GNT - Recap and Beyond

Kudos again all around - to Unit 178's Mike Cassel and 103's Judy Nassar for an excellent weekend of GNT competition - and to those who played well enough to enter the winner's circle.  We wish the best to all who are headed for Washington D.C. in July, and look forward with anticipation to see how high District 14 teams can climb in North American battles.

Also, Mike has written a thoughtful recap of the weekend, along with some thoughts about future GNT's for District 14.  Both the final results from the weekend, along with Mike's piece can be found below the line.

Download GNTfinalsPRESS

Download GNTblog309

Comments

[Richard Lawson]

Mike,

First of all, you did a phenomenal job revitalizing this event. It's difficult to express exactly how exciting it was to see so many people show up on Saturday.

I kind of expected the Sunday Swiss was doomed to fail. Swiss Teams is, in my opinion, the least enjoyable form of bridge, and is certainly anti-climactic if you get knocked out on the first day. I just don't think you'll ever be able to drum up a lot of interest in this.

On a similar note, in your blog you said:

"1. A full Round Robin Swiss Final with pre-duplicated hands for these two flights on Sunday would be a more fair competition."

I strongly disagree. At the Nationals, the GNT's are not a Swiss. They're a knockout. As such, the winner should not be determined by who gets the most Victory Points in a Swiss. In my opinion, the winner should be the team that performs the best in the style of bridge competition that will be used at the Nationals.

You wouldn't use an IMPs pairs to determine who's going to represent the district in the NAP's, would you?

That's my perspective from a perennial Flight B player. Our team this year might well have done a heck of a lot better in the Swiss format you suggested, but I didn't feel like our loss in the semi-finals was due to any unfairness. We just played badly. =)

[Rich Newell]

And if anything seems different from a KO, it is the 14-match 4-board movement that we played. How about this alternative. Let's say that you want 8 teams to compete on Sunday. Divide the 15 teams randomly into a group of 8 and a group of 7. Have them play an entire round robin and the top 4 teams in each bracket advance.
Having more teams survive until the second day gives the hope (illusion) to more people that they can win. I suppose you could have a 48-board KO in three rounds of 16 boards, letting teams compare after every 8 boards.