[BudH]

Monday: NAP club qualifier, 11 full tables, used 11 table 12 round Hesitation Mitchell with Table 1 as the Pivot Table and arrow switch for ONE round (the first round)

Wednesday (today): NAP club qualifier, 11 1/2 tables, used 12 table 13 round Hesitation Mitchell with Table 1 as the Pivot Table and Pair 1 (NS 1) as the phantom to maximize stationary pairs (yes, Pair 2 NS would prevent board sharing - our players don't mind - and having only 10 stationary pairs with 13 moving pairs would be tight considering I needed to seed the field and the lack of mobility at this club), last TWO rounds arrow switched

With the board sharing today, I made very frequent forays into our novice/intermediate Section B to borrow many boards used at the sharing Tables 1 and 2 to assist in keeping the pace of play up.

Observations:

1. Despite making multiple announcements emphasizing (begging!) to please confirm the correct compass direction on the switched rounds, someone still is going to screw it up. I just received a phone call about (another) compass error that happened in today's game in the last round. I'm being blamed by some due to "my silly arrow switch". This definitely shows a disadvantage of having an arrow switch at the end of the game.

2. I think Monday's game where I switched rounds at the start to give me a chance to check for errors after switching back to normal would be worth it if you were certain the initial ACBL player ID number was not screwed up when players did not know whether to put themselves in as East or West. (Now I know if you ever switch the first round, the stationary pairs do need to put themselves in as East-West when entering player numbers.)

3. Due to the above, there could be an advantage in switching the third or fourth round - but you know someone will screw it up by not switching back properly, so that isn't practical.

4. The 11 1/2 table game definitely has more chances for Director error than the 11 table game. With 11 tables, a SINGLE set of boards is on the bye stand and there is NO board sharing. In the 11 1/2 table game, there are TWO sets of boards on the bye stand (which most of our directors have never seen and that all by itself scares them) and there is board sharing at Pivot Table 1 and Table 2. There are two sitouts at the Pivot Table (first and last round) plus no board sharing Round 2 due to NS 2 having a sitout, so only rounds 3-12 is there board sharing.

5. I made a guide card for the Pivot Table 1 and I found very good coaching by the Table 1 NS pairs telling the EW pairs to follow them into the NS seats for the next round.

6. One or two other directors in our group played today and this past Monday and experienced the Pivot Table and are willing to give the Hesitation Mitchell a try (especially if I can be a phone call away), but more than half I doubt will try it - unless a few other directors with some experience are there to coach.

7. The arrow switch was a complaining point for some players, but the movement itself was no problem for any of the players.

8. I was EXTREMELY tempted to set up today's 13 round game with the last round switched ONLY instead of two rounds switched, so there would be reduced chances for player error. None of the players would know you should switch at least 1/8 of the boards and it would certainly be easier on me and any other director using this movement in the future to have only one round switched. But I would know. (We did switch only one round in Monday's 12-round game. I decided 1/12 = 8.33% was close enough to 13% which is about the desired switched round ratio and 1/6 = 16.67% which isn't that much closer to 13%. But for the 13 round game, 1/13 = 7.69% is too far away from to 1/8 for my taste so I went with the "standard" last two rounds switched.)

9. As noted above, it is extremely tempting to arrow switch one round only no matter how many rounds are being played, knowing for a large number of tables it isn't enough, and perhaps months from now when the concept has been more readily accepted, going to the last TWO rounds switched in a 12x2 or 13x2 movement.

10. I made an error in having the two slowest pairs playing East-West starting at consecutive table. That meant they met each other and also a time when they needed to share boards.

11. We did have one player who asked me yesterday if we were using the arrow switch today, she would not be playing. I told her it was extremely likely for an NAP game. She insisted more players received masterpoints when you did not arrow switch. (I checked later and did not find an appreciable difference.) Thanks to her not playing, I was able to try out the 11 1/2 table Hesitation Mitchell, otherwise we would have been running a straightforward 12x2 bye stand and share. (I try not to use the word relay because outside ACBL that is the term for the bye stand.)

Bud H

[WellSpyder]

Quote

She insisted more players received masterpoints when you did not arrow switch. (I checked later and did not find an appreciable difference.)

