District 13 Grand National Teams
Conditions of Contest – 2005-2006
Play in all four flights (Championship, A, B, and C) will take place March 4-5, 2006 at the Doubletree Hotel Chicago - Arlington Heights, 75 W. Algonquin Road, Arlington Heights, Illinois, United States 60005.
Telephone: (847) 364-7600 Fax: (847) 427-4298
The event will take place over 4 sessions and will be concluded in a single weekend. Game times on Saturday will be 12:00 noon and 6:00 PM. Sunday times will be 11:00 AM and TBA. We plan to schedule a Stratified Swiss Team (open to new entrants) on Sunday for those eliminated on Saturday. (Details later).
The same basic format will be used in each flight. There will be no competition among flights. There will be three stages of play with teams eliminated at each of the first two stages culminating in a two-team final match in Stage 3.
Stage 1 will consist of the first two sessions of play on Saturday. Teams will play a complete round robin within each flight. If the field is small enough within a particular flight, teams will play a complete round robin in each of the two sessions on Saturday. Sessions will be approximately 26-28 boards in length, depending upon the requirements of the movement. The movements may be “board-a-match style,” but the score will be based upon IMP’s converted to a USBF style 20 VP scale. (See Appendix A for scale examples). If the field in a given flight is smaller than sixteen teams, five teams will qualify for Stage 2. If the field is larger than fifteen teams, approximately one-third of the teams will qualify for Stage 2. The exact number of qualifying teams in each flight will be announced during the first session of play.
Stage 2 will consist of session of play on Sunday. The number of boards will be 32, or as close to that number as possible given the requirements of the movement. Teams will play a complete round robin with each flight. There will be no carry over of VP’s from Saturday’s play. There will, however, be a full carryover of the IMP score against each team still in contention. The objective of this provision is to make sure that the winning team does well against other good teams, not just the lowest-scoring opponent. It is also designed to make every board count, and extend the length of the match between the two ultimate finalists. Scoring for Stage 2 will use the USBF style 20 VP scales, using the combined score and number of boards from both of the first two stages. The top two teams in each flight will qualify for the final.
Stage 3 is a final heads-up match between the two leading teams. There will be a full carryover of the score from boards played between the two finalists in the prior two stages. It is our expectation that this will result in an effective match length of between 42 and 50 boards.
|
Flight |
Master Point Limit Points as of 8/15/05 |
Club Qualification |
|
Championship |
Unlimited |
None |
|
A |
Fewer than 5000 points |
None |
|
B |
Fewer than 2000 points |
Determined by Unit |
|
C |
Non-Life master and fewer than 500 points |
Determined by Unit |
Players must reside in District 13. Each member of the team must be a paid member in good standing with the ACBL. Players in Flight B or C must be certified by their respective Units. Club qualifying may be required at the discretion of each Unit. A Flight B or C team may qualify under the rules of any Unit where a plurality of team members resides.
In addition, players who are currently, or have ever been in the past, members of another bridge organization, whether domestic (e.g., American Bridge Association) or foreign (e.g., Polski Zwiazek Brydza Sportowego), must submit information on their past and/or current ranking in that organization. Submissions must be in writing and be received by the District GNT Coordinator or CCBA Secretary at the time of registration for the event. The information submitted may be used to assign a conversion to ACBL masterpoints for purposes of verifying flight eligibility.
Email: pchiszar@comcast.net
For Flights B and C the ACBL General Convention Chart will be in effect.
Should the final match end in a tie, continuing 8 board matches will commence immediately until the tie is broken. There will be no seeding rights in a playoff. A team may field any four of its players for a playoff. Both teams shall submit written lineups in advance to the director.
Each player must play at least 50% of the boards scheduled for the event (not including tie-breaking playoffs), including 50% of the boards in each Stage, with a possible exception for a BAM movement if required on Sunday. It is a Conduct and Ethics violation to list players on the entry who will not actually participate or to use players in early rounds when they will not play in later rounds. Any exceptions will be permitted only in the event of an emergency and at the sole discretion of the District Director or Grand National Team Coordinator.
