[ San Antonio 1999 ] [ Boston 1999 ] [ Cincinatti 2000 ] [ Anaheim Summer 2000 ]

Again the attendance at Boston surprised management. We had over 1,000 tables above projection. The committee provided excellent hospitality and the weatherman provided unseasonably warm weather for the sightseers. For those of you who haven’t been to Boston, it’s very like Seattle without the mountains.

At the fall meetings there are many appointments and elections:

Glenn Smith, District 8, was elected by acclamation to the office of ACBL President for a one-year term beginning January 1, 2000.

Jim Kirkham, District 22, was elected as the first ACBL Vice-President.

Nadine Wood, District 6, was elected, and Joan Gerard, District 3, reelected as WBF representatives for a three-year term beginning January 1, 2000.

Chip Martel will be the Honorary Member of the Year.

Judy Prescott, was elected President of the Education Foundation with Jonathan Steinberg, Vice President and Eugene Kales, Treasurer.

Eric Kokish, Norman Kay and Mary Jane Farrell have been elected as representatives to the Bridge Hall of Fame Nominating Committee for a three year term.

Joan Weinrott is received as the 1999 Goodwill Member of the Year.

Bobby Wolff, Peggy Sutherlin and Ron Gerard were appointed to the Laws Commission for the term January 1, 2000 through December 31, 2004.

The 2000 budget, as presented to the finance committee showing $600,000 in red ink, on top of the $380,000 prox. loss projected for 1999, appeared significant. In an analysis of full costing, it was determined that the tournament division is not paying for itself. Therefore, the BOD adopted the following increases:

1. Regional, Sectional and StaC Fess will increase from $3.70/2.60/2.00 respectively to $4.30/3.00/2.30 per session effective March 1, 2000.
2. NABC Entry fees will increase $1. Per session beginning Spring 2000 in Cinncinnati.
3. Tournament Director session fee will increase an additional 2.5% effective March 1, 2000.
4. Tournament supply fee will increase from $.75 per table to $.85 per table effective March 1, 2000 (last change 1987).
5. Hand records fee will increase by $1.00 across the board (last change 1993).
6. Club Manager Exam fee will increase from $10.00 to $15.00 effective January 1, 2000 (last increased in the 70’s).
7. Director Study Packet will increase from $5.00 to $10.00 Effective January 1, 2000.

A proposed long-range pricing strategy for membership dues, club and tournament sanction fees and NABC entry fees was adopted. The theory is more frequent smaller increases rather than less frequent larger increases.

First year ACBL dues for players who have never belonged shall be $20.00 US.

Both the ACBL Bulletin and Better Bridge Magazine will be sent the first month and the member may indicate a preference. With no preference stated the ACBL Bulletin will be continued.

The pricing policy for Canadian renewal was: The prevailing exchange rate during the last five business days of July shall determine the exchange rate for membership dues for the succeeding calendar year. It has been changed to:

1. Protect the Canadian ACBL member from overpaying because the Canadian dollar strengthens.
2. Protect the ACBL from exchange losses because the Canadian dollar weakens.
3. Control the administrative burdens and costs changing dues renewal exchange rates too often.

The old procedure will be used for new members. The exchange rate for renewing members shall be that rate established for that year except that the exchange rate will be modified during a year under the following conditions:

Once each quarter, if the rate differs by 3 Canadian cents or more, the average exchange rate for that week shall become the rate used to bill renewing members. Management is encouraged to implement a rate based change rather than a date based change as soon as possible.

A long overdue look is being taken at the household membership fees. Hopefully we shall be taking action at the Spring meeting.

Tournaments will be charged the IRS allowable per diem as paid to the tournament director in the US. In Canada, tournament directors will be paid and tournaments will be charged the per diem allowed by the Treasury Board of Canada. Currently about $37.50 US. So a savings on our Canadian tournaments.

Start saving your money, the following sites have been approved for future NABC’s. Honolulu, Hawaii, Fall 2006; New York City, Summer 2004; San Francisco, Fall 2007. While more expensive than other tournaments, Management was able to obtain wonderful prices for these areas and it was felt that the membership would enjoy and support these sites.

NABC’s are expected to be profit centers. Within each two-year period, the financial goal is to have excess revenue from NABC’s reach or exceed $450,000 without consideration of indirect cost.

Management will continue the Appeals Process used in 1999 until further notice.

A two-day NABC Speedball Championship is authorized to be held, on an experimental basis, at the 2000 Summer NABC in Anaheim. Results of holding this event will be evaluated at the Fall meetings. The Speedball Championship will be held Thursday, with a two-session qualifying and Friday with a two-session final. Starting times will be 1 pm and 4:30 pm. Two board rounds will be 11 minutes in length and there will be TIGHT time monitoring. The General convention chart will be in effect for this event.

Management will create and issue recognition certificates to all first place overall winners and ties for first overall Nationally-rated events.

Byes in the Vanderbilt and Spingold will be eliminated.

There has been a new policy for frequent lateness or egregious slow play. Teams may lose seeding privileges, players may be benched on more than 4 man teams, the director may make charges to a disciplinary committee against a player or pair who is playing excessively slowly. This action should be considered especially with 4 person teams. Directors may curtail boards, if necessary, for the orderly progress of the event. In three or four-ways, when a segment is not completed although time has expired, the director shall remove boards . If one team is found responsible for the slowness, its opponents will be awarded the greater of 3 imps per board removed, or the imps its other-table result would normally earn.

