The ACBL conducts the North American Pairs (NAP) event every year. It starts with qualifying events at the club. If you qualify at the club level, you get to go forward to the District level. If you finish high enough at the District level, you get to play in the North American finals. Playing in NAPs is great fun. You get to travel with your bridge partner. You get to meet other players of similar skill levels from nearby states or across the nation. You enjoy the thrill of competition (and, sometimes, the agony of defeat).
The NAPs have three stratifications:
- Strat C: limited to people who are not Life Masters and who have fewer than 500 Masterpoints
- Strat B: limited to people with fewer than 2500 masterpoints
- Strat A: unlimited Masterpoints
The club qualifying games are required to have those same three strata.
If you finish in the top HALF of your strat or finish with a score that is 50% or greater in any club qualifying game, you qualify to play in the District Finals. At the District Finals, you only play against other players in the same stratification as you.
We are in District 10. Our finals are normally played in either Birmingham or Jackson MS in January or February. The locations and dates for 2022 District Finals have not been announced on the district 10 website, which is:
https://www.bridgewebs.com/cgi-bin/bwoo/bw.cgi?club=acbl10&pid=display_page9
The NAP Finals will be in Reno, Nevada, in March 2022, in conjunction with the Spring North American Championships.
The additional benefit to playing in the club qualifying games is that the masterpoint awards are 50% red and 50% black (red is normally only awarded at sectionals) and are paid at 81.8% of the sectional award levels (much higher than regular club games).
Also, District finals award gold points for section firsts and overalls. Flight C is 25% gold for overalls. Other masterpoints in all flights are red points.
To proceed to the North American Finals, Districts are entitled to three pairs in Flight A (Open) and two pairs in Flights B (0-2500) and C (under 500 Non-Life Master). To help offset costs of participating in the NA Finals, first place qualifiers will receive $700 per person; second place qualifiers will receive $300 per person; third and fourth place qualifiers will be invited to participate in the national level finals, but will not receive a prize. To receive the monetary award, qualifiers must play in the national level event until eliminated to receive the award.
You can play in every qualifying game if you want to, which gives you multiple chances to qualify. Even if you do not want to proceed to the district level, multiple club qualifying games gives you multiple chances to win masterpoints at a rate higher than available in a usual club game. The games will be stratified using the ACBL-directed Strats (0-500 NLM, 0-2500, and unlimited).
Finally, you can play and qualify with multiple different partners. You do not have to go to District with a partner with whom you played in a qualifying game. The only requirement is that both you and your partner qualified in a club qualifying game within the district and that you reside in the District. If you proceed to the NA Finals, you must play with the same partner you played with at the District level.
The HBA will have NAP Qualifying Weeks (Monday - Sunday):
During these weeks, all games except the Monday afternoon 199er game will be NAP qualifying games and will cost $7. The added cost is due to the added charge levied on the HBA by the ACBL. Entry fees revert to $6 outside of these weeks.
If you have any questions, please contact Bud Hullings (our NAP/GNT coordinator) or Charles. For additional information on the location, see the news tab.