| ACBL District 21 | Let's Play Duplicate Bridge | District Representative Report |
By Bruce W. Blakely
District 21 Representative to the ACBL Board of Directors
Elections: The big news at the Fall 2011 meeting of the ACBL Board of Directors held starting on Sunday, November 20, 2011, in Seattle, Washington was the elections. Sharon Anderson of Eagan, MN, was elected as the President of the ACBL for 2012. Sharon is a relatively new member of the Board who is just finishing out her first 3-Year term. It is an exciting time for ACBL, with a new CEO, Robert Hartman, who started at ACBL in November. Robert, at 40 years of age, is younger than all 25 members of the Board of Directors.
There were two positions available for three-year terms as ACBL representatives to the Executive Counsel of the World Bridge Federation. Five candidates competed for the two positions: incumbent Georgia Heth (D8, Morton, IL); incumbent Jonathan Steinberg (D2 former director, Toronto, Ontario); Dan Morse (D16, Houston, TX); Bob Heller (D7 Decatur, GA) and I. Georgia was reelected and I won the election for the second position. For those of you who don't care about the peculiar ACBL election process, feel free to skip down to the next heading, "Initial Board Matters."
The ACBL has a strange election system. Although two elected positions were open, Board members vote for only one candidate at a time. On each ballot, one of three things happens: a candidate can receive 13 votes or more (a majority of the 25 District Directors) and be elected; there can be no majority winner and the candidate in last place is dropped from the next ballot, which process continues on until a candidate receives 13 votes; or there is a tie at the bottom, in which case no one is eliminated, and there is another vote with the same candidates as the prior round. Mathematically, with two positions open and five candidates, if there are no ties at the back of the pack, there could be as many as seven ballots, four to decide the first position, and three to decide the second. If there are ties for the bottom position, and no one changes his or her votes, however, there could be an infinite number of ballots with no declared winner.
The WBF elections were extremely interesting in Seattle. On the first ballot no one received 13 votes and world champion player Dan Morse was eliminated, leaving four candidates. The second ballot resulted on a tie for the bottom position, which led to a repeat vote with the same four candidates. On the third ballot, at least one additional vote was cast for Georgia Heth. She received 13 votes and was elected. This brought us to the second election. Dan Morse, who had been eliminated on the first ballot, came back into the running. On the fourth ballot, Jonathan Steinberg was eliminated. Apparently some of Georgia's votes went to Dan, so he was not eliminated. On the fifth ballot, Bob Heller was eliminated. On the sixth ballot, I was elected by a vote of 15-10. The strangest part of this system is that someone could receive very few votes in the first election where votes are split between the candidates, and eliminated, but then come back in with a strong showing to win the second election. That almost happened in Seattle where Dan Morse was eliminated on the first ballot in the first election, and then eliminated two other candidates in the second election, only losing in the final head-to-head vote.
Initial Board Matters: The other big news is that I voted in the minority on only two motions. If you have been reading my columns over the years, you will know this was certainly a record for me. These minority votes pertained to the 2012 Conditions of Contest and to free plays for the GNTs at nationals. More on these issues later.
Before the Board broke into committees, there were a few other matters: Astronaut Greg Johnson was elected as the Honorary Member of the Year, an overwhelmingly popular choice. Greg has been a great supporter of the ACBL and has been very helpful in attracting positive publicity for the League. Charles Gil of St. Petersburg, FL was selected as Volunteer of the Year.
Following these announcements, we had a report from our new CEO, Robert Hartman about the status of the League. All members of the Board appear extremely excited and optimistic about the new CEO. There is a feeling of energy and enthusiasm among staff and Board members alike. Let's hope we have a long honeymoon.
The CEO Report was followed by our League Counsel's Report and a report from the Transition Team, a group of Board members who are helping the new CEO take charge of the home office. The Team had distributed a board survey regarding effectiveness of the League and our leadership. Robert described the survey results: club operations and NABCs scored well; teacher training and board operations scored poorly; marketing was atrocious. Let's hope that Robert, who has a marketing background, can get the word out, will mainstream bridge in the public's consciousness, and can increase membership by 20% (33,000 members) or more in the next 5 years.
The survey also allowed Board members a chance to offer freeform comments to the new CEO. The primary topics raised were online bridge; improving board-staff relations; focusing the attention of the League on the large majority of members who are not tournament players; youth membership; and the WBF. Robert also gave us a glimpse of how he intends to operate with the Board and staff. He promised transparency and an open dialogue with the Board; no secrets, and full disclosure. Some of his initial impressions of the HQ operations were lack of teamwork among employees, and absence of a clear strategic plan. The Board was impressed with his insights, his people skills, and his desire to get the League functioning more efficiently and successfully.
All of the business described above took place in the first half-day of four days of meetings.
