[SBU Board] KO Sectional Post Mortem

[Eric Sieg]

Some thoughts:

1) Didn't understand the late start times on Saturday/Sunday. Its 
consistent with Friday I guess, but not sure it makes sense to start 
that late on the weekend.

2) Looking through attendance stuff, our table count was way down but it 
wasn't equal. Some big differences were:

A: KO attendance dropped from 13 in the open and 31 total to 10 in the 
open and 26 total. If we lose a few more teams in the open, we might not 
hit the necessary 9 for a 4 session event.
B: No 0-200 game on Saturday seemed to cost around 3 tables. Last year 
we had 14 and 5 for the 200 and 750 respectively, this year just 16 for 
the combined 750.
C: Sunday pair attendance got crushed. The open dropped from 22 to 19 
but the 750 games dropped from 17 to 9 in the afternoon and 9 to 5 in 
the evening (last year it was 2000 in the evening instead of 750).
D: Both Swiss and BAM were down on Monday, the Swiss was down 10% and 
the BAM down 20%

In some places attendance was fine. Friday pairs jumped in total table 
count, especially in the evening and Saturday evening was up as well.

Thoughts: I wonder if having an NLM sectional so recently hurt the 
Sunday 750 attendance? Presumably the weather also had a big impact, 
every time I looked outside I was sad about being indoors on such an 
amazing day. People who got knocked out of the KOs might have just 
decided to go enjoy it rather than play bridge. If I didn't have 
commitments to play and was a lot less addicted to bridge than I am, I 
might have skipped on the tournament to go kayaking or something similar 
outdoors.

BAM Teams: I think I was one of the players who vehemently objected when 
DT came to our table asking for opinions. At the time, I thought 
everyone was getting polled and so I had my "feelings as a player" hat 
on where I really wanted to play 60 boards. I was excited when they 
decided to keep the movement at 60 because that seemed more appropriate 
and only seemed like a few more boards than normal (60 instead of 54 or 
56). However, as the day went on it became clear that not everyone was 
polled and DT was probably just polling either board members or select 
people. Had I known only a few were getting asked, I would have put my 
SBU board member hat on and been a lot more reasoned about it. So my 
apologies to DT and to others for answering as a player rather than as a 
board member when asked.

As for other stuff with the BAM: we initially had a super awkward 
number, 12, which meant there were 11 other teams which would be 33 or 
22 boards at a time or a weird movement. Whereas adding 1 more team 
would have made it a "perfect" movement of playing 24 boards against all 
other teams twice. The team that won the NAP Bs 
(pesce/jarvis/ruprecht/galer) were asked if they were interested in 
moving up to do the movement for a few reasons, including the fact that 
at least 1 of their team members (Adam) loved BAM and considered it his 
favorite event. Initially they did, however later a team realized they 
didn't want to be in the BAM and dropped so the team that moved up to 
the BAM moved back down to the Swiss to leave it at 11 teams which is 
less awkward than 12. The only reason any asking occurred was to fix the 
super awkward size of 12, not to "increase BAM attendance".

For other Monday events: One big issue with fast pairs is that all the 
Swiss tables wouldn't count towards masterpoint awards so the reward is 
really tiny. Its also fairly commonly available at regionals and even 
with regionals it doesn't usually pull many players. For example the 
Portland regional fast pairs only pulled 12.5 tables which is barely 
enough for a single section and this was at a regional. In comparison, 
the Swiss had 83 tables (37 AX and then a bunch of bracketed) and 
Victoria had almost identical numbers. Anyway, probably a bigger subject 
than a single post mortem, but was responding now since the subject was 
brought up. It certainly seems likely that we'll have a deeper 
discussion about the May sectional schedule at some point before next 
year. Unusual events are really nice so I also wonder what other teams 
events we might be able to do in the future that might get people 
excited rather than just defaulting to the usual Swiss. Maybe a BAM 
Swiss, which involves more frequent comparisons and has a lot fewer 
issues with awkward sizes?

