2026 Tri-Cities Regional, Day Seven: Sunday, November 1

What’s My Name?

This Day in History - November 1 Birthdays

The five self-describing historical figures below were all born on November 1. Can you name them and place their birth years in chronological order? (Hint: the five people are in alphabetical order by surname.) Answers below.

• “I was the last NHL player to wear eyeglasses, winning the Stanley Cup with Chicago and Toronto and later captaining the expansion St. Louis Blues, who were 0-12 in three Stanley Cup finals when the league put all the expansion teams into a single division, ensuring that one survivor would be crushed by a team from the Original Six each year. Later I became coach of another expansion team, the New York Islanders, in their second season. Improvement came each year and year eight brought a Stanley Cup championship, with three more to follow! No team in North American major sports has won four straight championships since.”
• “After fifteen years in the music business, I became very quickly successful as a producer with a string of hit records for Earth, Wind & Fire, Boz Scaggs, and Chicago. (The task of reviving Chicago was a success in selling records but created discord in the group when I downplayed their brass section.) I continued the run of success with Natalie Cole‘s Unforgettable...With Love and Whitney Houston‘s soundtrack album for The Bodyguard. I‘ve been nominated for 45 Grammy Awards and won 16.”
• “I first commented on snooker matches for the BBC long before there were commentary boxes and we sat in the crowd with a huge microphone. We had to whisper like a golf commentator does and this stayed with me long after. Worst gaffe? “For those of you watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green.” A highlight was commenting on the final stages of the 1985 World Championship, a two-day match that began with Steve Davis winning the first seven frames and then starting the Saturday evening session by winning again to go up 8-nil in a race to 18. It looked like it might be over in three sessions, but Dennis Taylor staged an epic comeback and the final frame lasted over an hour, ending past midnight on Sunday evening, with huge TV ratings!”
• “I was born in South Africa and became a professional golfer at 17. Winning the 1965 US Open made me the first non-American to win the modern career grand slam, with previous victories in the British Open, the Masters, and the PGA Championship. I won nine majors and over 160 tournaments in my long career. I‘ve designed over 400 courses and authored dozens of books on golf.”
• “I was born in Tennessee and went to college there, at Vanderbilt. Played football and baseball while studying Greek and Latin and after graduation got a job at a newspaper. Soon I was covering sports full time and syndicated across the country. I made the people who played the game into heroes and gods with my writing style, leading me to be called the Dean of American Sports Writers. “It matters not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” is one of my more famous quotes, but there were many more, even books of poetry about sports.”

In 2024 (Ocean Shores), there were 321½ tables to this point.
In 2019 (Pasco), there were 421 tables to this point.
For full details, check out the Table Counts page!

Bridge clubs and tournaments throughout the ACBL are still struggling with returning to live play after the pandemic, so comparing this tournament's attendance to one before the pandemic is not really fair. We'll hope to get a similar number to Ocean Shores in 2024, around two-thirds of the 2019 pre-pandemic attendance, making the target number 280 tables this time — but perhaps we will be pleasantly surprised!

Masterpoints for all players are updated nightly here first, with everyone’s current red and gold point total listed alphabetically below the leaders, before a shorter leaderboard is added to this page.

(The clues are above).

• Grantland Rice ( 1880 - 1957 ) — American journalist, columnist and sportswriter who was deemed the Dean of American Sports Writers for his elegant style of writing that made heroes and gods out of the stars of games.
• Ted Lowe ( 1920 - 2011 ) — English sportscaster best known for snooker commentary, including the epic 1985 World Championship Final where Dennis Taylor battled back from 8-nil down to Steve Davis, winning 18-17 in a record-setting post-midnight live broadcast.
• Al Arbour ( 1932 - 2015 ) — Canadian hockey player and coach who won the Stanley Cup three times as a player and four times as coach of the New York Islanders.
• Gary Player ( born 1935 ) — South African pro golfer, golf writer, and course designer with over 160 tournament wins in a lengthy career.
• David Foster ( born 1949 ) — Canadian singer-songwriter, keyboard player, producer who turned songs into hits for several bands from the late 1970s onward, earning 16 Grammy Awards and 45 nominations.

A quick plug for a new(ish) source of District 19 info: the e-newsletter Bridge Northwest, a monthly round-up of District Nineteen results, events, and news that can appear in your e-mail box monthly. Check it out here and subscribe if you are not getting it sent to your inbox already!

• Victoria Regional, March 29 - April 4, 2027, at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney BC, north of Victoria and a short drive from the ferry terminal (info)
  
  
• Penticton Regional, June 14 - 20, 2027, at the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre in Penticton BC info)
  
  
• Midnight Sun Regional, June 22 - 27, 2027 at the Anchorage Bridge Center in Anchorage AK (info)
  
  
• Puget Sound Regional, August 16 - 22, 2027 at the Lynnwood Event Center in Lynnwood WA, north of Seattle (info)
  
  
• Kamloops Regional, October 19 - 23, 2027 (Tuesday - Saturday), at the Colombo Lodge Italian Cultural Centre in Kamloops BC (info)
  
  
  
• Grand National Teams Club Qualfying, September - January or later at your local participating club. District Final in Spring 2027, details TBA, qualifying teams for the Summer 2027 NABC in Las Vegas.
  
  
• North American Pairs Club Qualifying, at local participating clubs in June, July and August 2027; Fall 2027 District Finals TBA, will be held to qualify pairs to represent District 19 in the National Finals at the Spring 2028 NABC in Reno.
  
  
  
• Vancouver Round-Up Sectional, Nov 14 - 16 at Engineer‘s Hall in Burnaby BC, just east of Vancouver (info)
  
  
• Unit 441 Olympia-Area NLM Sectional (0-750), Nov 15 at Olympia Bridge Club in Lacey WA (info)
  
  
• John Coone 299er Sectional, November 16 at All Saints Anglican Church in Vernon BC (info)
  
  
• District 19 STaC (Sectional Tournament at Clubs), November 30 - December 6: Silver points at participating local clubs! (Info & club managers sign-up)
  
  

Let’s not forget the Fall NABC in San Diego CA, November 26 - December 6, 2026, the Spring NABC in St. Louis MO, March 10 - 21, 2027, and the Summer NABC in Las Vegas NV, July 14 - 25, 2027. Players, take a moment to visit the table with tournament flyers and take a few for your local club; this remains the best way to spread the word and build attendance.

We’ve listed the next batch of District 19 Regionals, and will also list Sectional tournaments up until the end of March 2027 that had flyers posted online when I do the research a few weeks before the tournament begins. (Several in the period covered are scheduled and listed on the ACBL Tournament page, but will not appear here, unless they have a flyer listed here.)

ALERT to tournament organizers, please remember to send your event schedule or tournament flyer to tournaments@acbl.org as soon as it is set, or whenever it is revised, so they can add or adjust the data in the ACBL tournament database. This very essential first move gets your flyer posted online at ACBL.org’s Tournaments section (sometimes after a quick check of something that may be ambiguous or a misprint). When the tournament data is added by ACBL staff, your event schedule will appear online with full details — so players can simply scroll down to see them — directors will be assigned, and deal sets will be automatically generated for the tournament.