CONDITIONS OF CONTEST

The basic Conditions of Contest for the North American Pairs are established by the ACBL. Copies of the ACBL Conditions have been posted on the ACBL website and mailed to those clubs and Unit Co-ordinators requesting a copy.

The ACBL Conditions cover such matters as Flight Eligibility, Club and Unit Level Participation, Conventions and Substitutes.

The NAP’s are divided into three flights as follows:

Flight A - Open to any District 4 Player

Flight B - Players with less than 2000 masterpoints as of the ACBL 2009 June masterpoint cycle (Points on May 6^th)

Flight C - Players who are Non-Life Masters with fewer than 500 masterpoints as of the ACBL 2009 June masterpoint cycle

Qualification at the Club level covers three months: June, July and August. To participate in the District finals in any Flight, players must have qualified at the Club level for that Flight or a higher Flight.

District 4 NAP Conditions of Contest

Flight A

1. The Flight A District finals will be a two day, four session, qualifying event held at the West End Youth Center in Allentown on October 17 and 18, 2009.

2. The first two sessions in Flight A will be play-through on Saturday, with the number of pairs qualifying to play on Sunday based upon the number of entrants with the carry over to be determined in accordance with standard ACBL guidelines.

3. The standings in Flight A will be based on the rankings achieved, with the three highest finishers representing the District.

Flight B

4. The Board has again approved a split site qualification for Flight B. On Saturday, October 24^th a Flight B District Final will be held (a) at the Lakeville Fire Department Banquet Hall in Lakeville (near Rochester), New York, and (b) in a stand alone game to be held at the Bridge Studio in Wilmington, Delaware.

5. The Flight B Final at each location will be a two session play-through event with preduplicated boards. If the ACBL directors at both sites can, without undue difficulty, communicate with each other, there will be across-the-field matchpointing. In the event across-the-field matchpointing cannot be easily accommodated, then the field will be scored separately at each site with the scores converted to percentages.

6. In this split site event, the District 4 winners will be determined as follows. When both sites have 12+ tables of qualified pairs, then 1^st place and 2^nd place will be awarded to the pairs with the highest percentage scores. If the 1^st and 2^nd place finishers played at the same site, then the 3^rd place District winner will be the highest percentage score at the other site; otherwise the 3^rd place District winner will be the pair with the third highest percentage score irrespective of site. If one site has 12+ tables and the other less than 12 tables, then 1^st place comes from the larger site, 2^nd place from the smaller site, and 3^rd place from the larger site. If neither site has 12 tables, then the same method of determining winners will be used as when both sites have 12+ tables.

Flight C

7. Flight C District Final will be conducted along the lines of a District StaC in the same manner as the last two years.

8. The Flight C Final will be held on Saturday, October 17, 2009. Any entity, club or unit in District 4 may participate but must notify the District 4 Flight C Co-ordinators (Craig Robinson or Bill Bauer) at least 2 weeks in advance of their intention in order to receive appropriate sanctions.

9. The Flight C Final at each location will be a two session play-through event with the standings at each location determined by the percentage rank on the total number of boards played. There will not be across-the-field scoring.

10. The starting times of each session will be fixed within reasonable limits by the District 4 Flight C Co-ordinators in order to accommodate the use of pre-duplicated hands at each location.

11. Just as in a StaC, the District 4 winners will be the pairs with the highest percentage scores regardless of the location at which they played. The co-ordinating Director will be an ACBL TD just as in the case of the StaC.

Each participating Club will be assessed a $10.00 per table per session sanction fee (with $7.00 going to the ACBL and $3.00 going to the District).

General Conditions

12. In order to be considered a valid competition, there must be a minimum of five full tables in play in the Flight at that location. Fewer than five tables are not counted.

13. Players in Flight B may participate in either the Flight A final or the Flight C final on October 17, 2009, if they qualified for participation in that Flight at the Club level.

14. Should a qualifying pair in the District final find they are unable to compete in the National ACBL finals in Reno, Nevada, they will be replaced by the next highest percentage finisher in their Flight. This process will repeat itself until the District has selected three qualifying pairs in each Flight able to attend the Nationals.

15. Ties which occur in any Flight at any location will be broken based upon criteria established by the ACBL.

16. Starting times at each location will be determined by the local Tournament Chairman to insure the conclusion of the event at an appropriate time. Starting times may not necessarily be the same as those set for the Sectional Tournament taking place at the location.

a. The Flight A starting times on Saturday, October 17^th, will be 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. for the first two sessions unless those starting times would seriously inconvenience the Sectional or be in conflict with ACBL regulations.

17. First-place District winners in each Flight will receive (from ACBL) $700.00 per person subsidy (in lieu of the lodging and airfare subsidy of prior years) to attend the 2010 Spring NABC in Reno. Each person receiving the subsidy must attend and play in the NABC finals. Second- place pairs will receive $300.00 per person subsidy (in lieu of the airfare subsidy of prior years). Third-place pairs are invited to participate in Reno and, although not receiving any subsidy from the ACBL, the District will pay $100.00 per person. The ACBL will waive all entry fees for the NABC finals in Reno.

18. The ACBL NAP Finals will be held in Reno:

Flight A, Wednesday – Thursday, March 10 – 11, 2010.

Flights B and C, Saturday – Sunday, March 20 – 21, 2010.