Grand National Teams: It finally seems to be spring, which means it is time for the 2014 District 8 Grand Nationals Team District Final. We are at the Eagles Club in Springfield again on April 26 at 1 pm. If needed (based on the numbers of teams in each flight), semifinals and/or finals will be held April 27. If you haven’t already notified me of your team, please do so. I need the names of your team members and the flight you are entering. You do not have to RSVP to attend, but it is helpful.

The most common question l get in the weeks leading up to the event is how many teams are entered in a flight. If you don’t rsvp, I don’t know. I know this is a conflict with Gatlinburg and I am sorry we had site problems that necessitated the change in the usual date, but you could use Gatlinburg as a warm-up all week and come back for the GNTs I hope to see many of you there.

Patrias retiring: Chris Patrias was the Chief Tournament Director of his last Spring NABC last month. He isn’t retiring until sometime in 2015, but we will all miss him when he takes his well-earned retirement. He has been working in District 8 as long as I have been playing bridge, and it won’t seem the same without him. We have been lucky to have him working our tournaments.

Goodwill award: Karl Dencker received his Goodwill Member of the Year award at the Goodwill reception in Dallas. I was honored to introduce him and he gave a very nice speech at the ceremony. I think he and his wife had a very nice time at the tournament. This was a great and well-deserved honor.

Dallas meetings: Dallas was a very busy meeting for me. I had WBF meetings as well as the ACBL meeting. I ended up missing the entire WBF meeting as I chaired a disciplinary hearing that lasted as long as the meeting. Highlights of the ACBL meeting include:

• A motion from the Board of Governors requesting the ACBL to provide free wifi at the NABCs was defeated. The technical gurus assured us that present equipment would be overwhelmed with the demand, and new equipment would cost us in excess of $500,000.

• I had proposed a motion that the ACBL would stop duplicating disciplinary proceedings for actions occurring in non-ACBL events by ACBL members who are not members of Zone Two. These people are generally players who join the ACBL to play in NABCs. I proposed that we recognize the discipline imposed by the bridge organization running the event where the behavior occurred. Apparently I was about the only one who thought this was a good idea because it was soundly defeated, 4-19-2.

• A request to extend the exception for no surcharge for tournament entries for nonmembers from games with an upper masterpoint level less than 20 to an upper limit of 299 was defeated.

• Juniors representing the US, Canada or Mexico in international competitions will have free entries at NABCs during the time between when they are appointed to the team and the international competition is held while they are playing with other members of their teams. The amount of money involved is small and it was thought that this would be good preparation for the teams.

• There will be a Youth NABC at the summer Nationals in Chicago in 2015. Since the tournament is later than usual, it was requested that management see if it could be scheduled the first weekend of the NABCs instead of the second. Space considerations may not allow this.

• The following policy regarding member information was passed:  All member information provided to individuals or entities shall be subject to approval of the CEO with written guarantees that such information:
       Be limited to terms of use.
       Be subject to the ACBL privacy policy
       Not be used for profit.
  Proper protection of member information while still being able to use it for appropriate bridge purposes is a huge concern for the ACBL.

• A new document -- guidelines for determining which responsibilities rest with the sponsoring organization, which are at the option of the Director in Charge and which are shared -- was approved. The document is entitled “Rules and Responsibilities of Tournament Sponsors and DICs” and will be available on the ACBL website.

• The practice of using more than one round of random pairings in Swiss Teams events was banned.

• Conditions of Contest for most major team events were changed to allow for shorter events. The top events will now be 60-board matches and Flight C of the Grand National Teams will have 52-board matches.

• And finally, we finished the last few chapters of the Codification, rearranging and getting rid of motions that had been superseded. I was getting excited about this because I am usually on the committee that has been reviewing these motions, and it involves pages of reading. However, Phyllis Harlan, the ACBL president and the woman in charge of organizing all of this work, told me this is only the first step. She said we need to go through them again to see if we should make changes based on current practices. This work will be shared by all of the committees.

Full minutes of the meeting should be on the ACBL website later this month. I hope to see many of you at the Grand National Teams event in April and at the Champaign regional in May.