Rocket Rookie Race
The Rocket Rookie Race
Unit 430's latest masterpoint race, geared toward newer players.
Quick Summary: The Rocket Rookie is a new masterpoint race being run for the first time in 2012. Many events are covered, from sectionals to Unit Games, but all RRR-eligible events are limited events. Masterpoints won in these events, only by non-Life Masters playing with other non-Life Masters, count towards the race. There are a few exceptions and lots of details, so past the current standings we have placed the complete rules.
Current 2012 Rocket Rookie Race Leaders (as of November 13)
| 1. | 14.67 | Ronald Kuiper, Surrey BC |
| 2. | 13.52 | George Franko, Vancouver BC |
| 3. | 11.48 | Alex Roman, Burnaby BC |
| 4. | 11.11 | Stephen Ottridge, Vancouver BC |
| 5. | 10.58 | Elain Duvall, Vancouver BC |
| 6. | 9.96 | Andrew Krywaniuk, Vancouver BC |
| 7. | 9.71 | Jim Glanville, Surrey BC |
| 8. | 9.44 | Pearl Franko, Vancouver BC |
| 9. | 8.98 | Bill Matheson, Richmond BC |
| 10. | 8.16 | Jan Bromley, Langley BC |
| 11. | 7.72 | Sue Glanville, Surrey BC |
| 12. | 7.28 | Kurt Moller, Vancouver BC |
| 13. | 7.17 | Frances Corney, Vancouver BC |
| 14. | 7.12 | Debbie Martignago, Pitt Meadowas BC |
| 15. | 7.04 | Pamela Rattenbury, West Vancouver BC |
| 16. | 6.97 | Ross Deegan, Vancouver BC |
| 17. | 6.93 | Robert Sewell, West Vancouver BC |
| 18. | 6.85 | John Coates, Vancouver BC |
| 19. | 6.84 | Eve Jensen, Abbotsford BC |
| 20. | 6.79 | Natalie Warnes, W Vancouver BC |
| 21. | 6.75 | Miranda Levert, Vancouver BC |
| 22. | 6.57 | Larry Barker, North Vancouver BC |
| 23. | 6.43 | Erwin Tenta, Squamish BC |
| 24. | 6.38 | Madeleine Bourgouin, Vancouver BC |
| 25. | 6.36 | Rich Schmid, Surrey BC |
| 26. | 6.01 | Colin Stark, Vancouver BC |
| 27. | 5.92 | Jim Garnier, Maple Ridge BC |
| 28. | 5.81 | L Ralph Buckley, Vancouver BC |
| 29. | 5.73 | Barbara Van Blankenstein, North Vancouver BC |
| 30. | 5.67 | Lucian Popescu, Vancouver BC |
| 31. | 5.45 | Barbara Forfellow, Port Coquitlam BC |
| 32. | 5.14 | Tadeusz Smaruj, Vancouver BC |
| 33. | 5.05 | Sharon Main, Vancouver BC |
| 34. | 4.98 | Leslie Tenta, Squamish BC |
| 35. | 4.89 | Ruisheng Shi, Burnaby BC |
| 36. | 4.86 | Grethe Larsen, Surrey BC |
| 37. | 4.82 | Denny Gibson, Bellingham WA |
| 38. | 4.79 | William Cooke, Magna Bay BC |
| 38. | 4.79 | Karen Cooke, Magna Bay BC |
| 40. | 4.64 | Farivar Sahihi, West Vancouver BC |
| 41. | 4.51 | Linda Seifred, North Vancouver BC |
| 41. | 4.51 | Nita Dalal, Vancouver BC |
| 43. | 4.35 | Sania Begovic, Burnaby BC |
| 44. | 4.29 | Lucia Van Horne, North Vancouver BC |
| 45. | 4.26 | Lucy Zhong, North Vancouver BC |
| 46. | 4.25 | Karin Phillips, Mission BC |
| 47. | 4.18 | Nonie Schmid, Surrey BC |
| 48. | 4.12 | David Gabel, Vancouver BC |
| 49. | 4.11 | Kathryn Shannon, North Vancouver BC |
| 50. | 4.08 | Doug Chaffee, Langley BC |
509.91 masterpoints have been won by 191 RRR-eligible people so far in 2012.
(Players must be paid-up members of the ACBL to be eligible for all ACBL masterpoint races.)
How The Rocket Rookie Race works (by McBruce)
Unit 430 has several masterpoint races based on a calendar year's worth of achievement in local competitions:
- The Phil Wood Trophy has been awarded since 1968 to the player who wins the most masterpoints at open sectionals in a year. Phil Wood directed at Vancouver tournaments (since they began) and throughout the ACBL for more than 40 years.
