North American Collegiate Bridge Championships are an intramural college competition run by the American Contract Bridge League. [1] The finals are held every summer in conjunction with the North American Bridge Championships. Any college in the United States, Canada, Mexico and/or Bermuda is eligible to participate in the event. Teams must consist of four to six players all from the same college.
The first North American College Team Championship was held in 1987 at the Spring NABC in St. Louis and the winners (except Barry Goren, who was not eligible because of his age) represented ACBL in the first World Junior Championships in the Netherlands. Guy Doherty, Jon Heller and Asya Kamsky—joined by Bill Hsieh and Aaron Silverstein—finished third in the World Junior championships.
The championships were played at the Spring NABCs from 1988 to 1990. In 1990, after Harvard had won by what is still the largest margin in the history of the event, the competition was moved to ACBL headquarters in Memphis where it was co-sponsored by ACBL and the Association of College Unions-International. The competition moved back to the Spring NABC in 1991 but the following year, it returned to Memphis, where it became part of the annual Memphis in May activities.
The event was cancelled after the 1996 championships. Between 1997 and 2001, OKBridge and ACBL teamed up to sponsor the Internet College Team Championships. In 2000, the Collegiate Championships were reinstated and held at the Summer NABC in Toronto in 2001. It was cancelled in 2002 and reinstated in 2003.
The competition changed in 2006, with two parts of competition. Teams would play in a one-day online qualifier in January. The format was a bracketed round robin, with the top number of teams from each bracket, up to 8 total, qualifying to the finals. Players received lodging, airfare and spending money to attend. The finals were a two-day competition that took place at the summer North American Bridge Championship. The first day consisted of a complete round robin, with the top four teams qualifying to the second day. The second day was a semi-final and final bracketed knockout. The winning team received a $2,000 scholarship.
In 2014, the competition format changed. Rather than a one-day online qualifier in January, colleges were assigned two head-to-head online matches each month starting in October and concluding in March. Teams would accumulate victory points based on the results of each head-to-head match. The two teams with the highest victory points at the end of December earned the first two qualifying positions. The two teams with the highest victory points at the end of March earned the next two qualifying positions. Four teams total qualified for the two-day championship. Players received lodging, airfare and spending money to attend. The first day was a full-day semi-final round, with the second day being a full-day final round. The winning team received a $20,000 scholarship. [2]
In 2018, the championship was opened to all teams with no qualification required, with the online spring tournaments awarding only travel packages to the top finishers. In 2020, the championship was cancelled along with the Summer NABC due to COVID-19, though an unofficial online championship was held. In 2021, an official tournament was held on Bridge Base Online as part of the Summer NAOBC.
| City | Year | University | Players | Final Match Score | Runner-up | Players | 2nd Runner-up | Players |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| St. Louis, MO | 1987 | New York University | Guy Doherty, Barry Goren, Jon Heller, Asya Kamsky | |||||
| Buffalo, NY | 1988 | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | Brian Blackmore, Dennis Carney, Justin Graver, Michael Steigmann | |||||
| Reno, NV | 1989 | University of Tennessee | Jim Baker, Mike Cappelletti Jr., Michael White, David Williams | |||||
| Fort Worth, TX | 1990 | Harvard University | Bill Cole, Michael Mitzenmacher, Franco Basseggio, James Colen | |||||
| Atlantic City, NJ | 1991 | University of Virginia | John Miller, John Prince, Hank Strauch, Scott Tumperi | |||||
| Memphis, TN | 1992 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | Scott Bieber, Brady Richter, Andrew Skolnick, Ron Sperber | |||||
