Open Spot on the D24 Advisory Council

Posted on May 29, 2024 by Lee Lin

Every three years, our District governing bridge in New York City and Long Island needs to elect the three Advisory Council representatives. Think of the Advisory Council as the House of Representatives. They meet on zoom at least 3 times a year around the same time as the three NABCs and reviews ACBL Board of Director motions, sometimes resulting in modification or reconsideration of such motions.

In practice, serving on this all-volunteer body allows one to learn a lot more about what is going on in the higher levels of ACBL management, and even join a specific committee to give direct input to major decision makers. For example, AC members Jeff Bayone and Silvani Morici were previously on the Teachers & Club Owners Committee. Lee Lin has served on the Masterpoints Committee and observer on the Competitions and Conventions Committee.

One can incept real changes by joining. In the past two years, ACBL modified gold rush events and NAP / GNT Flight C to use the Basic+ Chart instead of the Basic Chart, introduced security tablets for the final stages of high level events, unified ways to account for players with international and non-ACBL playing experience, proposed Masterpoint inflation adjustments to the Flight B/C brackets, and reworked bracketing rules for teams who wish to play up. These ideas all originated from committees containing Advisory Council members.

How To Run – Email by May 31st, 2024

At the moment, you might even be able to run unopposed! If interested email elections@acbl.org to declare your candidacy – you don’t have to prepare any campaign materials at this time. Also, give your unit officers a heads up (either your Unit 155 or Unit 242 president and VP). You do not need to be on your local Unit board to run, although the Unit board meetings are probably one of the best ways to share info upstream and downstream.

If you are shy about elections, don’t worry. Several of us have been on the AC for quite a number of years and will gladly make room for an eager new volunteer.

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Kent Mignocchi and Joel Wooldridge win Key Platinum Pairs

Posted on May 22, 2024 by Deborah Tormey

Kudos to Kent Mignocchi and Joel Wooldridge who won the prestigious Kay Platinum Pairs Tournament at the 2024 NABC in Louisville. While Joel and Kent are no strangers to winning bridge tournaments, this Platinum Pairs event is considered the premier pairs event for the year and players from all over the world come to compete so it is a strong competitive field of players. It was an important win for the men and just the latest way Joel and Kent have demonstrated excellence in duplicate bridge competition. We congratulate them on this important win!!

In general, bridge players compete for Master Points awarded by ACBL (American Contract Bridge League) but it may interest many bridge players to note that this Platinum Pairs Tournament is not considered a ‘Master Point race’ by these elite players. Joel indicated that, while it isn’t about the points, it does contribute to one category that he cares about and that is “Player of the Year” which is based on how many times a player has done well in National Tournaments in the US that year and how the points have accumulated.

Both Joel and Kent began learning bridge as children and participated in the Juniors Program, sponsored by ACBL. In 1990 Joel, at age 11, became the youngest person to reach the level of Life Master. This record has since been broken but it remains a remarkable achievement. It was in the Juniors Program that Joel and Kent met while representing the United States in international tournaments. ACBL sponsored their travel and supplied them with a coach. As an adult, Joel has served as a mentor in that program.

Joel said that bridge has benefited him in a number of ways – 1) it was a bonding experience with his parents and people his own age, 2) it improved his ability to think logically and to make judgements, 3) it gave him a reason to travel the world, 4) it opened his mind to new ways of thinking, 5) it gave him discipline, 6) it provided him with a passion for something that started as a game and became a career because he is good at both playing and teaching. He plays all the time but continues to love it because, as he says, “it is just that interesting and it can’t exactly be mastered and there is something to be learned from it no matter how long you have played. It is a great game and more people should be playing.”

Clearly, both Joel and Kent have talent. They were also given excellent guidance and opportunity from a very young age so they both already have an impressive list of bridge wins and accomplishments. That said, it is likely they have not yet peaked in their careers and we can expect to see much more of them in the future.

Research continues to show multiple health benefits from playing bridge so it may be helpful to expose more people of all ages. Research coordinated by Samantha Punch at BAMSA (Bridge as Mind-Sport) in Scotland has shown benefits for memory and brain health but, these days, given the prevalence of loneliness (CBS reported 80% of young people report feeling lonely) perhaps the most important health benefit may be that playing bridge decreases the sense of loneliness.

