The NABC Summer Nationals – Grand National Teams

BRIAN GLUBOK

Brian is a highly accomplished American bridge player hailing from New York City. Glubok, an alumnus of Amherst College, has consistently excelled in North American Bridge Championships, securing numerous titles, including wins in the Jacoby Open Swiss Teams, Reisinger, and Spingold events. In addition to his domestic success, Glubok came close to victory in the World Mixed Pairs Championship in 2010, finishing as the runner-up.

Brian will be writing for IMP about the Summer NABC in Minneapolis. This is the second of the series.

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For details about the Summer NABC in Minneapolis, look here.

Hello Bridge Players!

Play has just gotten underway here in Minneapolis, around 90 teams from around the country gathered to represent the 25 different districts in the national final of the Grand National Teams.

The “GNT” once had great prestige, and great attendance – when this event was launchd, in the early 70’s, there was the high-minded notion that “Now every member, even those who don’t have the means to travel to NABC’s, will have the chance to compete for a national title – truly a grass-roots championship!

In the very early years, winning the GNT even came with a berth in the Team Trials attached, as the prize. Quite appealing, in an era when only a very small group, winners of the Spingold, Vanderbilt, or Reisinger, might qualify to play off in the Trials to be the US representative.

Fast forward fifty years, and now:
Still a great event, but, for most districts:
Very small attendance in the Championship Flight – in the modern era, players want to play where they have a good chance to win – “Masterpoint Equity” trumps other considerations. So while ten or more teams might contest Flights A, B, and C – there are probably no districts where that many teams enter the Open Flight.

Yes, the stipend for winning teams, in each of the four flights, is more than trivial, but only barely – $700 per player, last I checked. Enough to offset some of your costs if you’re going anyway, but not really enough to fully cover your expenses (airfare, hotel, meals) otherwise. 

Even that $700 isn’t guaranteed – I think it is up to each district whether they want to fund their representatives at all, and if so, for how much. The event throws off very little in sanction fees – some districts have only three or four teams in the Championship Flight, some one or two, some none at all.   Overall, today it’s a far cry from the dozens of teams that once competed in many districts – we had well over a hundred in NY – contesting the “Club Stage”, “Unit Stage”, “District Stage”, “Zonal Stage”, and then, ultimately eight finalists playing three days of KO here at the summer nationals.

Times change, and maybe it’s progress – Billy Cohen and I had this conversation this morning, in the Sheraton lobby, perhaps a half hour before play began:

Billy (to SoCal Resident): You’re here for the GNT’s? 

SoCal Res: Yes, we won Flight A…. 

Me: Nice going! You had to beat Mitch and Ifti to win the District? 

SoCal Guy: Oh, no – I said “Flight A”  Me: Right, I forgot – ‘Flight A’, not the ‘Championship Flight’. Greatest piece of marketing ever (naming the second flight, open only to players with under 5000 (now 6,000) masterpoints, ‘Flight A’.

SoCal Guy: Isn’t that what the League is all about now, anyway? Marketing?

*****

We may not have invented cynicism here in America, but – we’re pretty good at it!

I’ll report best I can, as results come in.
 

That’s all for now – 

Signed,

IMP’s Man in America,

Glubok