| Memphis, TN | 1993 | Yale University | Matt Hastings, Douglas Koltenuk, Malik Madon-Ismail, Tony Tang | |||||
| Memphis, TN | 1994 | Harvard University | Mark Paltrowitz, Barry Piafsky, Michael Steigmann, Tom Rozinski | |||||
| Memphis, TN | 1995 | Stanford University | Steve Altus, Scott Benson, Bert Hackney, Joel Singer | |||||
| Memphis, TN | 1996 | Texas A&M | Hank Eng, Eric Wolff, Patricia Lozano, Marc Whinery | |||||
| OKbridge | 1997 | Harvard University (mixed) | Barry Piafsky, Shawn Samuel, Jenni Hartsman, Joel Singer | |||||
| OKbridge | 1998 | University of Kentucky | Daniel Neill, Gilbert Busby, Ali Vaezy, Todd Anderson | |||||
| OKbridge | 1999 | University of California, San Diego | Eugene Hung, Jeremy Martin, Dan Harting, Michael Davis, Richard Wang | |||||
| OKbridge | 2000 | University of Technology - Vienna, Austria | ||||||
| OKbridge | 2001 | mixed | Li-Chung Chen (Harvard), Andrew Cotton (Harvard), Quixiang Sun (Stanford), Theodore Hwa (Stanford), Jason Woolever (MIT) | |||||
| Toronto, ON | 2001 | University of California, San Diego | Eugene Hung, Graham Hazel, Cameron Parker, Sriram Ramabhadran | |||||
| Cancelled | 2002 | |||||||
| Long Beach, CA | 2003 | Stanford University | Samuel Ieong, Ho-Lin Chen, Joon Pahk, Eric Mayefsky | |||||
| New York City | 2004 | MIT | Ljudmila Kamenova, Jason Chiu, John Hopkinson, Kevin Chu | |||||
| Atlanta, GA | 2005 | Yale University | Marc Glickman, Christina Craige, Randall Rubinstein, Jonathan Bittner | |||||
| Dallas, TX | 2006 | University of Michigan | Kevin Fay, Ilya Podolyako, Jeremy Vosko, Jonathan Zimbler | |||||
| Nashville, TN | 2007 | University of California, Los Angeles | Jeffrey Schrader, Blake Haas, Jason Chu, Barry Ko | |||||
| Las Vegas, NV | 2008 | California Institute of Technology | Roger Lee, Chien-Yao Tseng, Hsi-Chun Liu, Cheng William Hong | |||||
| Washington, D.C. | 2009 | Stanford University | Eric Mayefsky, Zizhuo Wang, Elena Grewal, Alex Lovejoy | |||||
| New Orleans, LA | 2010 | University of Pennsylvania | Kendrick Chow, Zhuo Wang, Naijia Guo, Zhiyi Huang | |||||
| Toronto, ON | 2011 | University of Pennsylvania | Kendrick Chow, Zhuo Wang, Naijia Guo, Xi Chen | |||||
| Philadelphia, PA | 2012 | University of North Carolina | Patrick Domico, Ovunc Yilmaz, Jinsheng Zhou, Xiyuan Ge | |||||
| Atlanta, GA | 2013 | University of Washington | Ben Bomber, Greg Herman, Daniel Poore, Lee Holstein | |||||
| Las Vegas, NV | 2014 | University of California, Berkeley | Armin Askari, Rebecca Wernis, Isha Thapa, Raymond von Mizener | |||||
| Chicago, IL | 2015 | University of Chicago | Oren Kriegel, Julian Manasse-Boetani, Kelly Mao, Ruth Ng, Alexander Okamoto | |||||
| Washington, D.C. | 2016 | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | Peter Yeh, Yewen Fan, Bradley Sevcik, Ziyang Liu | University of California, Berkeley | ||||
| Toronto, ON | 2017 | Georgia Institute of Technology | Arjun Dhir, Santhosh Karnik, Charles Wang, Zhuangdi Xu | 80-37 | University of Chicago | |||
| Atlanta, GA | 2018 | University of California, Berkeley | Chengwei Li, Kevin Rosenberg, Mingyang Zhou, Xinchen Zhu, Armin Askari | 78-37 | Georgia Institute of Technology | Cyrus Hettle, Richard Jeng, Santhosh Karnik, Arjun Dhir, Zhuangdi Xu | ||
| Las Vegas, NV | 2019 | University of California, Berkeley | Stella Wan, Kevin Rosenberg, Jess Chao, Foster Tom, Armin Askari | 78-57 | University of Chicago | Cynthia Huang, Ilan Wolff, Raphael Hallerman, Zihan Tan, Zhengyan Fang | ||
| Bridge Base Online (Unofficial) | 2020 | University of California, Santa Barbara | Andrew Rowberg, Philip Tian, Danning Lu, Nicholas Adamski, Ian Banta, Aaron Maharry, David McCarthy, Michael Zheng | 106-102 | The Claremont Colleges (mixed) | Jake Williams (Harvey Mudd College), Emma Kolesnik (Scripps College), Elke Kiva (Scripps College), Nick Koskelo (Harvey Mudd College), Luke Williams (Pomona College) | ||
| Bridge Base Online | 2021 | Georgia Institute of Technology | Cyrus Hettle, Santhosh Karnik, Sean McNally, Shengding Sun, Zhuangdi Xu, Bo Han Zhu | Princeton University | Nathan Finkle, Sam Berman, Aaron Balleisen, Yi Zhao, Sihui Dai | |||
| Providence, RI | 2022 | University of Chicago | Cynthia Huang, Ilan Wolff, Zihan Tan, Raphael Hallerman | 54-24 | Washington University in St. Louis | Rohan Srivastava, Henry Shuster, Lucas Strammello, Jinhao Zhao | ||
