[TimG]

I recently read Jonathan Steinberg's Boston NABC report and found that there is a proposal to change the NABC event schedule. Aside from the addition of a new event at the Spring NABC (the Platinum Pairs) the Open/Women's BAM at the Fall NABC and the Mixed Pairs at the Spring NABC are basically switching places (pending approval).

The effect of this is to make the Mixed Pairs at the Fall NABC the premier NABC event for those two days, it starts on day three of the Senior KOs, and those will be the only NABC events offered on Sunday-Monday.

I think this is bad for two reasons: it elevates the status of the Mixed Pairs when sexed events should be going in the other directions; and it means that a partnership made up of two males under 55 won't have any NABC events to enter those two days.

I wonder what others think.

[jdonn]

I agree with your points. I also strongly believe if it's not broke don't fix it. I mean is this seriously one of the grave concerns facing the ACBL right now? It reminds me of when congress spent all its time worrying about steroids in baseball.

[eyhung]

Well, I have to say I do like the idea of a Platinum Pairs. And having both major BAM events at the same nationals feels wrong too. I do agree with TimG's sentiments that it's not a good change for males under 55 -- I'd prefer to see some Open National Event available on every day.

[maggieb]

TimG, on Dec 7 2008, 09:41 PM, said:

it means that a partnership made up of two males under 55 won't have any NABC events to enter those two days.

Come on, is it really that hard to play with a woman for a few hours?

[JanM]

The reason that the NABC event schedule is being looked at is that to have the Platinum Pairs (which I think most people agree is a good idea) something has to be moved - you need to find 3 days to hold that event. Putting it in the Spring NABC makes sense, because there is a 6-session pair event in each of the other NABCs. Putting it the first weekend makes sense, because it seems to be the least disruptive place for it. Since that means adding an extra day to the first weekend event, the Vanderbilt has to start a day later. So the Mixed Pairs would be opposite the second day of the Vanderbilt instead of the third day. My best Mixed Pairs partner is generally unavailable on the third day of the Vanderbilt, but it isn't so bad for most people. On the second day of the Vanderbilt there will be far more unavailable people, making it a less attractive place for a "main" event (OK, maybe the Mixed Pairs shouldn't be considered a "main" event, but that is how it's considered). So the schedule designers looked for another place for the Mixed Pairs. And then the dominoes start to fall of course. There are really too many events and not enough time, and putting together a schedule that satisfies everyone is impossible.

Personally, I think if they're going to give us back a "real" mixed event (iow one that doesn't conflict with a fairly early round of the Vanderbilt or Spingold), I'd like it to be a team event. It's hard to find a partner for a Mixed Pairs opposite the Vanderbilt, but people who really want to seem to manage. It is much harder to find 3, 4 or 5 people to play on a team opposite the 4th day of the Spingold. I'd like to see a Mixed Swiss the first weekend of the Fall NABC, I think that would be attractive to a lot of people, even if it wasn't open to men who can't stand to play with a woman, or women who can't stand to play with a man.

[awm]

I rather like moving the mixed pairs, because Elianna and I really want to play together in that and can never seem to make it to spring nationals.

The only real complaint I have with the new schedule is the proliferation of "second class" national events. Certainly it's always been the case that some national events are more prestigious than others, but having an "open national championship" event that starts on the same day as another more prestigious "open national championship" event seems pretty ridiculous. That's what the new schedule has done with the platinum pairs and silodor open pairs starting on the same day. Isn't the silodor just going to be a joke now? This is even worse than the national swiss that starts the same day as the reisinger, and the pairs events that start on day two of the spingold and vanderbilt.

It seems better to me to arrange things so that if a national event is to start on the first or second day of another national event, one of the two should be one of the age or gender restricted events.

[mycroft]

I'm not thrilled with the auto-entry to the Platinum Pairs; I think if it's that prestigious an event, that a continuous show of ability should be required.

This way, it becomes a SuperLifeMasters event - I'm sure that when it was instituted, the LM pairs was as strong a field as the PP will be now. The chance of, in 15 or 20 years, having a mini-PP become a viable event due to masterpoint inflation is pretty high, and disturbs me.

If you want to keep an auto-entry, do like the BRP and make the top 100 PP holders (ouch, sorry for that one) automatically eligible, rather than putting in a (frankly, rather low) auto-entry floor.

But I'd do away with it altogether, and say "50 PP in the last three years; you don't qualify this year? Play the Vanderbilt and make the Round of 8."

[paulg]

Stacy Jacobs has given a client's view on her blog.

p

[JanM]

cardsharp, on Dec 9 2008, 03:40 AM, said:

Stacy Jacobs has given a client's view on her blog.

p

I think Stacy's main point has to do with being a woman and not with being a client, and it has to do with the timing for the new schedule. ACBL thinks of NABCs on a calendar year, but for Team Trials purposes, the Open "cycle" starts with the Summer NABC and ends with the Spring. The Women's cycle moves (because there are 3 Women's Trials every 4 years). For the 2011 Women's Trials, the Women's cycle will start and end with the Summer NABC. I'm not convinced that it makes any difference when a change takes place, though, so long as all of the relevant events occur once a year. I do know that many women have expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed schedule because it puts two Women's team events in one tournament (Spring) and none in another (Fall). I don't think that will be what we see in the end, although I don't have a good enough crystal ball to know what we will see.

mycroft said:

If you want to keep an auto-entry, do like the BRP and make the top 100 PP holders (ouch, sorry for that one) automatically eligible, rather than putting in a (frankly, rather low) auto-entry floor.

