[SBU Board] Kent Sectional

[Tim White]

Paul,

On behalf of all Seattle Unit Board members, thank you for your feedback.  The Board appreciates and values all feedback on tournaments as well as on other matters.  For each tournament we review what went well and not so well.  Our ultimate aim is to serve unit membership, and the game of bridge at large, as best we can.  The entire Board will continue to devote much of its time and effort in research, review, discussion, decision-making and planning related to past and future tournament locations, dates, session start times and session events.  Your input helps in this process.

Thanks again,
Tim


On May 30, 2015, at 6:26 PM, pgevanoff at comcast.net wrote:

> I'm not sure who makes the decision regarding the location of the Seattle Unit's sectional tournaments, so I thought I would address this to all of you.
>  
> Congratulations on a well-run Sectional in Kent last weekend.  I especially wanted to thank you for holding this tournament in Kent.  I have attended every Sectional in Unit 446 since I started playing bridge two years ago, and this was my favorite.  OK, maybe I'm just a little bit biased since I actually live in Kent, and I really appreciated being able to get to the venue in 10 minutes.  But I also liked this location because it was the only Sectional that had restaurants that were within walking distance (even for us senior citizens).  I liked the new format with a shorter break between sessions, and the wide variety of nearby restaurants makes it easier for players to get dinner quickly and get back in time for the evening session.  We even had time for a sit-down lunch at a restaurant on Monday during the short break in the Swiss Teams event.
>  
> I know attendance was down 7% from last year's Knockout Sectional, but I doubt that it had anything to do with the location.  Attendance has been sliding at all five Sectionals in the Seattle Unit for the past 3 years, with an average decline of 9% per year, so a decline of only 7% is actually better than average.
>  
> I hope we will continue to have other Sectionals at this location, or at least in the general South Sound area.  I don't know what the geographical distribution of ACBL members in the Seattle Unit is, but if even 1/5 of the members live south of I-90, it would seem reasonable to hold 1/5 of the Sectionals somewhere in the south end (i.e., one per year).  I know there are a number of other factors that go into the decision regarding venue, but hopefully the lower costs associated with the Kent venue, the ample parking, and the proximity of good restaurants will allow us to have another Sectional at this location sometime in the near future.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.celestial.com/pipermail/sbuboard/attachments/20150530/0df741bb/attachment.html>