ACBL is a charitable organization which is continually working to support and encourage participation in bridge, including young people. They sponsor and partner with groups that help young people learn the game and compete in bridge games. Both ACBL and The World Bridge Federation sponsor tournaments just for young players. ACBL also sponsors both online and in-person bridge camps for juniors, offers scholarships to college-age players, and partners with groups promoting bridge education to young people. One such group, BridgeWhiz, is a free online beginning bridge program for students (and parents) in grades 4 through 12 and an ‘Improver’ series which is open to 4th through 12th graders who know the basics of bridge or are BridgeWhiz graduates. A free, one-year ACBL Junior Membership will be awarded to anyone completing the series. (Www.BridgeWhiz.org)

Coming up – Youth NABC has youth championships July 25-27, 2024 in Toronto and the games are free to ACBL members 20 years of age and younger. (ACBL.org/ynabc)

The World Youth Bridge Teams Championships occur every two years. The JUSBC (Junior US Bridge Championships) is held in December of the year before to select teams to represent the USA. The 2024 JUSBC  will be named after Sam Amer, a NY Bridge professional who, according to Bridge Bulletin “was a beloved member of the bridge community and a former member of the USBF Junior Program. He was known for his incredible kindness toward others and his infectious passion for the game.” Teams sign-up will open mid-2024.

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GNT, NAP, Regional and More

Posted on May 14, 2024 by Lee Lin

There is a whole lot to announce and a whole lot that recently wrapped up in the New York and Long Island bridge scene. Apologies for the delay and with so much catching up to do, we’ll first make a summary post and deep dive more in the coming weeks.

D24 GNT Winners and Results

First and foremost, the District GNT KOs are all over. Thanks for all who participated and we wish our teams the best in Toronto. We will post the GNT results now as everyone is waiting for them. The points will be processed in the coming week or so and you will see them in your account and posted on your Live results (at least that’s the promise from our ACBL contacts).

Here are the GNT KO winners in each bracket, many thanks to our Unit President for compiling the rosters. We will do a deeper dive on some of the notable KOs in a countdown to Toronto NABCs.

Winter Regional is Back: Dec 26th-29th, 2024

The winter regional is back to Midtown Manhattan with an all new hosting venue. For the first time in decades (or possibly first time ever), the Marriott Times Square will be our host (sorry Hilton). We are also back to holding it on the week just before New Years. The regional will run for four days, Thurday through Sunday, with pairs and teams every day plus plenty of gold rush and newcomer games. Flyer and full schedule coming soon…

NAP Club Qualification Begins June 1st

It’s already time to start thinking about NAP Club Qualifications. For the casual club player, it is a free windfall. You play at your normal club as always, except on random days when you least expect it, you get a lot more Masterpoints. In fact, 50% of them are red pigmented points, recognizing that NAPs are a District event and therefore deserve some blend of a regional rating and club rating (for the math purists, NAP Club Qualfiiers have the same ratings and multiplier as a STaC, which is 28% more than a club championship game).

Ask your club which dates have the special NAP Club Qualifier days. Every club is allowed to designated a decent fraction of their games during the months of June, July, and August to pay the extra red / black points and qualify players to compete in the Disrtrict NAP finals in October.

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District 24 NAP Dates: Oct 27th A/C + Nov 3rd B

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Lee Lin

As GNT KO season reaches the semifinal and final stages, let’s not forget about the other main grassroots events, the North American Pairs. Unlike GNT, the whole event is done in just one day. Teams that are fighting through 4 rounds of GNTs might appreciate that (opening swiss, quarter finals, semi finals, and finals).

Flight A and Flight C: October 27th, 2024

Open to all District 24 players who meet the residency requirement, the Flight A NAP District Finals will take place on October 27th, Sunday, location and start time TBD but likely to be Honors at 11am. For those eligible for Flight C, we will hold the Flight C event concurrently but you only play against other non-life masters with 0-500 points.

New this year, there is talk within ACBL of raising the limit to 0-750, but still requiring the requirement that you have not achieved Life Master yet. Therefore, for those of you in the 500-750 range who have not yet gotten enough of your gold and silver pigments, you might get a bonus year of eligibility!