I definitely agree that the entry floor is too low - I didn't realize how much too low until I went to look at how many Platinum Points I have. I think I should be about at the bottom of people allowed to play in this event; I'm not, which leads me to believe that there are a lot of people who are going to be eligible who shouldn't be. I'd rather see the 50 PPs be during the last year, and have the lifetime requirement be at least 500 and probably 1000. At the very least, what about a rolling 10 year window instead of or in addition to "lifetime"? Then "lifetime" could be very high (2000, 5000?) to deal with people like Mike Lawrence, who drop out of serious bridge for many years, without letting people who've accumulated 10 PPs a year for 20 years play.

[xcurt]

JanM, on Dec 9 2008, 12:53 PM, said:

I'd rather see the 50 PPs be during the last year, and have the lifetime requirement be at least 500 and probably 1000.

All of these proposals still include a big benefit for folks who can attend a lot of NABCs. 50 PP in 3 years is less than 6 PP per NABC if you attend all of them, or an average of <1 PP/NABC-day. I would follow the model golf uses for the Masters -- eligibility is limited to people with, say

a top-10 finish in the LMs
a top-10 finish in the BRPs
make the final day of the Reisinger
make the round of 8 of the Spingold
make the round of 8 of the Vanderbilt

over the last 5 years. No "lifetime" qualifications.

I'm not going to go add up the field you get from that, but I bet it's a lot scarier than what the actual PPP will look like when it's finally played.

Of course, since the ACBL has a monetary policy problem they really can't signal a significant devaluation of their "currency"* by creating an event that explicitly uses placings and not the currency itself as the entry "price."

*masterpoints


Edit -- thinking about this a little more this only qualifies up to 98 pairs per year -- maybe top 25 in the BRPs and LMs and round of 16 of the national KOs makes more sense. It would be nice to get the entry list to about 100 pairs actually starting play -- then you could go to 52 for day 2 and 28 for day 3 and play a complete Howell for the final.

[cherdano]

I really can't believe the schedule for the fall NABC is a serious suggestion. Two days with the only top events being seniors KO and mixed pairs? It seems a no-brainer that there should always be an open event, those who want can participate in the restricted even instead but nobody is excluded.

[For the record, I also wish there were no women's events, for the sake of women's bridge. The Rosenberg/Rosenberg/Auken/von Arnim team is a good start, with 3 of the best women playing in the open events against the best competition, and I am happy to see they did well in the Reisinger. But I guess we had that discussion before.]

[TimG]

cherdano, on Dec 10 2008, 02:36 AM, said:

I really can't believe the schedule for the fall NABC is a serious suggestion. Two days with the only top events being seniors KO and mixed pairs? It seems a no-brainer that there should always be an open event, those who want can participate in the restricted even instead but nobody is excluded.

[For the record, I also wish there were no women's events, for the sake of women's bridge. The Rosenberg/Rosenberg/Auken/von Arnim team is a good start, with 3 of the best women playing in the open events against the best competition, and I am happy to see they did well in the Reisinger. But I guess we had that discussion before.]

As long as the WBF has Women's team events, it seems to make some sense for the ACBL to hold Women's events at the NABC level. Especially since the USBF uses results from those events in setting up their trials.

The Mixed events make little or no sense to me beyond their novelty factor.

I wonder whether an all female partnership couldn't make a similar case to that of the Blanchards and force ACBL's hand on at least offering an Open event concurrent with the Mixed.

[Vilgan]

the new schedule could definitely use some tweaks. Mixed Pairs being the only option in the fall kind of sucks. I am (personally) a fan of switching the location of the mixed pairs and the imp pairs in the new schedule. As it stands now.. those who have a solid male/female partnership will be fine while those who don't (and aren't senior citizens) will have jack all to do.

On the platinum pairs, I disagree with raising the bar further. Heck, I think it should maybe be lowered a bit (at least the 3 year amount) and allow a solid finish (top 25? top 20?) in a national event also count for entry. 50 pp in 3 years sounds trivial to those who can go to 3 NABCs a year and have a solid partner/team for each. It is not so trivial for those of us with jobs/families/full time commitments who can barely scrape together the time/money to attend 1 NABC a year.

I think the focus should be on insuring day 1 is solid. Day 1 is pretty crazy in the other pair events (at least the ones I've played) as there are no real requirements. Blue ribbons are a joke since you can get them in KOs and (I believe) for 1st/2nd in B in open pairs. Heck, I have 24 after playing bridge for 3 years. There are plenty of solid players who would /not/ damage the quality of play who are never going to hit 50 pp in 3 years because their life does not revolve around the bridge world. There is not 1 person (that I am aware of) in Oklahoma who would qualify, even the two(?) "professional" players in the state are nowhere near 50 pp in 3 years. I am probably closest after 13th in the fast pairs, but I'd still need another high finish in either Houston or whichever NABC I attend in 2010 since I can't attend 3 nationals a year like many people that post on this board.

