The 2nd KO of the KO-packed GNT season has completed with Smirnov prevailing to the semi-finals with a 65-22 halftime score and finishing the match with a final score of 114-34.
First off, congratulations to the 5th place team consisting of Jim Diederich, Thierry Bonnet, Barbara Marsh, and Rita Bar-Or. Each player will receive 6.67 Masterpoints, half gold half red, which are crucial pigments needed to eventually earn the rank of Life Master. The points will also count toward this year’s Mini McKenney races, but not the Ace of Clubs or Ace of Virtual Clubs (because even though the entire event took place at Honors, this is a District event).
Next up, Team Smirnov will play against Team Li, with quite a lot on the line. Any team that advances to the finals will receive an invitation to represent New York City and Long Island in the national finals in Toronto this July. It will be the winner of Smirnov vs Li in addition to the other side of the Flight C bracket, consisting now of Team Lupoff, Team Oratofsky, and Team Moscow.
Will There Be A 3rd and 4th Place?
Also, in one final twist, it is possible the two semi-final losing teams will need to play a match or merge into one team to determine the 1st alternates for Toronto. Why might a team not go to Toronto? Some people simply can’t take 5 days off to play bridge. Others might have no interest in going to the national finals, but wanted to play in a fun and friendly District wide event to earn gold points. Whatever the reason, should any of the eventual two winners opt not to attend, we need a clear 1st alternate team.
This occurred last year when Team Verrier and Team Latta advanced to the finals of Flight B, but Latta also reached the finals of Flight C. After Team Latta opted to go to nationals in Flight C, the original 3rd and 4th place teams, Petsch and Schwartz, merged into one team.
Let’s give all the advancing captains in Flight A and C a huge round of applause. Every first round KO match seems to be scheduled, most of them in February!
Flight A Semi Finals
First, the early bird award goes to Dziekanski vs Jonas-Silver, the Flight A wild card match. Because we had 10 teams in the opening round of Flight A, we split the field into two groups of five, one led by defending champion Trabulus and the other led by defending finalist Chang. Each group advanced the top two teams, and the 3rd place team from only one of the brackets would advance as the wildcard 5th team. Team Jonas-Silver narrowly beat Boge by less than a Victory Point (39.95 vs 39.31), allowing the wild card to play a heads up wildcard KO for a chance at the semi finals.
They quickly scheduled and played their 48 board match this week with Dziekanski, prevailing with a final segment comeback: down by 7 IMPs with 12 boards to go but then pulling it together for +8 IMPs to end the match 50-42). Not advancing is Maya Jonas-Silver, Jack Latta, David Yoon, and Randi Edelman, who win 13.33 gold points each and the official 5th place spot in this year’s District 24 Flight A.
Team Dziekanski will play Team Chang in a 48 board match on Wed night 2/28 and Friday night 3/1.
On the other side of the bracket, free from any wild card match, Team Ekinci will play Team Trabulus over 48 boards on March 7th in a straight afternoon and evening same day match (a good simulation of the daily 52 board KOs during the GNTs at NABC). EDIT: This match is not yet 100% confirmed, they might still try to do it over 2 days, stay tuned.
Will we see a rematch of Trabulus vs Chang this year in the finals, or will Ekinci or Dziekanski push through? Teams that reach the finals will receive 30 gold points and a blue ribbon qualifier for the Mini Blue or Blue Ribbon Pairs at nationals.
Flight C Quarter Finals
We already wrote about the Flight C Trophy Wars, or Battle of the Countess vs Inter-Club Cups. Oratofsky vs Moscow will take place on 2/29, Thursday night at Honors.
The other match is Team Smirnov vs Team Diederich, scheduled for Sunday, 2/18 for 30 boards. Captain James Diederich took first overall during the Gellas Newcomer Pairs event held at the Midtown Hilton in October 2022. Teammate Thierry Bonnet that year also won the Helen Shanbrom Ace of Clubs masterpoint race in District 24. That year both face-to-face and online black counted towards the same Masterpoints race, the final year prior to the Ace of Virtual Clubs separation in 2023.
