[tgphelps]

I'm a sub-100-MP player, but I'm still curious how knockouts are handled at the big national tournaments. In my fantasies, I may play in one in the distant future.

I recently read that those events are open to anyone. Yet, ACBL needs to quickly get the number of teams down to 64 or 32, since I understand that matches are 64 boards and take all day. No doubt people who have played in those events read this forum, and can tell me about this. My questions are:

1. How many teams typically enter the Vanderbilt and Spingold? (I think I'm using those terms correctly.)
2. How many teams are left when they start real, all-day matches? 64 or 32, I'm guessing.
3. If there are more teams than this number, and I suppose that's a common occurrence, How do they get down to the 64 or 32 teams?
4. Are good teams seeded? If so, what determines the seeding?

[mike777]

Yes good teams are seeded. Actually all teams are seeded. If 70 or 80 teams you may be near the bottom number, but all teams are seeded one through last number..

Good luck and ENJOY


If more than 64, they may play some three way matches to get number down to 64.

Yes you may enter a team. Anyone can..

.

[awm]

I assume you mean events like the Spingold and Vanderbilt. They are seeded. Seeding points are mostly for placing in comparable events in the preceding few years, with some seeding points also for masterpoints and some granted rather arbitrarily to foreign players (who may not have participated in so many ACBL events).

The first day of these events typically has some things going on other than head-to-head matches. Exactly what happens depends on the number of entries but typically includes:

1. Byes for some number of top teams.
2. Four-way matches, where you play one team for 30 boards and the winners advance, then the two losers play and the winner advances and loser is out.

Usually the number of entries is more than 64 but less than 128, so the goal is to get down to 64 for day two, from which point it's all head-to-head.

[tgphelps]

Thank you for the detailed answer. I think I understand.

[mike777]

Btw the USA team trials are open to all Americans or non citizens who meet the Bridge residency requirements...


Good luck

[mycroft]

Just to be clear - the NABC runs KO matches that work just like bracketed KO matches in regionals - grab MP values (or equivalent for foreigners), add 'em up, break into brackets of 11-16 teams, (up to) 4 24 board matches against one team on a "win, continue; lose, find another event" basis.

But that's not what you're talking about; you're talking about the NABC+ prestige events (and their NABC (no +), MP limited versions). And what AWM says applies (except it's not just byes and 4-ways, there are also some head-to-heads day 1 depending on the numbers). There can also be a "bye swiss" available for those teams with byes day 1 (they have to pay for the day anyway :-) if there are enough bye teams.

Just also to be clear, there haven't been 3-way matches(*) in the prestige KOs for "ever" due to the possibility of dumping (the "obvious winner" in the three teams playing in such a way as to KO the stronger of the other two teams either for "friendship" reasons or to weaken the full field). Many years ago, they went to a 4-qualify-1 scheme, where the medium teams would play the bottom teams for one session; winners to play the other winner to qualify for day 2.

That was considered "not a fun event" (as the losers only got to play one session, against "middling" teams) and "not what players expected from full-day, seeded KOs". I was, unfortunately, in either the last or the next-to-last edition, and as the 129th seed, lost to the 6xth and was out in one morning. I could have got that in a regional KO :-).

So they changed to the current format, where it's a 4-qualify-3. You still could be playing only one session the first day - but that's because you won and can rest up for day 2, not because you're out. Of course, the two times I was in the event after this, I "qualified for" the last or last-but-one of the head-to-heads. We didn't make it to day 2 :-) but we got the chance to play Welland-Willinken/Levin-Weinstein for 64 boards and Kamil-Coren and the Egyptians for 60 - which is what we signed up for!

Now in the last few years (oddly enough, exactly *after* my last entry - why am I so lucky?) they decided that the day 1 dead money shouldn't be forced to choose between an event they have a chance in, and a chance to play "real bridge"; so they start the minis (0-6000 and 0-2500 Spingold) the day *after* the big event instead of the same day.

If you're interested in the grotty details (and you can guess whether I am :-), they are available on the ACBL Conditions of Contest site:

• How the brackets are set (not *just* seeding points; there are "shuffled groups" 3-4, 5-8, and so on) are in the Bracket section of the Vanderbilt and Spingold CoC
  
• How Seeding points are assigned is in Appendix B
  
• How N teams go down to 2^n teams day 1 is in Appendix C (this one will make your eyes bleed).

