The races are done and the top Masterpoint winners have been determined. Congratulations to our Ace of Clubs and Mini-McKenney winners. Will it be you next year?


The races are done and the top Masterpoint winners have been determined. Congratulations to our Ace of Clubs and Mini-McKenney winners. Will it be you next year?


The GNYBA is hosting a 0-500 Silver point weekend, February 7 – 10. If you need silver, here’s a local chance to score.
So we ( as in the GNYBA – your local ACBL unit ) track points won in specific GNYBA events throughout the year.
So who won? Well, there are three races.
🥁Player of the Year Raluca Dobrescu
🥁Team Player of the Year Raluca Dobrescu
🥁The Bob Factor Flight B Player of the Year Marc Blanchard
Raluca is a professional player, originally from Romania. She’s startlingly nice, even by civilian standards. You might know her spouse, Radu (introduce yourself if you don’t).
Marc is from our sister unit out in Long Island, the NSBA. He won most of his points playing with Amy Rhodes, one of your friendly GNYBA volunteers.
The Grand National Teams is a team event played each year at the summer NABC.
Flight Results:
Flight B Round Robin results: https://live.acbl.org/event/1902649/NAPB/2/recap
Full Flight A and C results : http://live.acbl.org/events/1902624
Flight A semi final matches:
Jane Dillenberg – Alene Friedman – Michael Rosen, New York NY;
Jeffrey Hearn, Brooklyn NY; Sandrea Friedman, Flushing NY
vs
Abbott Feren, Westbury NY; Dina Schechter, Manhasset NY; Norman
Trabulus, New York NY; Charles Bilich, Hewlett NY
————————————————–
Stephannie Culbertson – Rachael Moller, New York NY; Florin Neamtu,
Middle Village NY; Christopher Rivera, Sunnyside NY
vs
Andrew Dyson – Jordan Lampe, New York NY; Ettore Bianchi, Dobbs Ferry
NY; Stefano Merlo, Brooklyn NY
Flight C Semi Finalists: (Match up to be determined)
Lee Lin – Nicole Hudak – Matthew Gordon – Frank Dinoff – Siqing Yu
Barbara Ullman – Richard Siegel – Nancy Pline – Robin Miller
Adam Siegel – Aaron Liehaber = Bingjie Wang – Mee Warren – Katherine Todd – James Keiger
Yanf Xu – Jiaheng Hu – Jing Zhang – Shelley Mendelsohn – Costin Dobrin
GNT Open Semi Finals
Joe Grue – Gillian Miniter – Joel Woodridge – John Hurd – Kent Migncchi
Defeated
Michael Lipkin – Magnus Olafsson – Peter Trenka – John Rengstorff – David Gurvich – Erez Handelman
———
Allison Wilson – Adam Wildavsky – Michael Polowan – Daniel Lev – Sam Lev
Defeated
Andrew Rosenthal – Aaron Silverstein – Chris Willenken – Martin Fleisher – Migry Zur Campanile
Grue and Wilson will schedule the final by May
The GNYBA is run by a volunteer group of local players who collectively work on ACBL-bridge in NYC.
It is a small non-profit corporation that basically organizes the two annual NYC Regionals, the NAOP/GNT, and a few dribs/drabs. The GNYBA has a war chest in the low 6 figures that was inherited from our glory days. Nobody on the board gets paid, but hotel space is expensive, as are the ACBL Regional fees, so we tend to lose a bit of money each year.
The GNYBA is controlled by a board of local bridge players. Three of them ( David Moss, Bonnie Gellas, Phil Lentz ) have been around for a while, and offer a wealth of institutional knowledge ( needed mostly to organize Regionals and work with ACBL HQ ).
Board members usually serve for a couple of years, up to our term limits of about 6 years. One of the board is elected to represent us on the ACBL Board of Directors ( which rules the ACBL itself ). Our current representative on the ACBL Board is Al Levy.
There is an annual public meeting that’s nominally held during the Winter Regional. No one attends, but if you want to be someone that does …
Details on the meeting and the composition of the board
The Edgar Kaplan Winter Regional was hosted at the New York Hilton Midtown from Dec 26-30.