Opposing captain Ivan Smirnov was the winner of the GNYBA silver point Rising Stars cup in June 2023 with a big 69% afternoon session to beat fellow Flight C quarterfinalists Oratofsky and Soloman. Ivan’s teammates Stephanie Chamberlain and Sheri Elowsky also have their own GNYBA tournament victory: they won the overall 1st place award during the final Saturday Gold Rush of the Astoria Regional, which won pure gold points and an invitation to the Red Ribbon Pairs in Toronto NABCs.
The winner of this match faces off against Opening Round group winners Team Li, who received a bye along with Team Rockoff during the quarterfinal KO round.
Paying KO Round Card Fees
New this year, we are piloting accepting credit card payments for the KO round. You will no longer need to pay the hosting club, which was previously a messy process where teams give cash to the club director, who may or may not know the correct amount to charge you.
We’ve entered the GNT phase that everyone both loves and hates: the KO rounds.
For those in Flight C playing GNTs for the first time, congratulations. You are guaranteed to win a big chunk of gold and red points, but apologies if you thought it was all over in one day! The KOs have been in the conditions every year for an eternity, but no one reads it until their team qualifies past day one.
Trophy Wars: Rising Stars Cup versus InterclubCup
One anticipated KO match in Flight C is Team Oratofsky vs. Team Moscow (the winner will face off against Team Rockoff). Paul Oratofsky and Steve Soloman entered the NYC tournament scene during the GNYBA June Sectional scoring silver points in both sessions of the Countess Cup, then followed up with an impressing back-to-back first overall finish in both morning and afternoon sessions of the Rising Stars Cup during the Astoria Regional.
Team captain John Moscow has two cups on display: the Interclub Season Winning Team and the Interclub Season Winning Pair, both found in the trophy case at the Harvard Club of New York. Their team consists of four regular players from the Interclub Bridge League, including Laszlo Seress, who represented our District in spring 2021 for NAP Flight C.
This match will take place on leap year day, February 29th, Thursday 6pm at Honors with former GNT Flight C national championSam Kuang officiating as table director.
Past Victors from District 24?
Sam is the first player in D24 to ever win the GNT-C national finals in 2014, followed by Lucy Zhang in 2018. Interestingly, they were playing for D21 and D23 respectively at the time of their victory. You have to fast forward to 2021 when the team captained by Henrui Xing won with an all D24 team, followed by last year’s 1st and 2nd place victories of Team Boge and Team Mandel.
GNT-A: Dziekanski vs Jonas-Silver
The final 24 boards of the match versus Team Dziekanski and Team Jonas-Silver takes place today, Feb 10th, at Honors. After the first two segments, the score was 28-11 followed by 47-31 with Dziekanski in the lead by about slightly more than one game swing. That’s a fairly thin margin at the halfway point of a 48-board match, so anything can happen as they enter segments three and four.
The winner of the match will play against Mini Spingold veterans on Team Chang in the semi-final KO to determine who gets 20 gold versus 30 gold and an invitation to the Blue Ribbon Pairs during the Fall NABCs, as well as advancement to the District final KO against the winner of the Trabulus and Ekinci match.
The 12 Flight C teams played 50 boards each today in two groups of 6 teams. In group A, the leaders are Music Li, Yuchen Xu, Joshua Allen, and Lee Silberman. Also surviving to the KO round are Team Oratofsky and Team Diederich.
Team Rockoff after learning they are the Flight C bracket winners
In Flight C group B, pictured above are the bracket winners Jesse Rockoff, Linda Brady, Olga Stein, and Dylan Lupo. Incredibly, this was their first time playing a team game or using IMP scoring; they signed up thanks to encouragement from their Supervised Play instructor and prior D24 GNT Coordinator Amy Rhodes.. The other survivors are Team Smirnov and Team Moscow.
Per our GNT conditions, now the 6 teams enter a Quarterfinals. Group leads Rockoff and Li receive byes in the first KO round. However, Rockoff will play the winner of Oratofsky vs Moscow while Li will play the winner of Smirnov vs Diederich. All players who have survived this far will receive at least 6.67 gold and red points, but could be upgraded to as high as 20 points and an invitation to the Red Ribbon Pairs and the McNab Grand National Teams during the Toronto NABCs this July.
