THE INTERNATIONAL VIEW
The American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) is an international organization.  Its member nations are Canada, Mexico, and the United States of America.  The entire region is divided into 25 subregions called Districts.  The ACBL members of each District elect one member to serve as Director of that District.  The set of 25 District Directors compose the Board of Directors of this non-profit organization.  Districts are composed of smaller units; in the USA, they might be viewed as composed of postal ZIP codes, especially useful for marketing and other purposes requiring knowledge of postal patterns, or they might be viewed as composed of counties, especially useful for linking maps with census data.  The two global views of the ACBL shown below are quite similar to each other when viewed at this scale.  The globe on the left shows the 25 districts of the ACBL defined by postal ZIP code in the USA; the globe on the right shows the 25 districts of the ACBL defined by county.  At this global scale, small differences may be noted in the boundary of Oregon with Washington, of Wisconsin with Minnesota, and other selected locales.  A "correct" view will reflect the original charters of each district.  I believe it is important to understand the entire pattern as a context into which District 12 fits; that way, national and international indices of various sorts can be used for comparative purposes to see where District 12 fits on any variable present in the ACBL or census databases.
Boundary definition is a basic issue.


ACBL Land:  25 districts.  USA district boundaries are determined by postal ZIP code.
ACBL Land:  25 districts.  USA district boundaries are determined by county.
[The Yukon has been assigned to the district with Washington State (District 19) and the Northwest Territories have been assigned to the district with Montana (District 18). 
This particular assignment is noted here because it is not always present on all ACBL maps.  The map projection is orthographic.]

This Atlas of international, national, and regional bridge maps is designed for visualizing information about the broader bridge-playing population.  Selected problems are considered using the evidence of maps.  These maps are tied in the computer to various ACBL databases and U.S. Census databases.  Thanks to Jay Baum, ACBL CEO, Rick Beye, Carol Robertson, Richard Oshlag, and Ed Evers, ACBL, for providing the materials directly to Sandra Arlinghaus, who then created the map sets using GIS software (ESRI, ArcView 3.2) that forges a dynamic link between underlying database and outline base map.  Graphic adjusments of various kinds were made in Adobe PhotoShop or Adobe Illustrator.
The linked materials display data from the ACBL national data base.  If you are looking for local materials related to finding a bridge club, please go to maps created originally by Jim Lahey, former District 12 Webmaster, and maintained by Alan W. Bau, current District 12 Webmaster (http://www.d12bridge.org/).  If instead, you are looking for materials about the broader bridge-playing population, at the regional and national levels, you are in the right place!


Click here to send an email to Bill Arlinghaus
Click here to send an email to webmaster of this page