Posted 4:35 PM by Floyd

I'm looking at the flyer for the Monterey Regional, a bridge tournament to be held January 1-6. A fine player from San Francisco of my acquaintance named Sid Lorvan once wrote a letter to the ACBL Bulletin decrying the "disgusting proliferation of events at regionals". At the time I thought he was overreacting. Looking at this flyer, I have to agree with him.

This six-day tournament has no fewer than 25 events, with 52 total sessions. There are the usual knockouts, two-session pairs, side pairs, and Swiss teams. There are Senior Pairs, for people over 55 who want to forget their methods -- or what is trump. But there are also 9 a.m. Swiss teams that continue at 9 the next day. There are 9 a.m. side pair games. (You have to really love bridge to want to play a 9 a.m. side game.)

Opposite nearly every open stratified event is a 299er (stratified) event. The open event is already stratified. What is the point? Also, there is a side pair game! So you can play in a two-session stratified pairs that is not really good because all the pros are playing in the knockouts -- and on which Marge and Betty Guggenheim are scoring 44% for a section 2nd in C and 1.2 red points. Or you can play two 299er sessions, which are also stratified for the benefit of people who are even more terrible than a bad player with 150 masterpoints. Or you can play in the side game and play against whatever's left -- presumably prisoners in bright orange jackets who are laboring for the benefit of society.

All this would be acceptable if attendance were so high that a two-session event attracted an unwieldly number of competitors. But Monterey will probably draw 1000 to 1500 tables. This means that the average event is not even big enough to fill out two sections.

I have heard that 30 or 40 years ago, regionals had these events:

• One big knockout, seeded. No bracketing.
  
• Open pairs every day. No stratification.
  
• A two-session board-a-match on the last day of the tournament
  

That was it! If you weren't a good player you had little chance of winning a pairs event; if you weren't a great player you had no chance of winning the knockout or the BAM. I have no problem with a little bracketing or stratification here and there to help out the less skilled players. But 52 sessions in six days is ridiculous.

The regional schedule is at least accessible to players, unlike the Monterey Sectional. This sectional is held in May -- not the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Last year the Saturday pairs started at 10 a.m., which is a kind way to treat those players driving the one-and-a-half to two hours from the Bay Area. The knockouts were even worse: The first round was Thursday night, the second was Friday night, and the third was Saturday morning!

"Hi, this is Floyd. Do you want to form a team for the knockouts in Monterey?"

"Sounds like fun. When is it? Will I need to get a hotel room?"

"You'll need to stay Thursday night and Friday night ... and maybe take Thursday off work in addition to Friday, since we need to be there by 7:30 and traffic is terrible ... hello? hello?"