The 2009 United States Bridge Championship will select the two US teams for the 2009 Bermuda Bowl. The 2009 USBC will be held in White Plains, NY; it will start on June 5th and probably end June 15th. The Bermuda Bowl will be held in Sao Paulo, Brazil; it will start August 29 and end September 12.

The USBC will be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown White Plains. To make a reservation,  call the hotel at 914/682-0050 and mention "bridge" or "USBF" or go to the hotel's online booking site, click on the + next to "Corporate, Group & IATA Identification" and enter "USB" in the Group box, to reserve at the group rate of $140 per night. If you have any problems with reservations, email Joan Gerard and she will try to solve them for you. Good news - self parking at the hotel is free and valet parking is $5 per day.

Entries have now closed and the teams listed under "Teams Entered" are the teams who will play in the USBC. They are listed in seeding point order, although changes to team rosters may change that order. The exact seeding points are listed here. You can download a chart showing individual players' seeding points and a chart of where the ACBL points came from. The teams without byes will be assigned to two divisions for a one and one half day Round Robin to select 14 teams for a Round of 32 KO. Before the Round of 32, the qualifying teams and bye teams will be assigned team numbers for the KO, setting the KO bracket for the entire event . The Rounds of 32 and 16 will be one day (60 boards) each. The Quarterfinal will be one and one half days. The Semifinal & Final will be 2 days each.

Because the 2009 USBC will select two teams, there will be two brackets in the event, the USA1 bracket and the USA2 bracket. All of the losers from the USA1 Round of 32 & later will play in the the USA2 bracket.The 7 Round of 32 losers will play a Round Robin of 9 board matches to select 5 teams. Those 5 teams and the 5 losers from the USA1 Round of 16 will play a KO round to select 5 teams to join the 3 USA1 Round of 8 losers in the USA2 Rounds of 32 & 16. They will play one day matches opposite the USA1 Semifinal to reduce to 2 teams, who will be joined by the USA1 Semifinal losers for the Quarterfinal and Semifinal of USA2. They will play 2 matches to reduce to 1 team, who will play the USA2 final against the losing USA1 finalist.

You can download the final 2009 Conditions of Contest in PDF format. For a graphic presentation of the format of the event, see page 29 (one semi-final bye) or download just the chart in PDF format.

The cycle of qualifying events for the 2009 USBC ended with the Vanderbilt. NICKELL has a bye to the semi-final,  WELLAND has a bye to the Quarterfinals, and three teams, KATZ, DIAMOND & STRUL, have byes to the Round of 16.  You can download a chart showing the PP holdings of teams that placed in the 2008 USBC, Spingold & Reisinger and the 2009 Vanderbilt. Click here to see the PPs awarded for different finishes in the qualifying events. Click here for the bye requirements. For all the nitty gritty, read pages 5 through 9 of the Conditions of Contest.

A note about competitors' photos.

We are very lucky, and grateful, that Peg Kaplan, photographer extroadinaire, is willing to share with us her pictures of many of our competitors. We try to identify the photographer for individual photos, but sometimes fail. If you like a picture on one of the team profiles, it's almost certainly one Peg took. THANK YOU PEG for helping all of our "readers" put faces with names.