In Flight A, the two defending finalists from last year have repeated their strong performance from the prior year. Norman Trabulus, Joseph Byrnes, Dina Schechter, David Joseph, Charles Bilich, and Michael Krevor, aka the Defending Champs, ended the day with the most Victory Points in the field. In the other Group, Spingolders Jacqueline Chang, Dave Marker, Jordan Lampe, Christopher Moh, Leon Yu, and Zhuo Wang won 4 out of 4 matches for 55.58 Victory Points.
Honorable mention to Team Dziekanski for also winning all 4 matches. The other two surviving teams are Team Ekinci and Team Jonas-Silver.
All surviving teams at this point will receive at least 13.33 gold points, which may be upgraded to as high as 40 gold points, an invitation to the Blue Ribbon Pairs , and the Goldman Grand National Teams during the Toronto NABCs in July.
Just after celebrating the party in GNT Flight A, Flight C has also reached pre-pandemic levels with 12 teams. Filling a teams event with 48 players in our District, all non life masters with under 500 Masterpoints, is incredible. A huge thanks to all the instructors, mentors, and supervisors who have encouraged our up-and-coming players to participate.
After consulting with ACBL, our Director-in-Charge, and the GNT Committee, we have expanded and clarified several elements of the conditions of contest.
Why Not a Round Robin or Swiss for 12 Teams?
We want the opening round to be as fair as possible and eliminate any reliance on seeding teams. However, it’s not practical for all 12 teams to play each other. You would need 11 rounds and each round would be too short. If we run a swiss, then not all teams face each other, creating unfairness. You might avoid playing against the strongest team or miss a chance to play the weakest team.
The “Two Groups” Round Robin Method
With 12 teams, we can split the teams into two equally strong groups, Group A and Group B. Then, the 6 teams in each group can play a relatively long match against each of the other teams in your group (sneaking in a lunch break somewhere). At the end of the day, the top half of each group based on Victory Points survive to the quarterfinals.
Any Changes to the KO Phase?
New this year, as required by ACBL, is the option for the 2nd place team in the semifinals to opt-in and become an opponent choice for the top seeded team. This occurs when say GNT Flight A has 9 teams in a round robin and 4 survive based on Victory Points. Team 1 usually chooses from Teams 3 and 4 as their semi-final opponent. However, sometimes due to luck and randomness, Team 3 and Team 4 might actually be more scary than Teams 1 and 2. In this case, Team 2 can decide to opt-in and become a selection, which under our premise would be a wise choice for Team 1.
How Do you do a Quarter Finals with 6 Teams?
The top teams in Group A and B, call them A1 and B1, receive a bye. Then A2 plays B3 while B2 plays A3 to advance to the semi-finals. In the semi, A1 plays the B2 vs A3 winner while B1 plays the A2 vs B3 winner.
The theory is, after the opening round, the two strongest teams are either A1 and B1, or they could have both been in the same original group, A1 and A2, or B1 and B2. This style of bracketing ensures that for all three such cases, the two strongest teams face of in the finals. Of course, in practice there’s enough randomness that all of this theorizing is quite silly!
Who Forms The Two Groups?
The Director will announce the groups as the event starts. Sometimes, a seeding committee consisting of the GNT Committee and other unbiased volunteers will do their best to take into account defending champions, tournament experience, past performance, Masterpoints, and ribbon qualifiers to balance the groups as best as possible. Seeding committee members recuse themselves when they are also participants in the same flight.
Why Not Cut Down to 4 Immediately?
The Masterpoints awards grant overalls to all teams advancing to KO Phase as long as the Opening Round cuts 50% or more of the field. Therefore, the event will award a big chunk of gold and red points to more teams by advancing 6 out of 12. It also gives an incentive to do as well in the Opening Round because of the valuable byes in the quarter finals.
Amazing. We matched pre-pandemic levels with 8 teams pre-registered for Flight A taking place this Sunday, Feb 4th (along with Flight C). And what a party it is, we have a huge crowd of GNT veterans joining the mix, including many multi-flight entries. One funny and hard-to-explain phenomenon: Why is it almost every GNT-A team is playing in GNT-B with a different group? You’d think there was some unspoken rule to randomly swap teammates and partners. Nevertheless, let’s introduce a few of the teams.
