[Fluffy]

from years in the forums I've had to deal with words like sectionals, regionals, nationals, flight, convention chart and some more.

Words only used by US (and canadians I think) and that did make no sense to me at all.

My question is, do other non US residents (or canadians) understand this words the first time they see them, or am I just the only ignorant?

[gwnn]

No, I didn't and I am still not 100% clear which event is how important and how long and how many of each there are.

[PassedOut]

I remember many years ago when I decided to learn how to play bridge, picking up a book on bidding by Charles Goren. A few pages in came the words "singleton," "doubleton", and "void."

"Now what in the hell are those?" I thought, and looked in the back of the book for the glossary. Nope, no glossary.

[gwnn]

why didn't you just google them?

[awm]

As an American, I'll do my best to explain it.

The ACBL is the sanctioning organization for bridge in north america. Because the US (and Canada, etc) cover an extremely large area (and population), they divide things up into districts. The idea is that each district holds its own local tournaments and sends its own representatives to the national championships for some events. For some purposes, the "districts" are sort of equivalent to countries in other zones.

Each district is further divided up into units. A unit is more like a city in area (although some are larger or smaller as it depends more on population than geography); typically a unit has one or two major bridge clubs within it.

A sectional tournament is a local tournament held by a unit. It typically draws players from the major clubs in the unit, as well as some players from the surrounding area. Sectionals are normally held over three days (Friday-Sunday) although there are a few longer ones for holiday weekends and such. Units typically hold a couple of these sectionals a year. Of course, especially in areas with dense population (or if you are willing to travel) it may be easy to attend sectionals held by other units. For example, in the Los Angeles area there seem to be a couple sectionals a month within easy driving distance.

A regional tournament is run by a district. Districts typically hold about three of these a year. They run for either seven or ten days. Regional tournaments tend to draw a bigger crowd, as people from far away sometimes fly in. Full-time professional players (well the good ones anyway) spend much of their time playing in regional tournaments. Of course, the strength and size of field for these regionals varies quite a bit, with some of them including many of the top US players (and some international players) and others being much more sparsely attended.

The schedule of events for sectionals and regionals is largely determined by the unit or district (respectively). Typical for a sectional is to hold one-session pairs events on Friday and Saturday, followed by a two-session swiss team event on Sunday. For regionals, typical is to hold two-session pairs events each day, four-session knockout teams events starting each day except the last Saturday and Sunday, a two-session knockout teams event on Saturday, and a two-session swiss teams event on Sunday. Recently there has been some experimentation with different schedules and events (it's up to the local unit/district).

The ACBL holds three north american bridge championships (NABCs) per year. These are sometimes called "nationals" even though they are technically zonal championships (vast majority of the bridge playing population is in the USA). Most events at the NABCs are effectively open to all, and they are welcoming to international players coming to participate. These tournaments include very large numbers of events, only some of which are categorized as "national championships" (NABC+ events). In other words, there are lots of events for intermediate players, events for people who got knocked out of the big events, etc.
Of course, the NABCs have to be held somewhere and the local district has some responsibility for planning, but the schedule is largely determined by ACBL.

[Aberlour10]

Fluffy, on Sep 27 2010, 12:45 PM, said:

from years in the forums I've had to deal with words like sectionals, regionals, nationals, flight, convention chart and some more.

Words only used by US (and canadians I think) and that did make no sense to me at all.

My question is, do other non US residents (or canadians) understand this words the first time they see them, or am I just the only ignorant?

I had to learn english bridge vocabulary from A-Z, but I knew the meaning of these 3 words immediately because they express the same in German language( Sektion, Region, Nation ) . Generally, my english is still pretty poor, but for sure on much higher level than at the time I joined the BBF.

[mycroft]

awm, on Sep 27 2010, 12:25 PM, said:

As an American, I'll do my best to explain it.

And as a Canadian...

Quote

The schedule of events for sectionals and regionals is largely determined by the unit or district (respectively). Typical for a sectional is to hold one-session pairs events on Friday and Saturday, followed by a two-session swiss team event on Sunday.

Maybe this is a North/South thing, but I don't think I've ever played in a sectional (apart from the odd ones, like ones with morning sessions, or the Oshawa Team Sectional, or...) that wasn't 2xone-session pairs Friday, *two-session* pairs Saturday (with one-session side games), two-session swiss teams Sunday. Weird.

In non-derail, and to add, the ACBL rates players (for playing purposes, anyway) by masterpoints, and has two standard ways of handling them: "flights" and "strata" (Not going to get into bracketed events right now). If flighted, you can play in any flight of the event your masterpoint holding doesn't exceed (so you can always play flight A, but in B only if you have fewer than X[b] masterpoints, in C if you have fewer than X[c] MPs, and so on)(*). If stratified, then you are in the stratum that contains your MP level, but everybody plays everybody. If you are in stratum A, you are rated against the whole field and win MPs if you're in the top contestants. If you're in stratum B, you can "place" in the overalls, like your Strat A compatriots, if you do that well; but there's a separate award for doing well compared to only the B (and lower) contestants. If you're in C, you are eligible for all of the A and B awards, and also have a separate competition where you're compared only to the C pairs. And so on.

Just to confuse, these two methods of grouping players can be combined, in a "strati-flighted" event. That is usually "Flight A plays alone, the B/C game plays amongst themselves" - and "Flight A" is stratified into "A/X". Again, if you are eligible for B, you can play in A if you wish (but not vice versa).

(*) Ignoring for the moment that we take note of bridge experience outside the ACBL - if you've been selected to play for your country, it doesn't matter how many ACBL MPs you have, you're in Flight A...

[NickRW]

Fluffy, on Sep 27 2010, 05:45 PM, said:

My question is, do other non US residents (or canadians) understand this words the first time they see them, or am I just the only ignorant?

Well this thread has explained a lot - but I felt similarly to you.

Nick