| Chicago, IL | 2023 | Georgia Institute of Technology | Vincent Zhu, Bo Han Zhu, Weilong Shen, Alan Yu | 70-59 | Carnegie Mellon University | Mingkuan Xu, Daniel Weiss, Alec Sun, Gan Yang | ||
| Toronto, ON | 2024 | Georgia Institute of Technology | Weilong Shen, Alan Yu, Kyle Rockoff, Alan Yeung | 32-14 (1st vs 2nd), 25-32 (1st vs 3rd), 43-14 (2nd vs 3rd) | University of Chicago | Ziheng Yun, Zhiyu Cheng, Sarik Goyal, Alec Sun | University of Waterloo | Olivia Laufer, Max Cheng, Martin Zhao, John Dong |
North American Bridge Championships (NABC) are three annual bridge tournaments sponsored by the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL). The "Spring", "Summer", and "Fall" NABCs are usually scheduled in March, July, and November for about eleven days. They comprise both championship and side contests of different kinds in many classes of competition. Host cities in the United States and Canada are selected several years in advance.
The Mixed Board-a-Match Teams is a bridge competition held at the summer American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The North American Pairs (NAP) is a set of annual North American championships for pairs contested over two days at the spring American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championships (NABC). The events are restricted to pairs that have qualified through local, regional and district levels within their ACBL Districts.
The Silodor Open Pairs national bridge championship is held at the spring American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Leventritt Silver Ribbon Pairs national bridge championship is held at the spring American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Whitehead Women's Pairs bridge championship is held at the spring American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Lebhar IMP Pairs national bridge championship is held at the spring American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Jacoby Open Swiss Teams national bridge championship is held at the spring American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Machlin Women's Swiss Teams North American bridge championship is held at the spring American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Grand National Teams (GNT) North American bridge championship is held at the summer American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Wernher Open Pairs national bridge championship is held at the summer American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Wagar Women's Knockout Teams national bridge championship is held at the summer American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Roth Open Swiss Teams is a North American bridge championship Swiss Teams event held at the summer American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Truscott/USPC Senior Swiss Teams North American bridge championship is held at the summer American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Sternberg Women's Board-a-Match Teams bridge championship is held at the fall American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC) and is a four session board-a-match event, two qualifying sessions and two final sessions. The event typically starts on the first Sunday of the NABC and is restricted to female players.
The Edgar Kaplan Blue Ribbon Pairs is a national bridge championship held at the fall American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC). The event is restricted to those that have won a blue ribbon qualification and is generally considered, with the Norman Kay Platinum Pairs, as one of the two hardest pairs event on the ACBL calendar.
The Mini-Blue Ribbon Pairs North American bridge championship is held at the Fall American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Keohane North American Swiss Teams bridge championship is held at the fall American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).
The Red Ribbon Pairs national bridge championship is held annually at the Summer American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC). Prior to the 2015 Summer NABC, the Red Ribbon Pairs event was held at the Spring NABC.
The Norman Kay Platinum Pairs national bridge championship is held at the spring American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) North American Bridge Championship (NABC).