Note: Club qualifying is not required for the District Six GNT 2022-2023 cycle.
See your GNT 2021-2022 Results
1-Where will the 2022-2023 Event be played?
The Open/Championship Flight competition will be face-to-face in Kensington, MD (Capitol View-Homewood Park) the first weekend and at the NVBA Sectional at the Fairfax, VA Elks Lodge the second weekend (Feb. 18-19, 2023).
We are going to play the Flight A (0-6000), Flight B (0-2500) and Flight C (NLM 0-500) competition online on www.bridgebase.com (BBO). See dates for these events on the website homepage.
2- How does the event work?
For the Open flight, put together four to six players on your team and
pre-register by December 30, 2022. They must be District Six members and be flight eligible. Pre-registration instructions are on the DistrictSix.org website home page.
For the Flight A, Flight B and Flight C competition, pre-registration will take care of your entry. Pre-registration instructions are on the DistrictSix.org website home page. Deadline for pre-registration is January 26, 2023. Then, as a player, all you need to do for the first weekend’s competition is get on the BBO platform. Then you will be asked to join a table.
3- How does the GNT work compared to a BBO Club Game?
First, the District will collect the entry fee. Your team Captain will collect from his team, and pay the District for the first Saturday’s two sessions. There will be no money paid to BBO, like you would in a Club game. If you progress to the next round, you will be asked to send payment to the District 6 Treasurer.
4-What will be the team Captain’s job?
To pre-register the team by the deadline, which means sending a check for the total amount of the entry fee ($112.00) and all information requested in the advertising to Lucy McCoy, 3353 Taleen Ct., Annandale, VA 22003.
Information needed is: the Flight you are registering to play in, the Team Captain’s name and contact information (phone and email), and the ACBL numbers and the BBO names of all team members.
5- In the past, District 6 had split sites for the Flight B and Flight C. Why are you not having them this year?
We have had split sites in the past to cut down on the amount of traveling players had to do on the first weekend. The advantage of playing online is that no one has to travel. Therefore, all teams within their Flight will enter one event.
To play, all you need to do is log in to www.bridgebase.com 7-10 minutes early, then hit join/accept for the table where you are invited to play.
6-What are some other good features of using the BBO platform?
After your session is over with BBO, if you look under History, there is a complete hand record of every board played. You can also see what happened at your teammates’ table and see a card by card and bid by bid replay of all the hands.
In addition, BBO will make sure you cannot revoke, mis-sort your hand or lead out of turn.
7-What will be the format of the various Flights?
The format on the first day depends on the size of the various events.
We averaged about 14 teams in each Flight in past years between all the sites. Assuming we have the same size this year, the following is the format we are currently thinking about. Remember everything is tentative; there is a lot we need to reconcile with playing online, and planning for the event is still a work in progress.
We are planning on running the similar format of previous years. In the Flight B and Flight C we ran a Swiss; BBO does not do well with Swiss Teams, so we’ll put teams in two Round Robin leagues. We will qualify around 60-65% of the teams to the second day. Every team is guaranteed to play two sessions the first day. From there on, we play a combination of Round Robins or Knockouts (KO).
For the Flight A (0-6000), we are planning on running the same event as in previous years. It will be an all-day Round Robin; then move into Knockout matches.
In the Open Flight, we will play an all-day KO with a combination of two- and three-way matches. The three-ways qualify two teams. Every team will play two sessions the first day.
8- What about online security?
We expect all players to follow ACBL rules concerning electronic devices. We will allow No kibitzing; that will stop the temptation of self-kibitzing. We will have a place to report suspicious behavior.
9-Why so much time between the pre-registration date and game day?
We try to run an organized event that starts on time. Pre-registration gives the Chief Director and organizers time to set up the movements and to know the amount of Directors to hire. We want to come to the best numbers for the movements we are running. Our events are well organized with few exceptions and start on time.
10- If I am a team Captain what should I emphasize to my team?
Be online at least seven minutes before game time. Do not be late. Make sure to always have a partnership Convention Card posted online. This is an item we will be enforcing with penalties.
11-What if I am not used to playing on BBO?
Log in to BBO; it is a user-friendly website, and you can practice there at no cost.
Find a friend, teammate or partner to practice with you on BBO in the Casual area for free or in BBO games that award masterpoints in the Competitive area, for which you need to set up an account to purchase $BB.
12-Why does District Six charge $112/team/day for an online event?
–There are no qualifier games this year, so there is no income from the many district-wide GNT club qualifiers and all Unit game GNT club qualifiers. Also, there have not been sectional tournaments for some time, so there is no income from grassroots support events and surcharges at our sectionals.
–Most importantly, the District pays for the trips to the NABC finals with income from the event. Trip costs have gone up.