[SBU Board] ACBL BoD Material

Fri Feb 28 11:35:04 PST 2020

I agree with JC's conclusions. It seems easy to mix correlation with
causation.

But also, I think if we looked at the effect of age as it relates to
regionals, sectionals and club games, I think you'd find that regionals are
the most likely event to decrease by age. I would hypothesize that
regionals are the most competitive of the 3 forms and as players age
significantly beyond 70, their acuity levels tend to stabilize or decline,
yet they are placed in tougher and tougher regional events because their
raw number of masterpoints keep rising. I know that for me, the allure of
large events historically has been to play against people at my level, yet
bridge insists that the 80 y/o veteran must be placed at the same degree of
difficulty of events as the 35 y/o wunderkind. No wonder, they get sick of
coming and stick to their club game.

I am a big fan of using advanced metrics in sports. Currently, the closest
thing we have to advanced metrics in Bridge are things like the Power
Ratings system. We could keep the masterpoints system as it stands for an
awards metric, while using a system like Power Ratings for stratification,
bracketing and flighting of events. There are other half-measures worth
considering, like making exceptions for extreme cases, like Alzheimers or
offering more Seniors events, but I think the competitiveness issue is the
"Elephant in the Room" here.

On Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 10:43 AM JC Chupack <jc.chupack at gmail.com> wrote:

> First, Tim, thanks for sharing.  Always great to know what's going on
> "above".
>
> The data and assumptions in this presentation raise some flags for me. The
> presentation overindexes on aging membership as a root cause and yet shows
> no data that supports that it is specifically a loss of members aged 70+
> contributing to the decline.  Slide 4 asks several good questions, but the
> presentation focuses on the last bullet (age) only.
>
> Further, there's nationwide data that strongly contradicts the "older
> people travel less" hypothesis, so if that is a trend, it may be limited to
> the ACBL (which calls more into question the choices of locations or
> overall interest in bridge rather than being a behavior of the segment).
> Here's one example found with a quick Google:
> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-aging-changes-the-way-we-travel-2017-03-10,
> but the AARP and AAA have both published studies showing that travel as
> well as activity generally is up among retirees, not declining. The age of
> diminished activity is increasing as well. (Caveat: health care is a big
> factor...and if the US health care system continues to decline in
> availability and continues to increase in costs, that will be an impact on
> seniors most of all.)
>
> Slide 6 is deceptive in a vacuum as well. We know from Slide 6's data only
> that age is correlated with lower regional attendance. We don't know that
> age is the cause vs. factors like distance to regional, availability of
> alternative entertainment, etc.  It also doesn't show whether this has
> changed over time or was always the case.  If this distribution has always
> been true vs. being a recent change in behavior, then it is less likely to
> be the reason for the decline.  (And again, if it *is* a change in
> behavior, it's likely unique to the ACBL vs. being a common behavior of
> individuals 70+.)
>
> I'd like to see this committee provide data specifically on segmentation
> of the members that play once and don't return by gender, age, masterpoint
> level, and years of ACBL membership.  Who are the players that arrive and
> don't return?  Do those players continue to be active at the club level?
> Has the committee reached out to a sampling of the "didn't return" segment
> to ask why they came once and not again?  Even just having a phone call or
> email with 20-30 randomly selected "tournament abandoners" would likely
> yield valuable insight.
>
> I'll also note, IIRC, Seattle's unit has one of the lowest average ages in
> the ACBL (SFBay/Mountain View beats us, maybe a couple others). Yet, we are
> still seeing declines. If the same is true of other "low avg age" areas,
> that further supports that age is not the (sole) limiting factor.
>
> Has the committee looked into the number of tournaments and count of days
> of tournaments being offered in the decline period?  I believe there was
> some data pulled by the ACBL that showed that the number of days of
> tournaments offered in the past 5 years has increased sharply. That is,
> it's entirely possible that people simply have more tournament days to go
> to and thus a fixed size market is being spread more thinly across many
> days of play.  While no region may like it, it may benefit the financials
> of all tournaments if we simply offered fewer and/or shorter tournaments.
>
> tl;dr - If this is a starting point rather than an ending one, that's
> great..but if it was intended as a conclusion, I think it's missing the
> mark.
>
> --JC
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 1:03 PM Tim White <trkwhite at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Colleagues,
>>
>> I will be filling in for Julie Smith as D19 representative to ACBL Board
>> of Directors and various committee meetings in Columbus.  I have begun to
>> participate in preparatory teleconferences and have begun to receive
>> various pre-coordination materials.  Where I come cross something I feel
>> might be of interest or value to U446 board members, I will send it your
>> way.
>>
>> One of the committees Julie works on (as vice chair) is the Strategic
>> Tournament Task Force.  I am attaching a .ppt file I recently received
>> reporting on developments with this committee.
>>
>>  I understand Julie plans to share this file with the D19 board.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Tim
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
> --
> JC Chupack
> * Seattle ACBL Unit 446 <http://www.bridgeinseattle.org> President,
> Web/Email Admin, & Publicity Chair
> * Lead Technical Product Manager, Zulily <http://www.zulily.com>, Inc.
>
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