Other thoughts: Grassroots day landing on the start of the KOs seems 
awkward since it doesn't do any good for those in the KOs. Winning the 4 
session open KO was worth 20 masterpoints this year whereas winning the 
2 session pairs on grassroots day was worth 32 in January and 2nd was 
worth 24.10. I wonder if we can move things around a bit to make it 
possible to benefit from grassroots day and still play the KO. Maybe 
make Friday grassroots day? There were certainly a lot more people 
playing pairs on Friday than on Saturday or Sunday.

Eric

Tim White wrote:
>
> Looking to the co-chairs (in this case David and Larry) to lead the 
> post mortem.  Grist for the mill from my standpoint…
>
> Heard many negative comments about the 1:30 and 7:00 Saturday & Sunday 
> session start times.   In 2015 and 2016 these sessions started at 1:00 
> and 6:30.  I don’t recall that the board addressed changing to the 
> later start times nor was this picked up on during flyer review.  
> Perhaps it was a copy & paste artifact that none of us noticed.  Mary 
> Wondra said the later times caused her to miss the last ferry of the 
> evening back home to the San Juan Islands.
>
> Saturday afternoon this year a 0-750 pairs game was held (drew 16.0 
> tables) in lieu of the 0-200 game that had been held in this slot in 
> prior years.  Several negative comments about dropping the 0-200 game 
> and apparently some 0-200 pairs left the site without playing when 
> they learned the 199er game they were hopeful of playing in was not 
> taking place.  Looking back at data on the ACBL website, the 2015 
> Saturday afternoon 0-200 event apparently drew 9.0 tables.  The 2016 
> Saturday afternoon 0-200 pairs game drew 14.0 tables.  It’s never good 
> when people come to play and leave disappointed when the event they’d 
> hoped to play isn’t offered.
>
> BAM Teams.  There’s a lot to address with this one.  A small core 
> group is passionate about this event.  Some players entering the BAM 
> tried to recruit players entering the Swiss to move over to play in 
> the BAM – I don’t know if any actually switched to the BAM.  BAM is a 
> relatively complex movement – the attempt to recruit Swiss players to 
> switch might have been motivated by improving the BAM movement (though 
> I don’t know that 12 versus 11 teams would have helped or hurt with 
> this) or perhaps it was motivated simply to increase BAM attendance.   
> BAM attendance has steadily and substantially declined in recent 
> years:  11 teams in 2017; 15 teams in 2016; 16 teams in 2015; 19 teams 
> in 2014; 19 teams in 2013; 21 teams in 2012.  Apparently there was 
> controversy over the number of boards played in the BAM event.  With 
> ten rounds, the decision was made to play 3 boards a round (30 boards 
> total) in the morning session and then there was the possibility of 
> either 2 or 3 boards a round (either 20 or 30 boards) in the second 
> session.  The tournament chair and DiC made a reasoned decision to 
> have 20 boards in the second session (50 boards total for the event).  
> Apparently someone or some number of players vehemently objected to 50 
> boards total and as a result the second session was changed to 30 
> boards for a 60-board event.  Typically, the BAM ran 45 or so minutes 
> longer than the Swiss and it again caused a significant delay in tear 
> down, as well as an additional tear down burden on Swiss players and 
> non-playing volunteers who were waiting in the wings for the 
> completion of an extended, lightly-attended event.  I understand at 
> least two BAM teams said they will not play the event again if there 
> is the possibility it could run to 60 boards.  I also heard there were 
> players with >2500 points including at least one very experienced and 
> high level player (ineligible for the Swiss) who would have far 
> preferred to play Swiss than BAM.   I heard suggestions that it’s well 
> past time to try a different complimentary event to the Swiss teams at 
> the KO sectional and that Fast Pairs would be a fun and appropriate 
> format to give a try.  Fast pairs would also offer the benefits of 
> allowing players who have a ferry to catch (or a lengthy drive) to 
> depart earlier and accelerating tear down rather than delaying it.
>
> Portable sound system.  Again, suggestions were made that the unit 
> purchase a portable sound system so beginning-of-session and other 
> announcements can be better heard by all.  For reference, Forest Ridge 
> has a microphone and speaker system; Bothell has a speaker system but 
> more often than not it is non-functional.  Renae and I will try to 
> gather some info on some potential systems; if others have experience 
> or ideas on this please being them forward.
>
> Tim
>
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