Solid field on day 1 is good, and is something no pairs event has. But I think the focus should be on insuring a solid field, and I don't think it requires 50 pp in 3 years to insure someone is a solid bridge player.

[TimG]

I think the objective in the Platinum Pairs to get an elite field rather than a solid field. Any system based upon Platinum points is going to be flawed because even non-elite players can accumulate Platinum points through attendance.

[gnasher]

Vilgan, on Dec 10 2008, 05:10 PM, said:

As it stands now.. those who have a solid male/female partnership will be fine

Not necessarily. When I participate in NABC events, it's as part of a male-female partnership, but that doesn't mean that we want to play in a mixed pairs.

[gnasher]

Regarding the platinum point requirement, the obvious thing to do is to use the ratio of platinum points earned to NABC events participated in.

[awm]

There are perhaps a few inaccurate impressions here. In particular:

(1) It is not particularly easy to accumulate platinum points "by attendance" at any particularly rapid rate. In a national pairs event, it is hard to get any non-negligible number of platinum points without qualifying for the second day (I guess you could score a section top, but usually if you do this you only need a 45% or so in the other session to qualify anyway). In a national swiss you could scrape a couple points by match awards. So "50 platinum in the last three years" essentially means you qualified for day two in at least five or so national events, or you placed reasonably high at least twice, or really high at least once. The day one field of platinum pairs should look a lot like the day two field in most other national pairs events.

(2) Some of the alternative suggestions (round of 8 in spingold, top ten in pairs events) would actually qualify a pretty tiny field for the platinum pairs. After all, there is a lot of overlap in these categories from one year to the next so while the "top ten from LM/BR pairs" over three years could in principle give you 90 pairs, you will probably get less than half that. And the Spingold/Vandy finals have even more duplication (many of the same pro teams get there each year). Certainly this would be a "strong field" but the event would end up to look a lot like the Cavendish (not very many pairs). You'd be lucky to get more than two sections under those rules.

(3) The ACBL wants to increase the visibility of the Mixed Pairs. I understand that a lot of people (especially youngish men who can't find a female partner willing to play with them ) do not like the mixed pairs. However, placing the mixed pairs early in the Vanderbilt creates a lot of scramble for partnerships as people eliminated from the Vandy look for mixed pairs partners at the last minute, and pairs who had some conditional agreement to play in the mixed if neither partner qualified in the Vandy are broken up. It makes sense that if there is an event to be played on an early day of the Vanderbilt, it should be set up in such a way as to allow people to play with the same person they partnered in the Vanderbilt. This means an open event such as the IMP pairs is a better fit than the Mixed for this slot.

(4) It might be slightly better to insert the mixed pairs on the first weekend of a nationals. This would increase the visibility of the event, but would allow people who don't have mixed pairs partners to simply show up to nationals a couple days later (rather than having a "break" in the middle with no national event to play).

[jdonn]

gnasher, on Dec 10 2008, 01:17 PM, said:

Regarding the platinum point requirement, the obvious thing to do is to use the ratio of platinum points earned to NABC events participated in.

I think the obvious thing to do is to use the ratio of

platinum points earned
to
total platinum points given away in NABC events participated in

rather than

platinum points earned
to
total number of NABC events participated in

[jdonn]

awm, on Dec 10 2008, 01:19 PM, said:

(1) It is not particularly easy to accumulate platinum points "by attendance" at any particularly rapid rate.

You can certainly get enough to play in the platinum pairs by accumulating them at a not particularly rapid rate. And of course if in the period of 9 NABCs you have one lucky result and earn 30 or 40 at once, you virtually don't have to accumulate any at all.

Quote

(3) The ACBL wants to increase the visibility of the Mixed Pairs.

Why?

[awm]

jdonn, on Dec 10 2008, 01:23 PM, said:

awm, on Dec 10 2008, 01:19 PM, said:

(1) It is not particularly easy to accumulate platinum points "by attendance" at any particularly rapid rate.

You can certainly get enough to play in the platinum pairs by accumulating them at a not particularly rapid rate. And of course if in the period of 9 NABCs you have one lucky result and earn 30 or 40 at once, you virtually don't have to accumulate any at all.

Quote

(3) The ACBL wants to increase the visibility of the Mixed Pairs.

Why?

Sure, if you are "in the mix" on day two of each pairs event, there is a good chance that you have a lucky result and earn 30 or 40 at once.

But if you usually fail to qualify, it's pretty tough to get so lucky that you not only Q, but place in the high overalls.

I think the point of platinum pairs is to restrict the field to "people who usually qualify for day two of national events" and not to restrict the field to "people who usually place in the moderately high overalls of national events." Obviously these are different goals; the latter is a stronger (but much smaller) field.

I am not sure why ACBL wants to increase the visibility of the Mixed Pairs, aside from the facts that it seems to be less cutthroat, involve fewer established partnerships with highly complex methods than other events, and routinely has women among the winners without being a "females only" event.