Summer Greetings!

I hope you are all having a wonderful summer. I attended the ACBL Board Meetings and NABC in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in July. I flew home on a new Canadian airline, Porter Airlines, and their customer service for a person with a broken knee cap and cracked tibia was exceptional. I am extremely happy that I had plans to fly home early from the NABC to watch the Olympics. I am recording every minute on every television station and I will spend the next three weeks or so watching all of the events from my temporary wheelchair.

The ACBL is doing very well financially this year. Through June 30, 2024, there is a gain in net assets of $1,176,000. Membership is down slightly over a quarter of a percent from July, 2023. There are several new and continuing membership growth initiatives which are adding new members to our organization. Close to 5,000 former and current guest members have converted to a paid ACBL membership in the first six months of 2024.

Approximately 17,000 of the 83,000 online players have been run through the EDGAR (Everyone Deserves a Game above Reproach) Program to date. It is anticipated that all online players will be examined by the end of
the first quarter of 2026. To date, less than 2 percent of online players evaluated have been found to be cheating online.

The 13 ACBL board members are each serving on multiple task forces and/or board committees. The Membership Recruitment & Retention Task Force will be spending the remainder of the year identifying ways for the ACBL to grow a separate F2F (Face to Face) Social Bridge Division. The Clubs Task Force is working on ways to make the Club Corner on the ACBL website easier to navigate, compiling club best practices to share and finding ways to intertwine online teaching and attendance at F2F clubs. The NABC Task Force is evaluating how to provide the best NABC experience for our players going forward and the Online Provider Task Force is identifying our best options for online play after the end of the exclusive BBO contract in 2025.

There were three motions passed that I would like to highlight. The first motion was placed on the consent calendar. It allows each district to hold up to 5 NLM regionals AND one annual junior, youth or collegiate regional
each year.

The second motion adds a fourth flight to the NAP Program, but some other new changes to the program have caused controversy and the ACBL Advisory Council has asked the ACBL Board to reconsider one of those changes. The GNT and NAP programs will now mirror each other with respect to flights.

The flights are:

• Championship Flight: 0 – Unlimited MP
• Flight A 0 – 6000 MP
• Flight B 0 – 3000 MP
• Flight C 0 – 750 MP

The Championship Flight and Flight A remain unchanged. The increase in Flight B from 2500 MP to 3000 MP was not contested. The change from 500 MP plus NLM status to 750 MP with no NLM restriction has been submitted to the ACBL Board of Directors for reconsideration. The board will meet very soon to reconsider this change.

The third motion set the location for the summer 2027 NABC at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. It will be a new venue for an NABC.

I have attached a copy of the summer, 2024 Board Report to my report in case you want to see more details about the actions we took in Toronto.

NEWSFLASH: ACBL President, Margot Hennings, will be attending the Seaside Regional in October. I hope you will say stop and say hello to her if you see her at the tournament. Seaside is one of my favorite tournaments and I am looking forward to seeing everyone there.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please contact me at region12director@acbl.org or jackiezayac@gmail.com.

See you at Seaside!
Jackie Z