Note also that the "weeklong KO" in the Fall Nationals (where the "Spingold" equivalent is the Reisinger B-A-M, which is a really different event) does things very differently - and you may like this one more. The Soloway Team event starts with two days of Swiss - so you will get to play the "experts", and the better you do, the longer you play them, but if you fall into the "dead money" half of the field, you'll start playing other dead money; qualifying 32 (exactly) teams for a seeded KO for the rest of the week (where seeding points are 25% of your seeding rank, your qualification rank in the Swiss being 75%).

(*)Okay, in the very rare cases that there are 2^n+1 or +2 teams, they'll run one (or two) 3-qualify 1(s), but as the conditions say, "the staff shall seek withdrawals" to get out of this.

[Stephen Tu]

mycroft, on 2025-October-29, 11:07, said:

Just to be clear - the NABC runs KO matches that work just like bracketed KO matches in regionals - grab MP values (or equivalent for foreigners), add 'em up, break into brackets of 11-16 teams, (up to) 4 24 board matches against one team on a "win, continue; lose, find another event" basis.

Make it "used to run regional KO events" during NABCs. These have died as far as I can see, now it seems the preferred regional team offering is only bracketed round robins, sometimes round robins combined with a top-flight Swiss. (Bracketed round robins break teams into groups of 7-9 teams and you just play everyone in your bracket).


So the only knockouts you'll find at NABCs these days are the big super-prestigious NABC+ events, limited (< 10000, < 6000, <3000, etc.) GNT, "mini-Spingold" and similar NABC events, and maybe college/youth KO events.

[mycroft]

I see, for SF. Odd. There's mini-soloways next spring on st Louis, though.

Guess there aren't enough brackets in most regionals now to get people any experience, so they won't enter them in nabcs any more.

Penticton or gatlinburg I guess.

[Stephen Tu]

mycroft, on 2025-October-29, 12:26, said:

I see, for SF. Odd. There's mini-soloways next spring on st Louis, though.

Guess there aren't enough brackets in most regionals now to get people any experience, so they won't enter them in nabcs any more.

Penticton or gatlinburg I guess.

Not odd for SF, normal now. It's St. Louis that is odd for offering mini-soloways. I can't remember any post-pandemic NABC that offered regional KOs of any type and I've been to a lot of them.

KOs are dead in regionals in my area also. I think people prefer committing to only one day for teams not two, don't want to be knocked off into afternoon consolation events, want to be guaranteed the whole day even if losing early. Before, KOs were popular for people chasing their gold for LM, but now Gold Rush pairs pays decently without having to find decent teammates. Else the bracketed round robins.

[barmar]

I also miss the Compact Knockouts that were common at NABCs pre-pandemic. The normal schedule was that every other day a 2-day KO would start, and the day after would have either a Compact KO or Swiss Teams for the teams that didn't survive the first day of the KO.

Now it's just Swiss Teams and/or Bracketed RR every day.

[mycroft]

For that one, blame masterpoints. When Compacts were first put in, the consolation route had a reasonable MP award. Then it got changed (don't know how, don't know why) and the result was that winning the consolation basically scored less than the 3 matches you won, and definitely less than taking your match win in the first half and pushing cards in the one-session Swiss. ISTR for a bracket that paid 6.x to win, the consolation winner would get 0.6. It was crazy.

So the Compacts became "win the first match and play, lose the first match and you're playing a 6-match Swiss, but the first two are against the same pair, and they don't count". After a while, we wouldn't run the consolation because nobody wanted to play in it when they could play the Swiss.

But it was a way to play KOs with 2 sessions, so it stuck around. I still have my notes on how to space (assign the second half of) a Compact KO; and I almost understand it. But with Bracketed RR doing the same thing (and with 3 brackets for every 2 of a Compact, shh), it was just a better event to run (for everybody).

I, too, miss the compacts. But with the consolation nerfed, even I felt like I paid a 24 board entry fee to play 12 boards "half" the time.