Handicaps for KOs stop at 5000 masterpoints. That is, all teams that average 5000 or more MPs get the same handicap.
Flight B is going to move to 0-1500 in February.
We shall stratify Flight A of Flighted Swisses at 0-5000 and 0-unlimited, starting in August 1998.
We are maintaining our junior discount, but adding a 2 for 1 special. For each junior discounted session one purchases, the next one is free. That means that a two-session championship event will cost $6. This is only available once per person per tournament.
We shall only score across sections for Flight A events. A director complained enough about scoring across sections that we have stopped doing it. If you want this to return, you have to complain.
It produces better statistical matchpoint results. In order for the variance of a matchpointing scheme to settle down, scoring must be done over at least two sections. More than that has little effect, according to David Grabiner.
It produces many more gold points for the players. If a game is scored across N sections, then the top N pairs in each direction get gold points. Rodger Harbin ran an example 90 table game for me and we found that everyone got at least just about as many gold points as they would have for winning a single section if they came in the top N. All except for the last gold placing got many more gold points, sometimes 8 or 10 total.
It takes a little longer to score and score corrections cause the entire field to have to be rerun. Most of the time, the differences are minute, since one score correction generally means only a tiny change in other scores, but it still takes time to get your final score. Sometimes the total delay is as much as 20 minutes, but normally it is pretty small.
It doesn't affect section top awards. 2nd in a section scored across two sections still wins a prize.
When you compare results with friends in other sections, you have a common basis for comparison. This is much more fun during dinner breaks.
Scores are much larger; no more 156 average. To interpret your score, you need to look at the percentage result. Here's a translation:
| 50% | 156 |
| 55% | 171.5 |
| 60% | 187 |
| 65% | 203 |
| 70% | 218 |
Midchart conventions for which the ACBL publishes defenses will be allowed in the top flight of KOs only, and then only if all teams in that match average 3000 masterpoints. All other events are GCC.
KO matches lengths will be mandated to be 24 boards for all morning KOs and for the first two rounds of all other KOs. The semifinals and finals of all non-morning KOs are 28 boards. Compact KOs are 12-board matches. The reason for the asymmetry is that round-robins don't work well with 26 or 28 boards, because some players seem to get confused when strange numbers of boards are on the table. I'm not kidding.
If a KO bracket has a range in average masterpoint holdings of the teams of a factor of ten or more and the difference in these holdings is at least 750 masterpoints, then the bracket will be handicapped using the standard ACBL formula.
Playbacks will be allowed in KO events.
Midchart defenses to 1NT openings and overcalls are allowed.