[jmcw]

It's expensive to vist an out of town NABC. Counting travel, accomodation, food, and entry fees expect at least a couple of hundred/day. To make it “worthwhile” I would in all likelyhood stay for at least a week and play every day. Needless to say I don't go to many.
Now suppose a few of the key events were played simultaneosly at various cities across the nation. For example, imagine the L.M. Pairs being contested in Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Orlando, and Toronto all the the same time. Possible?, a good idea?.

[mgoetze]

jmcw, on 2015-August-14, 11:19, said:

Possible?

Yes.

Quote

a good idea?.

No, a terrible idea, since rather than the best overall pair, the winner would be the pair that is best relative to their local field.

[barmar]

mgoetze, on 2015-August-14, 12:45, said:

No, a terrible idea, since rather than the best overall pair, the winner would be the pair that is best relative to their local field.

Even if you matchpoint across the entire field?

One problem with trying to do this is timezones. If the games are at 1pm and 7:30pm on the west coast, they will be at 4pm and 10:30pm on the east.

And how would you run Swiss Teams and Knockouts when the tournament is spread over multiple locations?

We already have regionals all over the place. NABCs are the occasional events where everyone congregates in one place. For most of us it's a vacation -- traveling and siteseeing are part of it. And we need lots of hotel rooms to be filled to subsidize the cost of the conference space for the tournament. Spreading it out over different locations would reduce this.

[mgoetze]

barmar, on 2015-August-15, 02:12, said:

Even if you matchpoint across the entire field?

Yes.

[barmar]

Another thing: the NABC is a big social event. This is our chance to get together with bridge friends from around the country and around the world, as either partners or opponents. I can't count the number of times this week that someone has said "Didn't we team up N years ago in <wherever>?"

If we split it up, it becomes just like a big regional.

[jogs]

Maybe it's time for someone to create an airbnb for bridge players.

[Vineuse]

I just returned from Chicago with my Partner Smiles3USA, we had a wonderful time, it is great to see friends from home but exciting to see some of the top players in the country. My favorite occasion was being their to see Mel Marcus become a Grand Live Master! I also played with ACBL_17, Dan Israeli, another fantastic treat.

[benlessard]

I think there should be more multi steps events.

EX You can make games at the city level in big clubs (but players cannot play all of those specials events they have to register in advance only to a certain amount). In short you cannot run after all the qualifications until your qualified.

You only take the winners and 2nd places. You get about 12 pairs per city of 2 millions than you make a unit final and than you send some players to a special section of a national or regional.

To make stronger events that are not spread on a full week you want a selection process not open events.

[stoppiello]

benlessard, on 2015-August-15, 15:33, said:

I think there should be more multi steps events.

EX You can make games at the city level in big clubs (but players cannot play all of those specials events they have to register in advance only to a certain amount). In short you cannot run after all the qualifications until your qualified.

You only take the winners and 2nd places. You get about 12 pairs per city of 2 millions than you make a unit final and than you send some players to a special section of a national or regional.

To make stronger events that are not spread on a full week you want a selection process not open events.

Don't they already do that? (NAP pairs/teams events)

[redbird97]

A bad idea for one main reason. No matter what city you pick to play, you are going to have the same outrageous costs you complain about so spreading events around will do nothing except help the pros. They will figure out who is going where and plan accordingly. People need to wake up to the fact that these tournaments are really held for select groups such as the pros and their wealthy clients, juniors, and those just starting out. Those are the current "flavors" of the month.

[barmar]

There are over 1,000 tables in play each day. How many of them are "flavors of the month"?

[barmar]

Vineuse, on 2015-August-15, 09:06, said:

I also played with ACBL_17, Dan Israeli, another fantastic treat.

I teamed up with him as well.

[JoAnneM]

Most hobbies are expensive, not just bridge. It's a matter of choice, and the NABC's are very special. Howver if you are not interested in a national event you can do better at a Regional. Why pay to go to a NABC just to play local events. Nowadays even the professionals are hidden away in special rooms or a different building, so the Regional events are just that - a Regional tournament with NABC costs.

[BillPatch]

JoAnneM, on 2015-August-18, 12:48, said:

Most hobbies are expensive, not just bridge. It's a matter of choice, and the NABC's are very special. Howver if you are not interested in a national event you can do better at a Regional. Why pay to go to a NABC just to play local events. Nowadays even the professionals are hidden away in special rooms or a different building, so the Regional events are just that - a Regional tournament with NABC costs.

A good reason for those lower ranked Life Masters in the less urbanized areas of the country to go to Nationals to play Regionals; to find suitable partners at partnership desk. For example: playing in the Detroit Regional I have about 500 MP. Only available matchup 20MP. Played in bottom 0-1000 MP strata of the only pair game for which we qualified. Only lower pair game was for NLM. Was there for week, partnership desk was able to find partners only by long distance, one partner was from Sarnia, Ontario, over 30 miles away. Eventually I only missed 1/2 day that week. Partnership desks at Regionals in here in Ohio are not much better. But at NABCs the odds are much better at finding partners: even in the eastern Great Lakes.

By the way Columbus, Ohio is having a NABC in the near future probably in 2017. I will be at the partnership desk. By the way, before I moved to the Columbus Unit and before I was a Life Master the Columbus partnership desk matched for one session with the noted expert now living in Florida Mr. Rajahasami(sp). Since then he qualified in the US Team Trials for the Bermuda Bowl, but there his team placed second. He had me keep score. Big mistake! We won a telephone number on defense, and I scored it on the wrong side. Only because he reviewed the scores did we win a section top.

I understand that a Florida tourney has topped that by pairing Garozzo. But I bet he got at least a Life Master.

[benlessard]

"A bad idea for one main reason. No matter what city you pick to play, you are going to have the same outrageous costs you complain about so spreading events around will do nothing except help the pros"

If you want to make a 512 teams KO in one place all those 512 teams got to travel and its too many round to be practical.

if you make 64 groups of 8 teams with only 1/2 winners per groups (city level) you go from 512 to 128 with no travel cost any city is able to make a 8 teams group.

than you match up 4 cities (wich is often only 2 hours drive for a weekend event) Big cities will have no problem making 4x8 by itself so if you live in one of these you still didnt travel.

You are now down to 32 or 16 and those players are for sure going to be will willing to pay for travle to go at a national. I can assure you that winning an even like this is (1 out of 512 teams) will be as hard as winning the spingold.

For me travel expenses for going to a national to play round 1 & 2 is kind of pointless (since there is still club level players at this point) so these rounds can be done locally at little cost.


small city round 1 and 2 or round robin with 75% elimination (2 days)
big city round 3,4 and 5.
National round 6 to 9.

If youve survived for 5 rounds that its likely your are going to be willing to spend some hard earned cash.

[barmar]

JoAnneM, on 2015-August-18, 12:48, said:

Nowadays even the professionals are hidden away in special rooms or a different building, so the Regional events are just that - a Regional tournament with NABC costs.

They're only hidden away in the late rounds of the main championship event.

And don't forget that while those late rounds are taking place, all the pros who got knocked out are stuck playing in the regional events. I was playing in the A/X Swiss on the last day, and the competition included Benito Garozzo, Lew Stansby, Lynn Deas, Beth Palmer, Dano de Falco, and other well known names and up-and-comers.

[Mbodell]

It is a bad idea to do this, since NABC are very good. However, it is a good idea to try to play more simultaneous hands across many locations. There are a few events that are run this way including world wide simultaneous pairs and/or STAC games and/or The Common Game. So if you want to compare yourself and your local people to people all over larger regions there are some ways to do this. Tell your local club to join the common game, and look out for the occasional special sorts of games.