- The Edie Bonnell Trophy, named after one of the area's finest players in the 1970s, has been awarded since 1979 to the woman who wins the most masterpoints at open sectionals in a year.
- The Leo Steil Trophy, named after the player who led the Unit in masterpoints for many years, has been awarded since 1997 to the senior player who wins the most masterpoints at open sectionals. (Senior has been defined in different ways over the years, originally 55 or older, now moved to 65.)
- A second trophy donated by Phil Wood in 1974, the Phil Wood Under 200 Trophy, goes to the player who begins the year under 200 masterpoints who wins the most points during the year at open sectionals.
- There is also a trophy for the masterpoint leader at Monthly Unit Games.
- The trophy winners also receive free plays for the following year: sectional free plays all year for the Phil Wood winner, six sectional free plays for the Edie Bonnell, Leo Steil, and Phil Wood Under 200 Trophies, and the Monthly Unit Game trophy winner wins free plays at Unit Games the following year, while the leader in Flight B and Flight C win six Unit Game free plays.
That's where we were at the end of 2011. Since 1993, when I first joined the Unit Board, I have been responsible for keeping track of these races. Before that time it had been done by hand, but by 1993, ACBLScore was two years old, up to the task, and made the job easier once the learning curve was overcome. Strangely, the scoring part of ACBLScore became the LAST part of the program I learned about when I began directing games: up until that time I had used it for masterpoint races and for the Daily Bulletins I produced at tournaments.
One thing that I had noticed about the Phil Wood Under 200 race became a suggestion that the Unit Board eagerly accepted for 2012. The under-200 race is usually won by someone who seldom plays with another player who is under 200 points. Usually the winner has spent most of the year in Flight A slugging it out with the Unit's best players, with a partner who is often among them. And while rewarding new players who have the talent to slug it out with the experts was a good idea in 1974, and still is, there is almost no chance for a player to win the under-200 race by playing with other under-200 players in limited events.
The idea I came up with was to have a race covering all Unit events geared towards newer players, but to only count the masterpoints won by non-Life Masters while playing only with other non-Life Masters. The Unit supplied the catchy name for the race, and I suspect will probably supply a trophy or plaque by the end of the year. Here are the rules:
- To earn points in the Rocket Rookie Race, you need to be a non-Life Master playing in a RRR-eligible pairs event with another non-Life Master as your partner, or you need to be a non-Life Master playing in a RRR-eligible team event, on a team where none of the players are Life Masters. (There are two minor exceptions to this rule keeping all Life Masters out, below.) Who is eligible is determined by the printout of the results of the event: pairs or teams consisting of players without a letter in their player numbers are eligible. If the printout sheet does not contain your player number, your masterpoints for that event will not count.
- Eligibility also depends on your membership status. Like all ACBL masterpoint races, you must be a paid up member of the ACBL to win the prize.
- A player who becomes a Life Master during the calendar year continues to be eligible to win the RRR competition, but cannot win any more points towards the race. (This is NOT the case in the Phil Wood under 200 race, where a player can start the season with 199.5 points, win a point or two on January 1 and still be eligible.) Exception Number One: in the Flight C IMP League, where the masterpoints are not awarded until the event ends, 6-7 months after it begins, everyone is eligible, even those who became a Life Master during the IMP League season.
- The Unit Board has yet to decide what the prize will be for the winner, but I would imagine some combination of sectional and Unit Game free plays would be appropriate.
- RRR-eligible events are all of the following:
- All open sectional events except for those which are unlimited. 0-200 pairs games, 0-750 pairs games, Flight B/C/D pairs and teams (when there is a separate Flight A/X game), all count. Flight A/X pairs and teams, open pairs or teams, and side games do NOT count for the RRR.
- All events at the two Future Stars Sectionals.
- Flight C (0-750 average for a pair or team) in Monthly Unit Games, the Ev Hodge Charity Classic, and any other fundraising games run by Unit 430.
- A non-Life Master section of the Monthly Unit Game, which began in March but has not yet gotten enough pairs to get a game going.
- The Flight C IMP League. When masterpoints are given out for this event in late April, all players will be RRR-eligible, even those who have become Life Masters during the IMP League season.
- Exception Number Two: Mentor-Mentee Games are RRR-eligible, even though most mentors are Life Masters. Because of this, and because the awards for the game are much higher (the games are treated as open games for masterpoint purposes), only half of the masterpoints (rounded up to the nearest 0.01) a player earns in Mentor-Mentee games will count towards the RRR competition.
So there are lots of chances to win RRR points.
