ACBL Director's Report
ACBL Director's ReportHello, Everyone:
Grand National Teams: It has been a busy time since I last wrote a newsletter. We had the Grand National Teams District Final in Springfield in May and only 29 teams showed up. After last year's 45 teams, that was disappointing, but we still had a good time. If anyone has any ideas on how to increase participation next year, please let me know. And start thinking about your teams for next year. The 2008 finals are in Las Vegas, which is always a fun place to visit.
Champaign Regional: The Champaign Regional was in its new home at the Hilton Gardens and Homewood Suites. The new hotels are lovely and the playing site has been renovated as well. The Homewood Suites includes breakfast each day and dinner Sunday through Thursday, which makes it very reasonably priced.
Rockford & Metropolis IL Split Regional: I wasn't able to attend the Metropolis regional and see their new site at the casino, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. I was at the Rockford regional, which had the honor of having the ACBL President, Sharon Fairchild, attend. Attendance was up more than 45 percent over last year. Sharon had a good time visiting with everyone and there was a "Breakfast with the President" Sunday morning before the game that was very enjoyable. She and I both appreciated all the effort the volunteers put into making her trip a pleasant one.
District 8 Charity Week: District 8 is having a Charity Week this fall. All clubs are invited to participate and help raise money for charity. Hand records are available for clubs with internet access. The sanction fee is an additional $1.00 per person, all of which goes to charity. Karl Dencker is organizing this for the district and can answer any questions. We are hoping each club will have at least one session. The games will be sectionally-rated.
Nashville Board meetings: After a series of relatively easy board meetings, the one at the Nashville NABC was not. The ACBL is in the process of re-determining pay policies for its employees based on changes in the law. The process is a difficult one in trying to balance the needs of all parties involved. Management has been hard at work and progress is ongoing.
Other major topics at the meeting included the first reading of the new masterpoint revisions. The main change is that masterpoints for knockout events will be based on the average masterpoint holdings of the teams entered in a bracket, not on the number of brackets entered. That means that a bracket with a specific masterpoint holding will pay the same whether it happens to be the top bracket or a lower one. The Masterpoint Committee used the new formula on all regionally- rated knockouts held last year and found that it did not decrease the number of masterpoints awarded. The motion is reported in full in the minutes of the meeting. Other changes include increasing the match awards for flight A and X Swiss teams and increasing the maximum allowable overall award at regular open club games to 2.5 masterpoints. Special games can award up to six masterpoints.
Other Board actions included:
Bylaws were prepared for the North American Contract Bridge Hall of Fame and a $50,000 loan was authorized for start-up costs once the Hall is incorporated. The loan will bear interest and must be paid back by December 31, 2010.
The Board Operations committee gathered many scattered pieces of legislation and organized them. The first two topics were Board of Director expenses and meeting procedures. The purpose of this was not to make substantive changes, but just to get everything organized. They had to comb through years of the Codification to find all of the relevant sections. This was an amazing amount of work on the part of a small group of people.
There were two attempts to limit the number of special games a club may hold and they both failed. The Education Foundation was added as another beneficiary of the special games, joining the Charity Foundation, the Junior Fund and the International Fund. We will be discussing the limit again in San Francisco as the Board of Governors once again asked us to reconsider the issue.
A request to allow handicapped matchpoint pair games was defeated. ACBLScore can do this in club games, but it was not believed to be manageable at tournaments.
An attempt to eliminate Consolation Compact Knockout team events was defeated. New rules were passed for the overall awards of regular KOs.
Management was authorized to establish procedures and guidelines for suspending or rescinding a club-game sanction or a club director's accreditation for cause. The guidelines are to be presented at our next meeting at the San Francisco NABC in November.
The format of the NABC final for the Grand National Teams was modified. It will now be the same in all flights: a one-day Swiss event to qualify into a seeded KO bracket. Sixteen teams will qualify for the KOs. The knock-out matches will be 64 boards in the Championship flight, 56 boards in the other flights.
An attempt to make English the official language of the ACBL was deferred to the fall meeting to give us a chance to seek advice from a Canadian lawyer on the consequences of Canadian laws requiring the use of French in several provinces.
If there is a district-wide STAC, all clubs within the district must be allowed to participate. If a unit outside the sponsoring district chooses to participate, all clubs in that Unit must be invited to participate.
The Spring 49er Pairs and the Fall Non-Life Master Pairs were eliminated from the Nationals, due to a lack of participation.
An additional regional was authorized for Quebec City for April 10-13, 2008 to commemorate Quebec City's 400th anniversary.
A Youth North American Bridge Championship was authorized. The first one will be held in Atlanta in 2008 or 2009.
An attempt to remove the ACBL from the World Bridge Federation was defeated.
It was reported that ACBL memberships are up, average table counts for tournaments are up, and our year-to-date financial performance is ahead of budget.
We think we have sold the ACBL headquarters building on Airways Drive in Memphis, and management was asked to provide us with plans for a new site.
The IRS has instituted new reporting requirements for all not-for- profit organizations. The ACBL will be distributing information to all units and districts soon. Every not-for-profit organization must have an EIN, so if your group does not have one, please apply for one soon. The eventual penalty for failure to report will be loss of the not-for-profit status, but the reporting requirements are not onerous for small organizations.
I hope to see many of you at our upcoming regionals in St. Louis and Fort Wayne. Good luck at the table.
-- Georgia Heth
If you have questions or suggestions about ACBL Board actions or other bridge matters, please contact me at gkheth@hotmail.com or 917 S. Main St., Morton IL 61550-2419.