Committees: After our initial full Board session we broke into committees. I can only report on the committees of which I am a member. The By Laws Committee discussed creating new rules for allowing units to move from one district to another. Staff member Jim Miller will be drafting new rules for committee comment with an eye to presenting these new rules to the Board for a vote in Memphis in Spring 2012.
At the NABC Advisory Committee, we were presented with proposals for NABC tournament cites in the USA and Canada for 2017 through 2020. More on this later.
On Monday, the Bridge Committee met. We unanimously approved Youth NABC's in Philadelphia in Summer of 2012 and in Atlanta in Summer of 2013. The Board was required to reconsider a motion that had failed at the Toronto meeting; the Board of Governors had voted 31-8 to require the ACBL board to review its decision not to provide free entry fees for players participating in GNTs. (One of the BOG's rights is to send motions back to the BOD for reconsideration.) The committee voted 7-5 to allow free entries. (This was later rejected by the full Board.) There was a second reading of the motion to eliminate the alert for 2C Puppet Stayman bids. This was endorsed unanimously by the committee.
Two important motions were 113-27 and 113-28. The second of this motions imposed additional pigmented point requirements for ranks above Life Master, including silver points for SLM, gold points for GLM and platinum points for PLM. The committee vote was 12-0. Having imposed these new pigmented requirements, the committee was now able to vote in favor of eliminating the prior rule which allowed only one-third of rank advancement points to come from online bridge play. The committee voted 11-1 to rescind this rule.
The committee also voted 12-0 to prohibit players who had been expelled from the ACBL or had been suspended for more than 120 days to become GLM's. The motion to require KO's with 9 or more teams to have four sessions failed 11-1. The reason was that, with only one bracket, less experienced players would have no desire to play against the Passells and Meckstroths of the League. Having only one bracket would discourage a lot of players in smaller tournaments from participating in KO events. Allowing KO's to end in three sessions, however, gives TDs the flexibility to break up the field into smaller brackets which keeps players in the event.
Full Board: On Tuesday, November 25, the full board met again. Finance Committee Chairperson Beth Reid and ACBL staff made a presentation regarding the process of creating and revising the ACBL budget. This was a marked change implemented by the new CEO. In the past, staff had never made presentations on the budget to the board. The goal of this change was to develop better rapport between staff and the board. We were also informed that the TD fees imposed on all units and districts does not cover actual costs incurred by ACBL. The League subsidizes local tournaments by about 6%, or a total of $185,000 annually. The League is currently in negotiations to re-write ACBLScore in a more up to date computer language, which will be a $1 million to $2 million expense, but no contract has been signed to date.
There was a spirited - and very lengthy - discussion of a proposal to base masterpoint awards in pairs games based on “Strength Of Field,” rather than number of players in various events. There was a general agreement that the masterpoint structure needs some correction since a person who wins an Open Pairs event with ten tables receives credit for a Gold Rush Pairs event with 80 tables, or a Swiss Team event or a Senior Pairs event that is held at different times from the Pairs. However, there was strong disagreement whether we need a tweaking of the current system based on size of the field, or a major overhaul based upon strength of field parameters. One of our board members described the conflict as "a collision of the core values of our organization." After listening to the discussion for over an hour, and hearing that many board members were conflicted about the motion, I proposed that we defer the issue, to develop perspective on what the right approach is and to receive our players' input. The Board agreed to defer by a vote of 16-9. It is unclear whether Strength Of Field would have passed, if a vote had been taken. I welcome thoughts from the District on how to resolve this contentious issue.
A motion to change the name of the President's Volunteer of the Year to the Nadine Wood ACBL Volunteer of the Year passed 25-0. Nadine was a member of the Board of Directors for 18 years (6 terms) until the end of 2010 and died very unexpectedly in 2011. She was a very highly regarded member of the Board who gave tirelessly to the League for decades.
On Tuesday afternoon, Yves Aubrey of France, President of the European Bridge League, made a presentation to the ACBL Board about cooperation between the ACBL and our European counterparts. Gianarrigo Rona, president of the WBF from Italy, was also in attendance. Mr. Aubrey mentioned that he visited 15 countries in 2011 in his efforts to promote bridge.
The full board then considered the issue of GNT entry fees (as described above, the BOG had required the BOD to reconsider its refusal to waive fees). At the full board, the dispute revolved around whether free entries would spur more players to participate, and whether this was a useful expense for ACBL, as opposed to districts, to bear. It was mentioned that sanction fees cover the cost of all free entries for NAP players at the NABCs; however, sanction fees for GNT qualifiers would not fully cover the cost of providing free entries at nationals, resulting in a cost to ACBL of $31,780.
The Board seems to be divided between those directors who want to spend money for the benefit of players, regardless of whether it means a small loss to the League (let's call them the "Spenders") and those who are opposed to funding events that lose money (the "Tightfists"). (I mean no discourtesy to either group). I clearly am one of the Spenders, and voted to grant free entries. In my view, with roughly $8.5 million in the bank and investments, and repeat profit making years, the League, which is a non-profit corporation, should be giving back to the players. Allowing free entries to GNT winners is one way to get more players interested in this grassroots event. For better of worse, the BOG's reconsideration motion failed 12-13 once again. I am hoping that since the national board didn't act, D21 will provide our winning teams more money than we have been paying in the past, especially for our Flight C GNT winners. Giving money to Flight C will get more newer players interested in this event, and is likely to get some players to attend nationals who may have never been before.
