The (sad) state of the ACBL

[keylime]

I gotta admit - hearing this warms the heart. Always good to give a beatdown to those that are rulemongers. Next time, win by 70 will ya?

[pclayton]

So what happened in the final?

[hrothgar]

So what happened in the final?

No Clue... I'll tell you once it gets played out.

 

The Conditions of Contest in District 25 are somewhat dubious

 

The GNT event takes place over the course of 1 weekend.

 

Flight C produces an actual winner

The SuperFlight and Flight's A and B reduce to two teams.

 

Said teams are supposed to schedule a final round on their own.

 

I have no idea what happens if the two teams can't agree to a date/time...

 

I have no idea whether the event needs to be run at an ACBL tournament with a real director.

 

I don't even know if we need to play the match out. For all I know, we can just agree to flip a coin and the winner goes to Vegas

 

I know that one of the members of the other team lives in Boston, but is temporarily working out of Chicago. I expect that we'll schedule the final match in such a way as to minimize his travel costs, which might mean pushing the match out 3 weeks.

[pclayton]

So what happened in the final?

No Clue... I'll tell you once it gets played out.

 

The Conditions of Contest in District 25 are somewhat dubious

 

The GNT event takes place over the course of 1 weekend.

 

Flight C produces an actual winner

The SuperFlight and Flight's A and B reduce to two teams.

 

Said teams are supposed to schedule a final round on their own.

 

I have no idea what happens if the two teams can't agree to a date/time...

 

I have no idea whether the event needs to be run at an ACBL tournament with a real director.

 

I don't even know if we need to play the match out. For all I know, we can just agree to flip a coin and the winner goes to Vegas

 

I know that one of the members of the other team lives in Boston, but is temporarily working out of Chicago. I expect that we'll schedule the final match in such a way as to minimize his travel costs, which might mean pushing the match out 3 weeks.

This is incredible.

 

I can't believe an event would reduce the field to two teams and then reconvene for a final somewhere else.

 

Of course, our GNT final is held on Easter Sunday (which is also sometimes Passover, I think), which creates some serious problems for me and others. So personally, I'd love it if we had the final at another time and place.

[pclayton]

Said teams are supposed to schedule a final round on their own.

 

I have no idea what happens if the two teams can't agree to a date/time...

 

I have no idea whether the event needs to be run at an ACBL tournament with a real director.

Hell, maybe you could do it online.

[ArtK78]

In District 4, the Open Flight of the GNT used to compete for a weekend to reduce the field to 2 teams who would schedule the finals at some mutually convenient time and place. I have reached the finals 5 times (winning 3), and one of these 5 finals was held at a later time.

 

Since we were all from the Philadelphia area, we agreed to play at the Hamilton Club on City Line Avenue in Philadelphia on a Sunday a few weeks after the GNT weekend. There was no ACBL director on site, but several were available by phone if the need arose. We had many kibbitzers, and, as you might expect in the top flight, all of the players were experienced and we all knew each other very well.

 

There were no problems with the match (except for the detail that we lost).

 

After several years of running the event in this manner, enough complaints were made so that the event is now run to produce a winner on the weekend. This is no longer a major problem, as participation in the event is down so much that last year there were only 7 teams in the Open Flight. Between the 4 flights (Open, A, B and C) there were about 45 teams in play.

[TimG]

This is incredible.

 

I can't believe an event would reduce the field to two teams and then reconvene for a final somewhere else.

It has been this way for many years, but depends upon the number of entries -- sometimes the event is completed over the two-day weekend. I've played in three finals (two flight B and one flight A) and each event was a one weekend event.

 

New England is much smaller than some Districts making it more convenient than if you had teams from, say, Denver and Boise.

 

The matches are often played at clubs or in someone's home (with a director available by phone).

 

In the past, there has been a default time (usually a centrally located sectional) which the match must be played at if the teams cannot come to agreement on a time.

[barmar]

The email I got from the organizer of the event said that we have to schedule the final before the Cromwell Regional (about a month from now), and play it by the end of May. Since the traveling player often comes home for weekends, I'm sure we'll be able to work something out. I spoke to one of the team members today, and he mentioned President's Day and the Saturday before the Super Bowl as possibilities convenient to them.

 

Last year both finalists were teams from our club, so the final was held concurrently with our weekly club game. I'm not sure this will be feasible this year, I think the CoC says that it's a 56-board final, which is a full day of playing.

[Rossoneri]

Interesting.

 

No one was completely innocent of course, and I am not saying Richard was completely right, but the fact is of course that the opponents started the gamesmanship first, and so, could easily be sanctioned by the aforementioned 74A2. Perhaps Richard could have used more tact with the director (especially) and the opponents.

 

I think the fact that the event has ended up with two finalists leaving them to conduct their own finals is perhaps more appropriate to the title!