It is possible that the movement in the first two stages will require an anchor pair sitting NS. Captains should not assume that a five-person team will be able to substitute freely at both tables. It is also possible that the movement will prevent a player from playing 50% of the boards as required in the prior paragraph. Captains are expected to come as close as possible to this requirement for each player.
Substitutes are subject to the discretion of the District Director or Grand National Team Coordinator and may not appreciably strengthen a team. Substitutes for more than one session shall be deemed a permanent addition to the team. Players should not enter this event unless planning to play until eliminated. Players who win should expect to represent the District at the North American Championship beginning July 12th 2006 in Chicago. Captains should verify that all team members expect to play the entire event. Entering the event with the knowledge that one cannot compete throughout is a violation of ACBL ethics guidelines.
The period for an appeal of a director's ruling expires thirty minutes after each session.
The period for score corrections expires at the announced starting time of the next session in an ongoing match, one hour before the announced starting time of the next session for the last session of a completed match, and fifteen minutes after the session for the last session of the final match.
The penalties for failure to seat a complete team at announced game time (tardiness) in Stage 3 will be as follows:
(i) first five minutes - no penalty
(ii) more than 5 minutes, up to 15 minutes - 1 IMP
(iii) more than 15 minutes, up to 20 minutes - 3 IMPs
(iv) more than 20 minutes, up to 25 minutes - 6 IMPs
(v) more than 25 minutes, up to 30 minutes - 9 IMPs
(vi) more than 30 minutes, up to 35 minutes - 12 IMPs
(vii) more than 35 minutes, up to 40 minutes - 15 IMPs
In Stages 1 and 2 the offending team may be required to use a substitute to facilitate the movement, in addition to the prescribed penalties.
The final match will be curtailed one board, up to a maximum of four boards, for each 7 1/2 minutes or fraction thereof of tardiness after the first ten minutes. Three IMPs per board curtailed will be awarded to the non-offending team in addition to the penalty in subsection (a) above.
If play has not commenced (with or without a substitute) forty minutes after the announced game time, the match will be declared a forfeit.
The winner of the event, if consisting of fewer than six members, may augment its team for advancement to the National Finals with any player or players who entered the district event and who reached at least Stage 2 in any Flight. In addition, members of any district-winning team from the previous year are eligible to be added if they have entered the event in the current year.
The District-winning team will receive a stipend of $1500 from the District.
GNT Coordinator:
Jeff Miller
876 Buttonwood Cir.
Naperville, IL 60540
630-548-0517 (office) 630-357-0341 (home)
Appendix A
These are sample VP scales based upon the extensive work by Henry Bethe for the Team Trials. The VP scales used in the GNT will be based upon Henry’s formula for consistency in all matches. This may mean modification of the “standard” scales for shorter matches.
The Team Trials has considered a fractional VP scale so that every IMP counts. For simplicity, we have not adopted that format, but we will seek feedback and review this for future years.
Once we know the number of teams, the VP scales will, of course, be announced in advance for each of the relevant match links.
Below are 20 point integer scales for 12, 14 and 20 board matches on the assumption that you will play either 5, 4, or 3 matches each day.
VPs 12 boards 14 boards 20 boards
10-10 0- 1 0- 1 0- 1
11- 9 2- 4 2- 4 2- 5
12- 8 5- 7 5- 8 6- 9
13- 7 8-11 9-12 10-14
14- 6 12-15 13-16 15-19
15- 5 16-19 17-21 20-25
16- 4 20-24 22-26 26-31
17- 3 25-30 27-33 32-39
18- 2 31-37 34-40 40-48
19- 1 38-46 41-50 49-60
20- 0 47+ 51+ 61+
The underlying assumption is that you reach 15-5 when the margin is 5 times the square root of the number of boards, and 18-2 when the margin is about twice that.
Henry Bethe