Flight B: November 3rd, 2024

We are going to try something a bit different for Flight B this year. The date is Sunday, November 3rd, 2024, at Bridge Express in Long Island. Keep in mind the grassroots events are District events, meaning a collaboration between the GNYBA and the NSBA (Nassau Suffolk Bridge Association).

It is great to include one of the Long Island clubs in hosting the Flight B event this year. More detials to follow.

Also, at the last Competitions and Conventions Committee meeting, the proposal on the table is to raise Flight B from 0-2500 to 0-3500 next year. Amazingly, there is NO plan to raise the Basic+ Chart above the current 3000 cutoff, meaning Flight B for the first time in history would be upgraded to an Open Chart event. Stay tuned for more…

Club Qualifiers Begin in June 2024

As usual, you need to qualify at the club level first. You may play as many qualifiers as you want, both in online or face-to-face clubs. You qualify as an individual and when October 6th or 27th rolls around, you just need to make sure your partner is District 24 eligible and has also qualified at some point during the June, July, and August qualification period. You don’t need to qualify together, although it’s often a good idea.

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WOW: Bracketing Rules To Change!

Posted on March 4, 2024 by Lee Lin

The always productive Competitions and Conventions Committee met for the first time in 2024 and passed some extremely sweeping changes. The big one that will impact many of us in the greater District 24 area is the bracketed KO and bracketed RR method.

The Problem

As many of us have seen, most tournaments in NJ / NY / New England all follow the same rule: you may either play your natural bracket based on Masterpoints, or alternatively you may play the top bracket. However, you may not play partially up, for example, upgrading from the bottom bracket to the 2nd from bottom or 3rd from bottom.

For years this was a frustration point for not just underrated teams, but teams who wanted to play complex conventions only allowed in Open Chart, or systems disallowed in Basic, etc. More importantly, the other teams are happy to see the ringers depart their bracket. Win all around.

Proposal for Playing Up in Team Events

A team playing in a KO or round robin may state the number of Masterpoints they would like to be bracketed as (in addition to their actual masterpoint total). This must be more than their actual number of Masterpoints. This must be done at the time of initial entry. The directors will place the team in a bracket as if they had that many points unless doing so would cause a disruption to the event.

BOOM.

And just like that, years of underrated B and C players arguing with directors become moot. The C&C Committee passed the proposal unanimously, with a nod toward the convention chart uncertainty problem, and that the ultimate decision is still down to the directors who have your original actual Masterpoints handy in case granting your playing-up request would disrupt the event. That is codeword for saying they really don’t want to push a team down, because point wise it just doesn’t make sense.

Why At the Time of Initial Entry?

As for why the election must be done at the time of the initial entry, we specifically don’t want teams trying to inspect the brackets looking for marks. Therefore, you are not allowed to see the brackets forming and then decide how far up you want to play. If you invoke the new rule, be prepared with the augmented number your team is comfortable playing because you won’t be allowed to toggle it down.

What Number Would Your Favorite Team Choose?

So imagine your favorite and usual 4-person Bracketed RR Team going to a large regional. What team total would you put down? Do you start with double and see how that goes? For example, everyone has right around 1000 but you write 8000 as your total? Or perhaps make it more objective: Take your actual team point total, but add 100 for each Red and Blue Ribbon Qualifier?

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GNYBA Award Game 2024

Posted on March 3, 2024 by Lee Lin

The GNYBA Award Game is both a celebration of Mini McKenney and Ace of Clubs winners from the past 6 years. It is also a chance to welcome all players back to the face-to-face club, since pre-Covid, club play was a huge component of any race winner’s MP earnings.

What is the Award Game?

You can think of it as something special, or just an ordinary game, both are perfectly fine ways to enjoy the evening. We had wine and cheese, cake, stickers and photos for the winners, and a welcome speech from our Unit president. But for people there solely for the bridge, just think of it as a lively game and a chance to see familiar faces and meet new friends.

This was a first-ever event to lookup back and include six years of prior year winners, from 2018-2023. Technically, there was a GNYBA Award Dinner in April of 2019, but that only celebrated one year of winners; every year after we postponed due to either NYC not being open (due to the pandemic), or Honors not being open (because it was Bridge and Games, and not the Brian Glubok version). In addition, it simply took us a while to get organized and for a viable evening game to form (if you haven’t been, Wed night at Honors is amazing).