And now for the punch line: after 18 years of using ACBLScore to figure out the winners in these races, I am now faced with one that ACBLScore will not be able to handle, at least not completely! The only logical way to work out the leaders in this race is to look at the ACBLScore output, select the RRR-eligible masterpoint awards, record player numbers and masterpoints won in a file, event by event, and let a computer program crunch the numbers together!
Here is a list of the RRR-eligible events in 2012:
Rocket Rookie Race-eligible events in 2012 (Completed events in italics, future events in bold):
- January 7 Monthly Unit Game (pairs, 7pm at VBC)
- January 27 Trophy Sectional Friday Afternoon 0-750 Pairs (1:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- January 28 Trophy Sectional Saturday Afternoon 0-750 Pairs (1pm at Engineer's Hall)
- January 28 Trophy Sectional Saturday Evening 0-200 Pairs (6:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- January 28 Trophy Sectional Sunday Mary Clarke B/C/D Swiss Teams (10:30am at Engineer's Hall)
- February 4 Monthly Unit Game (teams, 7pm at VBC)
- February 18 Mentor-Mentee Game (pairs, 1pm at VBC, half-rate)
- March 4 Monthly Unit Game (pairs, 7pm at VBC)
- March 31 Ev Hodge Game (pairs, 7pm at VBC, pot luck dinner before)
- April 7 Monthly Unit Game (pairs, 7pm at VBC)
- 2011-12 Flight C IMP League (in progress now)
- May 5 Spring Future Stars Saturday Afternoon Pairs (1pm at VBC)
- May 5 Spring Future Stars Saturday Evening Pairs (6:30pm at VBC)
- May 5 Monthly Unit Game (pairs, 7pm at VBC)
- May 6 Spring Future Stars Sunday Morning Pairs (10:30am at VBC)
- May 6 Spring Future Stars Sunday Afternoon Teams (3:30pm at VBC)
- May 11 Spring Sectional Friday Afternoon 0-750 Pairs (1:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- May 11 Spring Sectional Friday Evening 0-200 Pairs (7:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- May 12 Spring Sectional Saturday B/C/D Pairs (1, 7pm at Engineer's Hall)
- May 12 Spring Sectional Sunday Mother's Day B/C/D Swiss Teams (9:00am at Engineer's Hall)
- May 19 Mentor-Mentee Game (teams, 1pm at VBC, half-rate)
- June 2 Monthly Unit Game (teams, 7pm at VBC)
- July 7 Monthly Unit Game (pairs, 7pm at VBC)
- August 4 Monthly Unit Game (pairs, 7pm at VBC)
- September 1 Monthly Unit Game (pairs, 7pm at VBC)
- September 28 Evergreen Sectional Friday Afternoon 0-750 Pairs (1:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- September 28 Evergreen Sectional Friday Evening 0-300 Pairs (6:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- September 29 Evergreen Sectional Saturday Afternoon 0-750 Pairs (1pm at Engineer's Hall)
- September 29 Evergreen Sectional Saturday Evening 0-750 Pairs (1pm at Engineer's Hall)
- September 30 Evergreen Sectional Sunday B/C/D Swiss Teams (10:00 am at Engineer's Hall)
- October 6 Monthly Unit Game (teams, 7pm at VBC)
- 2012-13 Flight C IMP League (counts only towards the 2013 RRR)
- October 27 Fall Future Stars Saturday Afternoon Pairs (2pm, Elgin Hall, White Rock)
- October 27 Fall Future Stars Saturday Evening Pairs (6:45pm, Elgin Hall, White Rock)
- October 28 Fall Future Stars Sunday Morning Pairs (1:30pm, Elgin Hall, White Rock)
- October 28 Fall Future Stars Sunday Afternoon Teams (6:30pm, Elgin Hall, White Rock)
- November 3 Monthly Unit Game (pairs, 7pm at VBC)
- November 9 Round-Up Sectional Friday Afternoon 0-750 Pairs (1:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- November 9 Round-Up Sectional Friday Evening 0-750 Pairs (7:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- November 10 Round-Up Sectional Saturday Afternoon 0-750 Pairs (12:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- November 10 Round-Up Sectional Saturday Evening 0-750 Pairs (6:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- November 11 Round-Up Sectional Sunday Afternoon 0-750 Pairs (12:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- November 11 Round-Up Sectional Sunday Evening 0-750 Pairs (6:30pm at Engineer's Hall)
- November 12 Round-Up Sectional Monday B/C/D Swiss Teams (10:00am at Engineer's Hall)
- December 8 Monthly Unit Game (pairs, 7pm at VBC)