The board approved holding Youth NABC's in Philadelphia in Summer of 2012, and in Atlanta in Summer of 2013 by votes of 25-0 and 23-1-1, respectively. However, there was a concern that too much money ($44,000) had been spent on food in Toronto for the Youth Players. The response was the League is responsible for the safety of these young players at NABC's, and we therefore must feed them both a lunch and a snack until their parents pick them up. Food at a hotel is very expensive. It is unclear whether Youth NABC's will survive since some directors are opposed to this expense. Again, I am a Spender, who feels that we are investing in the League's future.
The motion to bar a player who has been suspended by ACBL for 120 days or more from being a Grand Life Master passed 19-6.
On Wednesday morning at 8:00 a.m., I had an hour-long one-on-one meeting with our new CEO. (Robert is meeting with each of the 25 directors individually.) We had a frank discussion about my concerns with the marketing department's ongoing inability to develop the public's awareness of bridge; my aim to have better training for board members; the desirability of a smaller NABC Advisory Committee; and other topics regarding improvements to the League.
On Wednesday at 9:00 a.m., the full board met to discuss the 2012 Conditions of Contest. One discussion was whether directors should be allowed to receive masterpoints in STAC games. I am fervently opposed to allowing directors, or their partners, to receive masterpoints. To allow them to participate in these multi-site events compromises the integrity of the game. A director may have been involved in duplicating the boards; even if not, the director takes director calls and he or she is likely to see hands before they are played at his or her table. These people should not be allowed to participate unless to eliminate a half-table, and even then should be non-eligible.
When directors play, they are at a huge advantage. It is like a coach who is a 6' 8" college trained player playing on a high school basketball team. Who is likely to win? It is really even worse than this, since a Pairs game has only two players, not five. This should be an absolute rule. Other directors said it is "punitive" to allow directors in small games from being eligible because there would not be enough players to hold a game, but, in my view, if the game is so small, these clubs should not be allowed to hold a STAC, where they will be competing against other clubs. In a small field, it is far more likely that there will be a huge 70 or 75% game than if there is field protection in a 15 or 17 table game. These clubs should be holding club games, not STACs. It would be an interesting statistic to see how often the 70-75% games in STAC are coming from the 3 to 6 table games.
Indeed, in some districts, the STAC games are being played without pre-duplicated hands. There, none of the players at Club A are playing any of the same boards as the players in Clubs B and C. This is in direct conflict with the duplicate principle, where players are supposed to play the same boards to eliminate luck and to reward skill. Imagine a team game where, at one table players are playing Boards 1 through 12, and at the other they are playing 13 through 24. At the end of 12 hands, players compare and IMP the results of hand 1 against 13, 2 against 14, and so on, without the two tables every playing the any of same boards. It could be done, but throws luck of the draw feverishly back into the game. I could not vote for the current Conditions of Contest. However, the motion passed 21-4.
The motion to have additional pigmented point requirements for Silver LM and above passed 20-5. Starting January 1, 2012 there will be additional requirements; however, every player who is an LM or above on 12/31/11 will be allowed to reach the one next higher rank based on the old requirements. For example, a player who is a Silver LM will be able to become a Gold LM based upon the old rules (2,500 MPs of which no more than 833.33 may be online points), but all further ranks will require minimum numbers of pigmented points. Since various pigmented points will now be required for advancement, the incongruous one-third online point rule could be eliminated. That motion passed 19-6. To make sure that the rules are in harmony, the pigmented point rule goes into effect on January 1, 2012, and the rescission of the one-third rule will be implemented one day later, on January 2. The one-third rule, which was unpopular with online players will be a thing of the past.
The motion to require all KO events with more than 8 teams which are advertised as four sessions, to have four sessions, failed. This was strongly opposed by the Board since it would require newer players to play in Bracket I. Only the Chair of the Bridge Committee voted in favor of this motion which was defeated 1 to 24.
Finally, staff member Jeff Johnston, the director of NABC Operations, proposed four new NABC playing sites for approval. Tampa was approved for Fall 2020 by a vote of 25-0. Toronto was passed for Summer 2017 by a vote of 23-2. Kansas City was approved for Spring 2017 by a vote of 25-0. And Honolulu was approved for Fall 2018 by a vote of 16-9. Fortunately, we Spenders were able to prevail on this one with 3 votes to spare. Although the League is likely to lose money on the Honolulu tournament, the players win big!
The next national will be the ACBL 75th anniversary tournament in Memphis, Tennessee starting on March 15, 2012. See you at the party!