of 8.

Instead of 2 sessions per day of 24 boards each, you squeeze in 3 sessions of 18 boards.

Instead of paying as you go, round by round, you pay up front for the whole day.

If you lose the morning match, you are knocked out but then automatically enter into a swiss teams event along with others knocked out teams, including those from other brackets of 8 (if there are enough teams, it could be bracketed swiss). The swiss is 36 boards and 6 rounds, and pays gold point overalls to the winners. Teams can also register separately for the Swiss, so it isn’t just a massive consolation swiss, but everyone starts fresh with a 0 score.

If you win the morning match, you have Knocked In to the semifinals! Except remember, there were only 8 teams in the bracket to start, so only top 3 spots should pay overalls.

If you won the first but lose the second round, you still play the final round against the other semi-final losing team, competing for 3rd place. The winner of that round still qualifies for overall awards (this is currently under review by ACBL).

If you win the first and second rounds, great job! You are in the finals just like in a normal KO or compact KO, and you play the final 18 boards to see who gets 1st vs 2nd.

Posted in Events | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Masterpoint Races 2019 Results!

Posted on January 7, 2020 by Lee Lin

ACBL has posted the 2019 Masterpoint race results. You check out our unit Ace of Clubs results and our Unit Mini-McKenney results. You can widen the geographical net slightly and check out the District Ace of Clubs and District Mini-McKenney.

Nationwide Contenders

A few noteworthy district winners made it to the top nationwide slots – they will be in the printed Bridge Bulletin in the coming months.

Wendy Wen finished 11th in the 5-20 bracket.
Nicole Hudak took 8th in the 100-200 bracket.
Tim Archdeacon won 3rd nationwide in the 200-300 bracket.
Siqing Yu was 13th for 500-1000, after winning his bracket last year.
Dan Lev and Yoko Sobel took 6th and 7th in the 1000-1500 bracket.
Sam Amer 3rd in the 1500-2500.
Giorgia Botta and Leonardo Fruscoloni took 8th and 9th for 2500-3500.
Joe Grue came 3rd in the “over 10,000” bracket.

Nationwide Mini-McKenny Race Winners

Four individuals in our district won the nationwide race (and we really mean North American-wide). All of them should begin preparing a bio and headshot for the Bridge Bulletin!

Matthew Gordon won the nationwide 200-300 with 439.69 points earned.
Ruth Fleischmann won for 300-500 with 452.77 points earned.
Gillian Miniter won 3500-5000 with 1608.02 points earned.
Radu Nistor repeated his prior nationwide victory with 1170.22.

Posted in Races, Results | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Bridge Adventures: Shibuya Bridge Center, JCBL

Posted on January 5, 2020 by Lee Lin

Hello and Happy New Year! Today our travels take us to Shibuya in Tokyo, Japan, home of the Shibuya Bridge Center. After a cold email inquiry to the website contact address, Tadashi Teramoto replied in excellent English telling us he could find us teammates for Swiss the next day.

ACBL and JCBL Conversion

The Japan Contract Bridge League uses your ACBL masterpoints to determine your stratification and bracket when you enter a JCBL event. However, in Japan they apparently haven’t seen the same levels of inflation we experienced here in the US. Life master in JCBL is still 300 masterpoints, which apparently takes ages to achieve.

You might be surprised to see the Stop card in use again, and someone even threw it out prior to opening a strong 2C. You never announce any bids – transfers and forcing 1NT are alerted. Pairs playing weak 1NT should pre-alert; and you don’t pick up your bidding cards until the defender plays the opening lead.

Shibuya Bridge Center

Most of the world was still in New Year mode on Saturday morning, Jan 4th, but Shibuya Bridge Center was full of energy and buzz. We found our teammates, who thankfully seemed super friendly and wouldn’t mind if we brought back plenty of “lose 12” boards.

The card fee for 2-sessions was 3200 JPY a person, comparable to a team event in Woodbridge or Allendale. That included a “Sandwich Lunch” break in the middle – and amazingly every table had a dedicated tablecloth to deploy just before the break (it must be North’s job, because it was under the North bidding box mini-table).

Lunch Break with Tablecloth

We previously discussed how players appreciate clubs that can provide Swiss Teams with hand records. However, in Japan they take things to another level. By the lunch break, some cool constraints have been met:

  • You have played the first half of all your matches
  • Your teammates have also played those boards, so you can discuss
  • The boards were all pre-duplicated
  • You don’t need to compare scores – the BridgeMate and tournament software did
  • You get a preliminary Victory Point total and rank based on the half-match

For the second session, you will play the second half of each match – against the OTHER pair of each team. That is, if you played say the North/South pair in the morning, you will play their East/West pair in the afternoon for the back half of the match. At the end of the day, you get a Victory Point score against each team based on the IMPs of both morning and afternoon.

Some people seemed to get more colorful tablecloths. Perhaps the pros bring their own?

Lost And Found – Cultural Differences

Most of us have seen the Lost & Found table at Honors – you can find about 50 old convention card holders left behind over the years (I used to think frequent players were granted a storage cubby hole). Things in Asia are no different; people leave things behind and the club owners are too nice to throw things away outright. Except, here the most commonly left behind item seems to be tea thermoses, mini-fans, and hand towels.

One last point about leaving your bidding cards on the table until the opening lead. It sounds like a good idea at first – you won’t have to recap the bidding. But I found it awkward for two reasons. First, as dummy you have to dodge the bidding cards when you lay out your cards – either that or delay everyone by picking up your bidding cards, THEN showing dummy. Second, my left-hand defender kept accumulating all my pass cards – for some reason they kept scooping it up (maybe I encroach too much to the left when I bid).

Posted in Events | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment