2022 Leavenworth Regional Start Page

FROM THE TOURNAMENT CHAIR:

Willkommen in Leavenworth. It is wonderful to be back playing real bridge after a two-and-a-half year absence.

In October 2019 my partner, Karen Madison, and I played 18 sessions at the regional in Tri-Cities, we finished up on Sunday evening, drove 460 miles to Whistler and started playing bridge on Monday. We played 16 sessions in Whistler. At the end we agreed that it had been a lot, we were ready for a break, and that we would probably be rested by Vancouver in April. Well, as you know, April never came and the break became much too long.

Anyway, it's wonderful that everyone has turned off their computers, put on pants [thank you very much] and come out to play in the first Face 2 Face regional in the District for over two years.

The next District regional is in Penticton in June. Encourage your friends to come back to the real table, hold real cards and play real bridge; tournaments will not survive without players participating.

Y'all play nice now.

—Karen Rise

Basic Tournament Information

Location: Leavenworth is a unique city in central Washington state, about fifteen miles northwest of Wenatchee on Highway 2. The city has a Bavarian theme throughout, a deliberate strategy to re-invent itself which took place in the late 1960s and 1970s. The early history of Leavenworth was based around the second largest sawmill in Washington State, built before World War I. The tournament site is the Festhalle, at 1001 Front Street. Near the Festhalle are dozens of restaurants of all types, many with a south German theme. The climate in mid-spring can be cool with some precipitation days, so bring warm clothing and rain gear just in case, although many days will be bright and sunny (but cool when you return after the evening session).

Driving: From I-90 exit Northbound onto Hwy. 97 in Ellensburg at the W. University Way exit, then left on Hwy 2, northwest through Peshastin into Leavenworth. Highway 2 east from Everett, north of Seattle, is a much more scenic route which will take about two hours. Highway 2 west from Wenatchee is about 20-30 minutes drive.

Transit: Link Transit's 22 route goes very close to the playing site, starting in Wenatchee at Columbia station, but the last bus back towards Wenatchee is well before the end of the evening session. Link Transit also now has a Leavenworth Shuttle (Route D) which goes along route 2 from Icicle Road on the southwest end to Wilkommen Park and Ride near Safeway, with several stops in between. This service runs every 20 minutes daily from about 11:00 to 7:00. (Alert: If you go to the Link Transit site and check out the route schedule and map, you may be easily confused since the map is upside down, with North at the bottom and South at the top. The Link Transit people must have a sense of humour...)

Bus/Train: Northwest Trailways connects Tacoma, Seattle, and Everett Station with Leavenworth on the very scenic Highway 2 route, and continues west as far as Spokane, leaving Everett daily at 10:10am and leaving Leavenworth for the coast at 1:00pm daily. There is also an Amtrak train from Seattle and Everett which leaves late afternoon daily and arrives at about 8pm; the return trip leaves at about 6am and arrives on the coast later that morning. The train trip is perhaps a bit more comfortable than the bus, but is a bit longer and much of the trip is through moountain tunnels, limiting the scenery. Important: If you come by Amtrak you need to arrange to be picked up or taken to Icicle Station, which is a considerable distance from the city centre, way too far to drag your bags and you may encounter bad weather or get eaten by a bear if you try...so don't! Call Leavenworth Shuttle and Taxi at 509/548-7433 to arrange a pickup from the station, or a shuttle to the station. The bus route's Leavenworth stop is at Icicle Road, which is about a mile southwest of the tournament site: close to some of the hotels but farther from others: you might need to get a cab or a Link Transit Route D bus from there.

FOOD SERVICE: At the Festhalle we don't have a formal food service, and we know some players will want a bite to eat between the morning and afternoon sessions and there is not much nearby. A few items are available for purchase at our little snack bar including burgers and salads. These items are provided as a service to our players. Also as a service to our players, anyone who wants to bring their own lunch or doggy bag from dinner is welcome to use our refrigerator and microwaves. We will put your name on your items and keep 'em cold. The snack bar is manned from noon to 12:45; food items are available at other times whenever the Caddy or Karen has time to serve you.

BAKE SALE: The bake sale is another service to players who need something sweet during the day. All of the ingredients and labor are donated and all of the proceeds this year will go to Mobile Meals of Wenatchee in memory of our dear friend Barbara Kinney who gave many years of service to this wonderful charity.

Restaurants and Shops: The Festhalle is very near many local restaurants and shops of all types. The beauty of the town will entice you to walk the nearby blocks between sessions, and you will make many interesting discoveries, both on Front Street and along the many cul-de-sacs that lead from it. Basic groceries are available at Dan's Food Market, about ten minutes walk east of the Festhalle just past McDonald's, and at Safeway, a short drive further east.

Tournament Site: The Festhalle has plenty of nearby parking and will feature all the usual tournament amenities: Hospitality, Partnerships, flyer desks, just inside the main entrance. We'll let you know about special and speakers, as we find out the information.

Parking: The City has installed parking meters on every street in the commercial district and there is NO free parking in Leavenworth anymore, except for hotel guests and on residential streets a couple blocks away from downtown. This year the City has granted the tournament half-price parking in the lots by the Festhalle; parking passes at $5.00 per day will be on sale inside the venue.

Dates, Times: 9:00am, 1:00pm, and 7:00pm are the start times from Tuesday thru Saturday. The tournament begins on Monday April 4 at 7:00pm, with a three-session Monday-Tuesday Knockout Teams (no morning wake up for winners!) and an Open Pairs which is the first Evening Side Game. On Sunday April 10, play begins at 10:00am with a two-session Swiss Teams and a two-session Bracketed 0-2000 Swiss Teams. Sessions should end 3¼ - 3½ hours after they begin, on Sunday things should end by about 6pm, probably earlier.

Team Events: The four-session knockout team events on Wednesday-Thursday and Friday-Saturday will be played Soloway-style, which means that all teams will play two sessions of (usually) round-robin teams to decide each bracket's four semi-final teams for the second day. You cannot be eliminated by a poor draw in the first session, and even a poor start will leave you at least a chance at an evening rally to get to the semi-final! Teams eliminated on Wednesday or Friday evening will have a Thursday or Saturday two-session Bracketed Round Robin Teams to play in. There is another such event spanning Wednesday-Thursday Morning and still another on Friday-Saturday Morning, plus the Open Swiss and 0-2000 Round Robin teams on Sunday.

Pair Events: Side Games are the only single-session events at this tournament, although the entry-sellers may look for single-session pairs to avoid half-tables in the two-session games. The Side Games are grouped into three series: Morning, Afternoon, and Evening, with series overall points available based on each individual's top two scores. You can play as many or as few of the sessions in a series as you wish, with different partners. From Tuesday through Saturday, there are daily two-session pair games, an Open Pairs and a Gold Rush 0-750 Pairs.

Where are the single-session games?: The only single-session games at the tournament are the Side Games, and there is one every session from Monday thru Saturday. If that sounds like we are encouraging you to play more than one session per day, you're right! 1pm and 7pm start times provide a lot of time for players to recharge batteries between the afternoon and evening sessions. Restaurants and hotels are plentiful and most are very close to the playing site, but there will be time between sessions to drive to many, many more just outside of walking distance. You can do this! Leavenworth is the perfect place to play two or three sessions of bridge one day, and then take a half-day or a full day off to explore the surrounding area, then return for more bridge competition! Do plan to play in the evening games though; after-dark activity in Leavenworth is mostly shopping and dining and little else.

Use cards for cardfees (maybe): We'll have more information for you on this closer to opening night, but the ACBL is rolling out a cashless format for entry sales. Credit cards may be required to purchase entries. There may be a coupon system in place as well, as we did in the pre-pandemic days. Stay tuned and we'll try to get you the details.

Here in Leavenworth we are in the unique position of being able to actually make our own coffee; unlike most tournament venues the Festhalle is not tied to a catering company so we are not paying both arms and a leg for coffee.
Players appreciate free coffee and it's great when we can provide it. However ... when there is Free Coffee, bridge players are notorious for pouring a cup, taking a sip, setting it down, walking away and forgetting it.
In 2015 I decided to address that problem by charging a quarter for the cup. Buy a cup and drink free coffee all day, lose your cup and pay another quarter. Bridge players are also notorious for being thrifty. Success! Much less wasted coffee; but, players were complaining about the foam cups.
Between 2015 and 2018 over 200 coffee mugs were collected, washed, sanitized and boxed.
In 2018 players were offered a choice: again, pay a quarter for a foam cup --- or --- buy a mug for a dollar. Both included free coffee all week. Mugs were labeled with names and could be left on shelves in the venue between games. Again, success! Players loved having a real mug for their coffee.
The environmental home run: From 2015 to 2018 attendance increased; and, even so: more than 1,000 fewer foam cups were used.
At the end of the tournament, most of the mugs were left behind to again be washed, sanitized and boxed for this week.

Welcome back to Live Bridge!: As I prepare this page, the good news continues to come about easing of restrictions and we hope you will consider Leavenworth as a great way to emerge from the pandemic and play tournament bridge! Officials on both sides of the border continue to stress that everyone will emerge at their own pace, and local rules, venue regulations, and ACBL regulations for tournaments will continue to evolve, and the tournament organizers will follow whatever restrictions remain in place. But the general sense really is that things are beginning to look up! Be aware that masks may still be required in some locations and that we should be courteous to those who prefer to keep them on. Travelers from Canada will be encouraged at the news that by April, vaccinated players no longer need a negative covid test to return to Canada, but special health insurance for US travel may be a smart option. As things continue to change, we will try to keep up with the latest local conditions and keep you informed.

This Web Site: Our plan for the Daily Bulletin site is to provide you with a quick daily digest of the events of the tournament, with links to ACBL Live for each event if you want the complete details and deals. I write (or create software that writes) simple HTML that should render well on computers, tablets, or phone screens of most sizes. We have a group of pages linked together by links bars like this one:

Daily Pages: Before the day's events are processed, these will contain a schedule of events in this order:

There will be details on each event, what type of game it is, what the strat limits are, last year's winners, and a direct link to the ACBL Live results, which will be active following each session.

At the end of the day Director-In-Charge Matt Koltnow will send me the days results and I will process them into the website in the early hours of the morning. The "day completed" version will replace the schedule section with the day's results, in this order:

Some of the comments I write about how the event leaders emerged comes from software I am working on to track everyone's scores round by round. In a pairs game this is a bit different from the one-round-to-go posted leaderboards: I figure if you get two top boards in round one you are leading at that point, even though it will take twelve more rounds before your top is confirmed.

Once a day's results are posted, I may revise it later if there are late scoring corrections. Some browsers save a copy of a page and do not check to see if the content has changed; in most browsers you should be able to hit F5 to reload the page and stop using the one your computer has saved.

Other Pages: You're looking at the Welcome page right now. The Masterpoints! Page, which we call DUMPS (Daily Updated Master Point Summary) will be updated every night first, before the daily pages of results take shape, and will contain the latest masterpoint totals and tournament leaders, both overall and limited to non-Life Masters. Also, they will have everyone's current total broken down into red and gold points, but will not include masterpoints already won in events that have yet to be completed. The Photos Page will depend on people sending me photos taken. Now that everyone's cellphone has a camera, anyone can do this! Here is a good guideline on how to get best results:

EVENT WINNERS:We want to take pictures of the winners of every event this week. Find Ann [partnership] or Karen [tournament chair] to have your photo taken. Be sure to tell Karen if you, or someone you know, reaches one of the milestones in duplicate bridge i.e. Life Master, Bronze, Silver etc. We want to be part of the celebration.

The Table Counts page has been rewritten from a pdf of a spreadsheet to a Python program that puts the attendance data into a colourful HTML table. You can check it out to see a graphical-display of the events of each session, by type, and compare our attendance in spring 2022 to that of fall 2018, the last time we were here. If we get close to that attendance level so early in the pandemic recovery we'll be doing very well indeed.

Finally, the ACBL Live link goes to the list of tournament events, from which you will need another click or three to find the one you want. Direct links are available from the event results on the daily pages and should be faster.

Thanks for visiting! This is still a work in progress and the progress in getting it where I want it to be continues slowly, but that's web development for you! We have a lot more colour in the pages this year, with each page having its own palette. Two years off and a look at what I did in 2019 produced the impression that we needed a splash of non-white for the pages, and a bit of CSS work made this happen quickly. Feel free to contact me (see above) with reports of errors or if something isn't working for you.

The 2022 Leavenworth Regional Start Page

Gateway to masterpoints, results, photos

FROM THE TOURNAMENT CHAIR:

Basic Tournament Information