These people have qualified for the North American Pairs final at the Memphis Nationals ( Spring 2019 )
District finals – full results
Hot off the presses, sort of , the latest standings in two of our local Masterpoint races
The Mini-McKenney tracks total number of Masterpoints earned by our members, in various categories based on original point holdings at the start of 2018.
The Ace of Clubs does much the same, but focuses on points won at bridge clubs.
Here are the official ACBL link to those two races if you don’t like our B&W presentation
http://web2.acbl.org/as400/mpraces/unit/2018/mm155.htm
http://web2.acbl.org/as400/mpraces/unit/2018/ac155.htm
You won’t see me listed in these races, but you will see all your Board Members at the December Regional. But only if you show up, so plan accordingly.
Never to early to plan. You don’t rate to win anything. Neither do I. But it’s about the journey, right? What else do we have going on in late December, anyway.
Edgar Kaplan was one of the old-time all-time luminaries of my bridge career. He was invariably polite, gentle, and yet very opinionated ( he was involved in both The Bridge World magazine as well as whoever/whatever crafts the laws of bridge ).
Here’s my Edgar story. Over a decade ago, I was kibitzing my two friends Lapt C. and David F playing against Edgar and someone of equally lofty stature in a Von Zedwidtz KO ( this is now gone, but we’re talking about restarting it in a way that makes it easier to participate. Maybe we’ll put up some free entries as a micro-reward. ) .
Lapt had some sort of 5-5 and bid 2N over Edgar’s 1S to show Diamonds and Clubs, but due to a slip of the wrist/mind, happened to actually hold Hearts and Diamonds. I’ve been there.
David, being a good pard, bid only 3C. Not vulnerable, Lapt tried to improve the contract over Edgar’s minor squirm by bidding 3D. David retreated to some number of clubs, and Edgar squirmed again. Confident in his luck, Lapt went to the well one more time, and even Edgar wasn’t enough of a gentleman to pretend he didn’t have a red card, so my boys went for a number after all.
Lapt being who he was, was annoyed at David. David of course was amused, as was Edgar.
Just typing this makes me nostalgic for the days when we could attend regionals and find great players playing with each other at your table. One of Edgar’s teammates, Richie Pavlicek is still active in tournament bridge. I run into him at the table once in a while. Just like Edgar, he’s invariably polite, pretending to not notice anyone’s misbids and misplays, teaching comportment by example. His website is a great timesuck with lots of resources for a wide range of players.
Highlights from the recently concluded Atlanta NABC
So, the Spingold. Look at these guys.
The guy on the far left is David Berkowitz, playing with the woman in the middle. And, presumably, matches. Not that even that would affect Migry Zur Campanile’s game. Chris Willenkin far right, paired with Eldad Ginossar (second from left) made up the second pair. Aaron Silverstein (resting his chin on Migry’s hair) and everyone’s pal Andrew made up the team.
I followed this team on Vugraph. All of them obviously all played very well given the outcome, but I want to single out David and Migry for excellent performances, both jointly and individually. Ask David what he did to our beloved Zia with Ax opposite Qx.
Here is the last segment of the semi-final. Chris and Eldad on board 29!
On to the Collegiate Bowl. ACBL pushed this event heavily, and was loose with the purse strings, providing free trips, prizes, pre-NABC competitions and what-not.
This is the Columbia University team. The lady in the middle is Giorgia Botta. That’s Coach to you.
The players are (Simon) Yang Xu, Max Krawczyk , Jing Zhang, and (Jeff) Jiaheng Hu. I don’t know them, but they’re clearly smart and talented, and I hope to run into them at the bridge table.
Alex Perlin won the 3rd NABC Online Individual. I found a nice picture of Alex on some Math site, but I dunno if I can just hoover it up and spit it out here, so I won’t. Instead, here’s an interview with Alex.
If you’re here, you’re wanting to know how everyone else did. So, here: Overall finishes by locals.