[jillybean]

Coming from here, I am not aware of "prizes" being awarded in any ACBL event.

Does your Bridge Organization award prizes? If so, what do you recieve?

I am aware that in NZ prizes of cash, liquor, glassware etc are awarded in tournaments.

[awm]

In Switzerland the “national championship” tournaments give medals or trophies. Other tournaments normally have cash prizes.

Most tournaments in Germany have cash prizes (and also medals if it’s a national championship).

No one is making a living off the cash prizes though (they are not very lucrative but they do pay back more than the entry fee).

[pescetom]

In Italy it was normal until a few years ago for all tournaments to offer cash prizes, even at club level. Covid and then a strict new sports law changed that radically at club level, although some have returned to cash prizes (my club just dispenses congratulations and was happy to lose the few who didn't accept the change). The middle ground of symbolic prizes was more or less killed off by the new law as they were still taxed and controlled like cash prizes, and it's less hassle to document a payment than the value and origin of a bottle of wine (quite possibly from the back of somebody's cellar).

National level tournaments pay out quite substantial prizes, up to about five times the inscription fee which is already high (€300 per team at the upcoming Milan tournament) to pay for... the prizes.

[diana_eva]

Cash prizes are standard around here too (Romania, Balkans). Some bigger, some smaller, sometimes just a goodie basket but there's usually something. The entry fees are typically conceived to cover logistics + prizes.

For example (this one is supposedly higher standard than a local "Festival"):

https://www.cupacontra.ro/en/prizes/

Local Festival:

https://festivalbrid.../p/program.html

Entry fees (approx): 15 bucks per player for one of the events; 50 bucks per player for the Open

Prizes worth of 4.2K distributed to the winners (1st place = $1000)

[jillybean]

$10,000 EURO wow. I will have to put some of these on my Bucket List, along with the ABF Gold Coast Congress which I was pleased to see will continue 2025

[mycroft]

The ACBL does not do "prizes" in this way for three reasons, some of them good:

• It started in the "devil's tickets" days, and not allowing any money to change hands (either as prizes or as gambling) allowed it to skirt over that (at the time, serious) image and hosting problem. Witness the number of ACBL clubs (and tournaments) held in church basements...
  
• It carefully avoided the government monopoly (or ban) on gambling by avoiding the "game of chance" vs "game of skill" issue. Yes, there was rubber; yes, the same people played; yes, there are still problems with those games (or Calcuttas) that basically are avoided by, you know, nobody saying anything and the stakes being small enough for the government not to notice.
  
• It very carefully avoids any idea of "working" for the purposes of immigration. Yes, I have had several discussions with the nice gentlemen who think they need handguns in Canada, that cleared themselves up when the answer to "what do you get if you win" was "bragging rights" (and one that got very suspicious about the same thing. "Really? People will drive 8 hours to play a game where they don't get money if they win?" But there were other issues with that border crossing). Now, the sponsored players coming in had (and have) a real issue with that, but they really are working...

We still have rules on the books about gambling or wagering *of any nature* at ACBL games; I've said several times here that if, as a director, I ever hear about any bets on a game (even "lowest score buys dinner" or "dimes") I have to stop it from happening, and if it happens anyway I have to report them and get them suspended. So my players are very nice and make sure I don't hear about it when I'm a director. How much of that is prompted by lawyers and courts, and how much is a remnant of the original Puritanism, is a question for the ages. But it does mean that the tournament itself offering cash prizes is a huge no-go.

[akwoo]

Alcohol consumption, 2019, in equivalent litres of pure alcohol:

Germany: 12.2
France: 11.3
UK: 10.8
Australia: 10.1
Canada: 9.9
US: 9.6

Why is this relevant? The Temperance Movement wasn't just against drinking; it was also against gambling. The lower alcohol consumption rate in the US is mostly a result of the Temperance Movement, 150 years later. (Eating apples and apple pie also became popular because of the Temperance Movement.) And that also means stronger cultural taboos on anything that looks like gambling as well.

I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons duplicate bridge took hold in the US is that it was a way to play bridge without playing for money.

[jillybean]

Interesting. It would be good to see the numbers from what they are calling the Epidemic within the Pandemic and the subsequent numbers today.