There were several changes made to the convention charts, if you are interested in all the changes, please contact me.

After consideration of the unhappy members, all Section places will appear in the Daily Bulletin at each NABC.

ACBL will test and support a parent-coordinated child care program for l year at NABC’s.

Entry into masterpoint restricted and/or bracketed events at tournaments will be determined by the computer player files in use at the tournament site. Players may confirm their totals with directors on site.

At every Spring meeting, Management shall provide a comprehensive report on the status of on-line bridge and their issuing of masterpoints.

Management shall, for the Spring meeting, submit for board approval a plan that allows sanctioned clubs to hold open games with a minimum number of boards played of 12. Masterpoints and Sanction Fees will be at 50%. Effective with the next ACBLscore diskette mailing.

Non-playing directors are encouraged, but not required, for games having not more than one section of 17 tables or less for a special event.

A unit is allowed to elect its officers by vote of the general membership or the unit board.

All penalties for non compliance were removed from the membership retention program. Instead all units complying with the coop marketing program will received $3.75 per member for regular memberships and $3.00 for each Lifemaster service fee for the year 2000. The incentive of $6.00 for each member increase will be removed.

Basically whenever the WBF allocates three junior teams to Zone 2, two teams will go to the US and the third team will go to Bermuda, Canada, or Mexico.

In an effort to cut down on the cost of adequately representing the ACBL at the WBF, the following actions were taken:

1. A proposal to reduce the number of WBF Representative from five to two failed.
2. The ACBL BOD requests that the WBF reschedule the Executive Council meetings in an effort to reduce cost to ACBL.
3. WBF Expense Reimbursement for per diem shall not exceed nine (9) days and payment for hotel expenses shall not exceed seven (7) nights. This is a considerable savings over the 17 to 21 days in the past.

A Senior USA Team Trials will be held to qualify a team to represent USA in the Senior Team Olympiad Championships to be held in Maastricht, August, 2000. Qualifications:

1. Open to all US players (in accordance with Appendix P) born on or before June 21, 1945.
2. Trials held June 21, to June 25, 2000 in conjunction with the Springfield, MO Regional.
3. Entry Fees $75.00 per session per team. Revenues from entries in excess of expenses from the trials will be used as partial subsidy to the winners.
4. The event will be a 5 day event with a 2 day preliminary qualifying.
5. Teams must register for the trials by May 15, 2000 and pay a non-refundable deposit of $300 that will be applied to the entry fees.
6. The entry fee to the Senior Team Olympiad will be paid from the International Fund.

If the WBF confirms in their meetings at Bermuda that there will be a Senior Team Olympiad Championship, a surcharge equal to the surcharge on NABC+ events will be added to the entry fees for NABC+ Senior Events.

The WBF in association with the Mind Sports Organization intends to conduct a tournament possibly on August 22-23, 2000 similar to the one that is traditionally held during the first week of June. There will be hand records, analysis, worldwide ranking and prizes provided. The benefit recipient of this tournament in North America will be the ACBL Education Foundation.

The sanction fee of $10.00 per table will be divided as follows:

$3.00 to WBF, $3.00 to ACBL to cover expenses of organizing event, $4.00 to ACBL
Education Foundation. Masterpoint awards will be similar to the Worldwide Simultaneous Bridge Championships.

The concept of a new Bridge Event is approved . This event will have sectional rating and will be effective as soon as conditions can be developed.

An ACBL-Wide Swiss Team Day is established with Management to select the week for the event. A sanctioned club is permitted to hold exactly one event. Any club or unit may hold a sectionally rated Swiss Team on its chosen day. The event may be one session, two one-session or one two-session event. Held on any day during the week, the event shall pay sectionally-rated black points.

The masterpoint limit for the NAOP Flight B is changed to 0-2000, starting with the 2000/2001 event.

Voting for all multi-seat positions that the ACBL BOD elect are amended as follows:

1. In the case of multi-seats with the same term, voters will vote for one person at a time.
2. In the case of multi-seats with different terms, the longest or longer term will be filled first.

Look for this to be revisited, after the Boston elections it is clear that we don’t have enough ballots to handle this procedure.

The BOD again reaffirmed their policy of not allowing BOD participation at NABC level of NAOP and GNT

Management shall implement email for all routine correspondence that currently is sent out with the packet mail to the BOD mailing list. Also, Management will study and implement if possible the same procedure for Field Representatives and Tournament Directors.

Effective December 1, 1999 Bridge Ventures, the cash prize arm of the ACBL, will cease activity. It was determined that tournament players were not significantly interested in cash prizes to warrant continuation.

In closing I would personally like to thank Val Covalciuc for a superb job of handling this BOD during a time of transition and wish Glenn Smith the best of luck in continuing to mold this group into a legislative body.

I look forward to seeing all of you this month in Richmond for the Greater Vancouver area regional.

Sincerely,

Barbara L. Nist, District #19
National Board of Directors

 Please contact us at daveg@d19.org.
02/11/2002