Next week at the Pasadena Bridge Club we'll be offering three games that are part of a Sectional Tournament at Clubs. Bridge clubs from San Francisco to Reno to San Diego will be awarding silver points and potentially very large awards.
With our club's focus on new players, I thought it'd be a good idea to explain what this is all about, and some of the history behind it.
Sectional Tournaments
Sectional tournaments are important for climbing the ranks of ACBL bridge masters. A sectional tournament is the only place to win silver masterpoints. One of the requirements to achieve the rank of Life Master is 75 silver points.
Traditionally, ACBL units organize and hold sectional tournaments. Holding a tournament usually involved renting a hall, bringing in tables and equipment, and securing the services of an ACBL tournament director. Sectionals are traditionally weekend affairs, sometimes including a Friday.
A sectional tournament historically was a fund raising enterprise for the units, all of which are non-profit organizations. Over time it has become more difficult to find a venue with parking, room for 50 tables or so, and hire suitably rated directors (who are ACBL employees assigned by ACBL field management).
Units and districts are governed by volunteers, and those same volunteers do the organizing for a tournament, set up and take down the equipment, staff the hospitality and partnership desks, and bring cookies, snacks and coffee.
When I was just beginning bridge in the 1990s, there was high tension between bridge clubs and the ACBL units. When a sectional tournament was held, it would draw players who might drive 50 or more miles to play — players who otherwise would have played at the local club. That's lost income for the club owners, many of whom are (or were) decidedly not non-profit enterprises.
In a dense district like San Francisco or Los Angeles, there could be a sectional tournament within 50 miles practically every other weekend!
Enter the STaC
The ACBL wanted to do something to appease the club owners who were complaining loudly about the competition from units holding sectionals.
Thus was born the "Sectional Tournament at Clubs."
In theory, the attraction of winning some of those precious silver points would lure additional players into the club to play. And indeed it does have that effect.
Now two or three times a year, groups of units or districts will band together and offer a STaC week to the local clubs. Club managers sign on to offer STaC games to their players, and pay the sponsoring organization an extra fee per player.
Participating clubs are given board sets to duplicate, so all the clubs playing at a given time of day will be playing the same hands. This comes in the form of an electronic file for the duplicating machine. Without the machine, boards would be created by hand by the director, or the duplication would be performed at the table at the start of a game. (Don't ask!)
At the end of each game, the directors send their game results to the STaC Director in Charge (DIC) who consolidates the various club games into a ranking of all the players in all the clubs for a given session.
If you do particularly well at your local club game, your masterpoint award might rank in the overall pool for the session. And thus, you might earn an award that's based not on eight or nine tables, but based on 50, 60, or more tables, depending on how many clubs were playing in a given session.
That lure of possibly winning not 2 silver points, but possibly 8 or 10, is what attracts players to the club for a STaC game.
The Pendulum Swings
STaCs are very popular — it's a chance to win silver points in your local club, without traveling to a distant tournament site. Since the pandemic, the ACBL has also been offering online "Silver Linings" weeks for winning silver points online.
Now the aggrieved party isn't the clubs but the units. The units rightfully complain that having so many STaC weeks and Silver Linings weeks mean players have less incentive to travel to their sectionals and buy entries.
Indeed, if you go further back in ACBL history (before my time), silver masterpoints didn't exist. They were created by the ACBL to get players to attend sectional tournaments, by requiring some number of silver points to become a Life Master. The silver point requirement proved to be a major boon to the ACBL units.
Can a balance be struck? Of course it can! But it will probably involve a few more pendulum swings before it reaches an equilibrium, if ever.
STaC games at the Pasadena Bridge Club
I plan to offer STaC games at the club whenever they're offered to me. This week we have three STaC games on the schedule:
- Wednesday, 11:00 AM Open Pairs
- Thursday, 11:00 AM Open Pairs
- Saturday 1:00 PM 0-750 Pairs
The Thursday game is added to the schedule, and the Saturday game, this week only, will take the place of the "Workshop and Short Game" that day.
But wait, there's more!
Glendale Verdugo Sectional Sept. 9-10
It turns out that my prime location at N. Fair Oaks and Orange Grove makes it an attractive place to hold a genuine sectional tournament.
The "community room" down the hall from the club is available for me to reserve occasionally, and has room for probably 12 tables. It even has a spacious kitchen attached, with a roll up window between.
That gives me a total capacity on a weekend of as many as 32 tables, albeit split between the two rooms. That's not the 70-or-so tables that Glendale would have set up at the Scottish Rite Temple in Pasadena, but there aren't as many bridge players just now.
It means that instead of just opening the doors to anyone who comes, we'll be taking reservations for the game. Given the recent increases in attendance at tournaments of all levels, it could mean having to turn some players away who don't have a reservation!
Whatever happens, this will be an interesting experiment. I have plenty to worry about, taking care of coffee and bathrooms, much less the bridge.
Our bridge club is not actually in the Glendale Verdugo unit, ours is the Pasadena San Gabriel Unit, but they were drawn to my location just as anyone would be. If this works out, we'll have a Pasadena sectional here in July of next year.
On September 9 and 10, there will be two games each day, starting at 10:00 AM and 2:30 PM. Each session will have an Open Pairs section and a section for players under 500 masterpoints.
To reserve a seat in any of the games, use this link and fill in the Google form. You'll get a confirmation from RSVPBridge when the seat is booked.
https://forms.gle/fzEBbB9KQiJwAsSw6