The Masterpoint Races

Each race is broken up into many brackets, so if you began 2024 with between 0-5 Masterpoints (or joined mid year), then you are in the 0-5 bracket. The full set of bracket are 0-5, 5-20, 20-50, 50-100, 100-200, 200-300, 300-500, 500-1000, 1000-1500, 1500-2500, 2500-3500, 3500-5000, 5000-7500, 7500-10000, and 10000+.

For each such bracket, there are now three different races. Your bracket includes your total Masterpoints from the prior year. Each race counts the number of qualifying points you earn that calendar year. Regardless of whether you started with 101 or 199, you are in the 100-200 bracket that year, even if you end up earning 200 and skip an entire bracket year.

Mini McKenney: Counts all pigmented points won throughout the year. The key word is pigmented. Black is a pigment, but what used to be called “online points” or “colorless points” are not. So online play CAN help you win mini McKenney, but only when you participate in the correct type of games that give black, silver, red, or gold.

Ace of Clubs: Counts black points won at clubs. Starting in 2023, only black points won in face-to-face clubs count. Also confusing, STaC week points do NOT count.

Ace of Virtual Clubs: New in 2023, counts only black points won in online virtual clubs. Somewhat ambiguous is whether silver linings week or various random gold point club weeks count.

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Flight B Live Results

Posted on February 25, 2024 by Lee Lin

Results after lunch.

final results and bracket:

Jonas-Silver (top seed bye)

Kuang vs Poon (seed 2)

Tetzlaff vs Sigward (3rd seed)

Yang vs Mandell (4th seed)

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Lipkin Leads Championship Flight Opening Round

Posted on February 24, 2024 by Lee Lin

Six teams entered the GNT Championship Flight opening round today to play 50 boards in a round robin. They played 10 rounds of 5 boards each, which allows for more match awards and more flexibility or the 5-handed and 6-handed teams. That’s different from the way Flight A operated 3 weeks ago, where we played 8 segments but treated the day as 4 longer 12-board matches.

The defending champions last year consisting of Mike Lipkin, Mustafa Cem Tokay, Erez Hendelman, and David Gurvich finished in the lead with 130.57 Victory Points. Technically, this team is a repeat of last year’s championship flight winners and qualify for favorable seeding. However, it was irrelevant due to the round robin format and clearly not necessary. They won 6 out of the 10 matches.

Close behind was Team Eisenstein with 126.07 Victory Points, who actually won more matches with 7 out of 10 wins (but apparently fewer landslide wins). First seed Lipkin chose to play against Team Baseggio in the semi-finals tomorrow, leaving Team Eisenstein to play Team Miniter.

Salute to the Three-Flight Players

It is especially rare to find players who are willing to play in three different flights of GNT in the same year. Four years ago we had a list of 10 such players. This year, it seems to only be two: Kari Tetzlaff and Jack Boge.

Note that one must be in the 0-2500 range to even pull this off; with our careful scheduling, one can only play Champ-A-B or Champ-B-C, because A and C are held on the same day, disallowing A-B-C. There were also some concerns about playing Championship and B in the same year. If a team plays in the opening round and survives until the 2nd day, then the conditions require that they continue playing Championship and abandon any Flight B ambitions.

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WOW: The GNYBA Bulletin from 1984

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Lee Lin

In the middle of all the GNT excitement, we have uncovered an absolute treasure from 40 years ago thanks to Adam Wildavsky. Decades ago, the GNYBA published a regular bulletin and we have our hands on the November 1984 copy.

What was going on then? Jeff Bayone was then owner and manager of the Manhattan Bridge Club, joining in his first year on the board. The club qualifier stage of the GNT Flight B was beginning — back then you had club qualifiers just like with NAPs. There was no fourth Flight C GNT, and not even a third flight. It was just Open and B (0-500 at that time). Also on the GNYBA board was Margie Gwozdzinsky, of Countess Cup fame, and treasurer Aileen Osofsky, former chair of the ACBL Goodwill Committee.

The GNYBA Winter Regional (Renamed Edgar Kaplan Regional Later)

Surprise, our regional was still right around the December holidays, only back then it was part of a vast schedule of many sectionals and regionals from surrounding units and districts (GNYBA, NSBA, NJBL, WCBA, and D3 Tri-State). It would appear Unit 155 and Unit 242, even back then, kept our regionals separate despite all begin part of District 24.

