Congratulations (semibold)
Congratulations to Kyo Chen, Sugar Land and his team that won Gold in the 8th World Youth Transnational Championships in Wroclaw, Poland in the Under 16 (years) Division. Kyo is 10 years old, and is a Unit 174 member.
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Summer NABC (semibold)
Congratulations to the D16 Grand National Teams Flight B National Champions: Jessie Lee, Hao Deng, both Sugar Land, Mark Pan, The Woodlands, Kalyan Venkat, Rond Rock, and Jin Chu, Plano!
The city of Toronto, the Convention Center, and the host hotels made for a wonderful venue for the Summer NABC and produced the highest post-pandemic table count of 9560 ½, besting last summer’s Chicago NABC by more than 1200 tables.
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ACBL Financial Status (semibold)
ACBL continues to have a good year financially with net income over budget by about $900,000. This is a combination of increased revenue and slower than expected spending on activities during the first half of the year. While spending will increase in the second half of 2024, it will still be a very good year financially for ACBL.
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Membership (semibold)
ACBL Membership is slightly decreasing with the year over year decline from this point in 2023 only by 0.27%. I remain optimistic that our new initiatives will reverse the decline and bring ACBL into a growth period.
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Masterpoints for NAP and GNT (semibold)
The most significant ACBL board action was to change the masterpoint requirements for flights in the NAP and GNT.
• The flights will be:
Championship Flight – unlimited
Flight A – 6000 maximum
Flight B – 3000 maximum
Flight C – 750 maximum
These changes to the masterpoint levels began September 1, 2024 as club level qualifying for the 2025 GNT began.
• The additional flight will be added to the NAP for the qualification that began June 1, 2025 with the finals held at the Spring NABC in 2026.
• The board chose not to restrict the 0-750 flights to Non-Life Masters as the previous requirements at 500 masterpoints did.
The Advisory Council has asked the board to reconsider this action and not allow Life Masters to play in 0-750 flights. A special meeting is planned in late August to decide whether to restrict the C flight to Non-Life Masters. Watch for the decision in the next issue.
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Online Bridge (semibold)
The Online Provider Task Force continues to work to shape the future of online bridge. Our current contract with BBO expires on June 30, 2025, and BBO has been informed that ACBL does not view a contract with the current exclusivity provisions in the best interests of bridge. ACBL wants to foster innovation and to support teachers and platforms used for teaching by allowing them to award masterpoints. Having said that, I believe we will continue to have a strong partnership with BBO, and that a high percentage of online tables will be played on BBO for many years to come.
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EDGAR (semibold)
ACBL has been using EDGAR, the computer based cheating detection system, since February. As of early July more than 17,000 players have been screened with 242 players determined to be cheating. By now, all those players will have received their notice of charges.
The good news is that we are significantly less than 2% at 1.4%, but that number will grow as ACBL evaluates more players. The current estimate to complete screening for members who have played online is in early 2026. To learn more about EDGAR there is an excellent article on page 28 of the August Bridge Bulletin.
I hope all of you are enjoying the summer and the many tournaments available throughout District 16.