The Flight “B” Graduates
Last year at the Chicago NABC we sent two B teams, Team Verrier and Team Schwartz. The teams have merged, mixed, and morphed into two new teams (see above). As always, playing up is highly encouraged in the GNTs, so it will be interesting to see how the Flight B finalists do in a 0-6000 field. Hopefully, we will also see everyone at the Flight B finals on Feb 25th, making for an action-packed but hectic KO post season (pre-register please).
The Flight “C” Graduates
You might think a Flight C team jumping all the way to Flight A is an overbid, but this isn’t any 0-500 crew. In Chicago, Team Boge and Team Mandel went all the way to the national finals and won 1st and 2nd place. Also, last year Maya Jonas-Silver and Jack Lattawon 1st place in the District Flight B tournaments (then won the District Flight C Battle of the Jacks). In total, they each took home 80 gold and red points in one GNT season, enough to win the national Mini-McKenney race. Let’s see if they can break a new record and win both A and B!
The Spingolders
Among the pre-registered field, this team has the most collective NABC knockout experience, which involves playing behind bidding screens under the ACBL Eye in the Sky. A majority of Team Chang have previously won the Micro Spingold in separate years, then faced off in the 2022 Mini Spingold finals. Now they’ve merged into one team of Micro / Mini Spingold winners. Regardless of who wins the GNT Flight A this year, we hope District 24 can continue our successful Mini Spingold runs.
The Defending Champs
Team Trabulus are the defending champions and should we need a seeding committee, the conditions grant them the top seed position. The Trabulus team has the longest history of success in representing our District in NAP and GNT events, with Charles Bilich and Michael Krevor representing us in pole position for the Golder North American Pairs this year in Louisville. Also, Trabulus is seemingly the only one immune to the mix-and-match bug that has caught on with every other entrant this year. The team is entirely intact with all 6 players who won Flight A the prior year.
How Many Will Advance?
Unfortunately, only one team will advance to the NABCs, unlike Flights B and C where we can send two teams after reaching the 8 team threshold. However, it’s not too late to join and register for any and all flights (even Championship for those who love to play up). Flight B in particular could use some help, but we suspect many players will decide whether to register for flight B after they see the A and C results on Sunday…
We have 15+ teams already registered for GNTs but room for plenty of more. We wanted to clarify and answer a few questions people have asked in the past few weeks
Flight C is For Newer Players
Last year our District made GNT history sending two teams to the national finals in Chicago and having them win 1st and 2nd place nationwide! That’s great and has only been done twice in ACBL records, the other time in Vegas by District 21; however that’s not what this event is about.
All 9 of the players across those teams have self-graduated out and will be playing this year in Flight A or B (or both). So the field truly is wide open for any level of players. This event does not allow any life masters or players with over 500 point as of the cutoff in August 2023. That’s even lower than the upper limit of a Gold Rush event.
To be clear, the Flight C event is the friendliest and best way each year to earn gold and red points right here in New York, and you do not have to advance to nationals in order to take home a big Masterpoint prize while having lots of fun.
Clarifying the GNT Schedule, Playing Time, and Ending Time
The opening round is only one day in every flight. Feb 4th for A and C, Feb 24th for Championship, and Feb 25th for Flight B. It will start at 11am and end around 6pm with a short lunch break. In bridge lingo, that is considered a two-session event because you will play approximately 48 boards for the day instead of 24 boards.
In the Championship Flight, the first round of the KO is the immediate day after the opening round. For all other flights A, B, and C (0-6000, 0-2500, and 0-500), the KO round for surviving teams can be schedule at the convenience of the two teams.
Unfortunately, the confirmation email is a little confusing because one might think that it is two days when the dates read: Feb 25th to Feb 26th.
Teammates Do Not Need to Play Same Convention
For any pair, you and your partner must play the same conventions. You can’t have one person playing transfers but the other does not. However, there is no restriction on the conventions your teammates at the other table play. You and your partner are welcome to play standard while your teammates play 2/1, for example. Sometimes it’s fun to ask how the bidding went at the other table when you play a different bidding system from your counterparts.
Flight A and C are Separate Events
The players in Flight A with 0-6000 Masterpoints and the players in Flight C who are non LMs with 0-500 points will not be playing together. They will physically be in the same space at the same time, but the events are completely separate and you will not play a single board or be scored against anyone in the other event.