A few interesting things to note. Regionals used to have a smoking and non-smoking section?? Does that mean East West pairs would have to rotate through a lot of North-South smokers, or was there literally a field of all smokers and a field of non smokers? For teams, is there a smoking bracket and non-smoking bracket? All intriguing questions. If anyone knows or has any other copies of the old GNYBA bulletin, please email them to us!

Apparently back then a 3-day regional at the Sheraton was profitable and drew tons of tables (or so I hear). It also seems the tournament schedule was MUCH more heavily focused on team events. You have a KO lasting Fri-Sun. You have 0-750 Swiss on Saturday and Sunday. Open Swiss Sunday, even consolation evening Swiss paying half red half black on Sunday, and Speedball swiss at 11:30pm Saturday?!? Was this all before the Goldman Pairs existed?

I see the tournament schedule was similarly confusing to newer players even back then, so I feel less bad about how crazy and intimidating our flyers still are today…

There was previously a club called Bridge and Games, not the renamed Cavendish that got us through Covid, but one run by Brian Glubok even further east than the old and new Honors. The teaching staff included Alan Miller, Augie Boehm, and quite a lot of familiar names.

We will dive more into the old Post Mortem’s in the coming weeks, but I very much hope to collect a few more issues. Please send them along to your favorite board member and they will pass it to us.

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GNT Flight B Seeding Problem

Posted on February 19, 2024 by Lee Lin

We have an interesting first world problem. There are a lot of teams signed up for GNT Flight B this year in District 24. In fact, it is popular enough that the every eligible member of our District GNT Committee is playing (those with fewer than 2500 Masterpoints). The more senior members of our GNT Committee are not in a good position to seed the teams. Also, Flight B is likely to use the classic “two groups” method of splitting the field, which we used in Flight A and Flight C.

Masterpoints to the Rescue?

The simplest solution is to seed based on Masterpoints, which everyone knows is not great, but at least is objective and should draw the least amount of process complaints. At least doing things this way, it is no worse than randomly seeding, and should be deterministic.

Straight Swiss?

Another simple method that should draw no procedural complaints: forget trying to use a round robin and forget seeding. The opening round at the national finals is a swiss, with all the randomness that comes with matching opponents by cumulative Victory Points with no playbacks. You might pull a swiss gambit, you might get an unlucky run of opponents, you might chance upon the right few crucial blitzes to pull ahead. The only guarantee is that it is slightly unfair for everyone — you won’t face every team in your group.

Defending Champions – Team Goodspeed

Regardless of seeding method, Team Goodspeed qualifies under our definition of defending champions from the prior year (one of the top 2 teams in the District finals with a majority of identical team members). With captain Celia Verrier, Carole Pasquarelli, and Joann Goodspeed as the three returning members (Lore Monnig is unable to attend Toronto this year), this team will receive favorable seeding, a sufficiently vague definition that hopefully everyone trusts the committee will be able to honor in law and spirit.

Fun fact, Team Jonas-Silver narrowly misses the other defending champion favorable seeding benefit. They would have qualified had it not been for two unrelated, personal and last minute calamities that required a 15-minutes-before-game-time reconfiguration in May 2023. With only two members of last year’s team returning, they will be seeded along with the rest of us.

Seeding Ourselves?

The District 25 folks, aka New England, have an interesting way to seed. The captains all seed themselves. Meaning, each captain stack ranks every other team (no ties allowed), omitting their own team, and submits it to the director in charge. The director aggregates the rankings weighing everyone’s opinion equally and comes up with a total ordering.

Everyone’s first objection is the rankings from some captains might not be accurate. In fact, you might go step one further and ponder whether there is some advantage to ranking a strong team low or a weak team high. However, if there is some obvious way to benefit from such a method, with or without collusion, it’s not obvious how to truly game it. Plus, if discovered it could be considered an interesting ethical violation.

Forming a Special Committee

Most likely we will need to invite a few key players who knows a majority of the Flight B field and ask them to be part of a seeding committee. They will then submit their groupings to the director who will have a final ruling on what is most appropriate. Ideally seeding has minimal impact, but it can create relatively large consequences for the KO phase, not just the quarterfinals but all subsequent rounds. Do we have any takers, not planning to play, that will volunteer for this glorious task?

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