Why The Weird Name? Grand National Teams?
Despite the intimidating name, GNTs are split into four groups: Championship, A, B, and C. Flight B and C are designed to be extremely generous for intermediate and beginner players, with large gold point payouts and restrictions on both the Masterpoints of your opponents and the allowed conventions they can play. District 24 includes ACBL members in New York City and Long Island.
It is social and fun; you can enjoy it without doing anything grand or national.
What Conventions Are Allowed?
For the first time ever in GNTs, this year Flight B and C are both governed by the Basic+ Convention Chart. It allows plenty of cool conventions, probably all of the favorites you play, while disallowing most of the weird and crazy conventions seen in pro levels of play. As usual, Flight B limits players to a maximum of 2500 Masterpoints. Flight C has a 500 Masterpoint limit and no player can be a life master (in case there are members grandfathered at the 300 point Life Master cutoff).
Do You Take Apple Pay or Credit Card or Venmo?
Sorry, we are low tech and require the entry fee to be in cash at the playing site.
Today is another meeting of the ACBL Advisory Council, formerly the Board of Governors.
ACBL Funding for Units: The 5-5-5 Plan
Executive Director Bronia Jenkins outlined the new 5-5-5 plan focused on membership recruitment and retention.
In the past, all ACBL units received 11% of a member’s annual dues. That is, of the $49 per year you pay in dues to ACBL, a little more than $5 goes to your unit. For NYC, we have 2429 active members in Unit 155, giving us $13,092.32 a year of funding paid quarterly. We then lose approximately that amount sponsoring regionals.
Starting Q2 0f 2024, the money paid to Units will be based on a sliding scale from 5% to 15%, depending on how actively the Units fulfill their membership recruitment and retention goals. First, all units receive 5% no matter what (down from 11%). Then, units receive another 5% for retention and another 5% for recruitment. They have some fancy new software to monitor how each unit is doing, although for now it’s a complicated dashboard that is hard to read. More instructions to follow, I’m sure. Thankfully, for Q1 2024 all units still receive their usual 11%.
Conflicting Tournament Sanctions
The ACBL Board of Directors passed a new motion detailing procedures for determining and resolving conflicting tournaments. The gist is, no two sectionals may be held within 200 miles of each other, and no two regionals may be held within 400 miles of each other. There use as the crows flies miles, not driving distance.
For Unit 155, we always try our best to cooperate with our neighbors in New Jersey, Tarrytown, and New England who often hold tournaments. The 200 and 400 miles distance might find us conflicting with a lot more New England tournaments, but in practice we would normally avoid trying to hold any regional during any of their regionals. Things get more complicated when we consider GNTs, NAPs, and STaCs. Does one flight of GNTs conflicting with the final Sunday of their sectional count as a disallowed conflict?
Pending Litigation – 3 Lawsuits
Unfortunately, ACBL is currently in the middle of 3 separate lawsuits.
First is the ongoing class action lawsuit between ACBL Directors and ACBL, and whether or not they qualified for overtime, hourly pay, or exempt salaried pay, and various labor law considerations.
Second, there is an emotional distress lawsuit between a former Advisor Council member and ACBL after being disciplined for inappropriate behavior and body language on a zoom call.
Third, the Sheraton host hotel for the Phoenix 2022 NABC is suing ACBL for some dispute in the contract’s attrition clause. Not enough players booked rooms in the host hotel, and somewhere along the way the hotel and ACBL had a disagreement about how to handle the attrition that spiraled into a lawsuit.
Advisory Council Meeting and Bylaws
Procedures and bylaws problems are never fun, but given how much the group has changed post-pandemic, there was a discussion of whether Advisory Council meetings should be held later, after a full preparation of meeting minutes and results from the ACBL Board of Directors meeting (that’s the smaller meeting of the 13 regional directors and ACBL Management, think of it has the senate while advisory council is the house of representatives).
Apparently, our bylaws now require meetings are held electronically on Zoom, in conjunction with the NABC tournaments. Although “in conjunction” is somewhat ambiguous, the AC chair believes it should be held on the final Sunday of NABCs at the latest. However, for the next NABCs, people will try to informally organize a chance for some face-to-face meetings.
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