I don't know how masterpoint awards are determined in your part of the world, but over here (England) you would get the same number of players getting them - one third of the field. (It is possible that rounding effects give one more pair winning points in the two-winner movement than in the one-winner movement.)

Much more to the point, I would have thought, though, is the actual number of masterpoints awarded, rather than the number of people they are given to. I think this is something like three times as high in the one-winner movement! That sounds like a pretty good argument for arrow-switching to me.

To understand why this is, look first at the second sixth of the field - ie the bottom half of those receiving MPs. These people get exactly the same number of MPs as if they were in the top third of a field half the size - eg in a two-winner movement. But all the top sixth of the one-winner movement get more MPs than this, and therefore more than if they were in the top third of the other half of a two-winner movement.

[campboy]

BudH, on 2015-July-22, 16:50, said:

8. I was EXTREMELY tempted to set up today's 13 round game with the last round switched ONLY instead of two rounds switched, so there would be reduced chances for player error. None of the players would know you should switch at least 1/8 of the boards and it would certainly be easier on me and any other director using this movement in the future to have only one round switched. But I would know. (We did switch only one round in Monday's 12-round game. I decided 1/12 = 8.33% was close enough to 13% which is about the desired switched round ratio and 1/6 = 16.67% which isn't that much closer to 13%. But for the 13 round game, 1/13 = 7.69% is too far away from to 1/8 for my taste so I went with the "standard" last two rounds switched.)

I think that is the wrong way to think of it. If you arrow-switch the last two rounds, you're switching a bit more than the ideal amount, which would be more like one and a half rounds. So if some players forget to switch, that actually helps! (It's also worth being aware that 1/8 is a back-of-an-envelope approximation which is actually a slight underestimate.)

[campboy]

WellSpyder, on 2015-July-23, 01:31, said:

I don't know how masterpoint awards are determined in your part of the world, but over here (England) you would get the same number of players getting them - one third of the field. (It is possible that rounding effects give one more pair winning points in the two-winner movement than in the one-winner movement.)

Much more to the point, I would have thought, though, is the actual number of masterpoints awarded, rather than the number of people they are given to. I think this is something like three times as high in the one-winner movement! That sounds like a pretty good argument for arrow-switching to me.

Unless something's changed, in the EBU you give the top third of the field MPs in 6-point increments for 1-winner, and the top third of each subfield in 10-point increments for 2-winner. This works out about the same. For example, with 12 full tables playing a 1-winner movement you get awards of 48, 42, 36, 30, 24, 18, 12 and 6, for a total of 216. Playing a 1-winner movement you would get two each of 40, 30, 20 and 10, for a total of 200. As you say, this is the same number of awards in each case.

[WellSpyder]

campboy, on 2015-July-23, 02:44, said:

Unless something's changed, in the EBU you give the top third of the field MPs in 6-point increments for 1-winner, and the top third of each subfield in 10-point increments for 2-winner. This works out about the same. For example, with 12 full tables playing a 1-winner movement you get awards of 48, 42, 36, 30, 24, 18, 12 and 6, for a total of 216. Playing a 1-winner movement you would get two each of 40, 30, 20 and 10, for a total of 200. As you say, this is the same number of awards in each case.

Oh. You may be right. I don't ever actually have to do this, and I don't think I've played in a two-winner movement for many years. But I thought my experience as a recipient in the past was that each sub-field was treated exactly the same as for a 1-winner movement, ie in your example awards of 24, 18, 12 and 6 rather than 40, 30 , 20 and 10. (This would certainly imply a higher total number of masterpoints awarded in the one-winner case, though not, I notice by as high a ratio as I claimed in my earlier e-mail.)

[axman]

BudH, on 2015-July-22, 16:50, said:

Monday: NAP club qualifier, 11 full tables, used 11 table 12 round Hesitation Mitchell with Table 1 as the Pivot Table and arrow switch for ONE round (the first round)

Wednesday (today): NAP club qualifier, 11 1/2 tables, used 12 table 13 round Hesitation Mitchell with Table 1 as the Pivot Table and Pair 1 (NS 1) as the phantom to maximize stationary pairs (yes, Pair 2 NS would prevent board sharing - our players don't mind - and having only 10 stationary pairs with 13 moving pairs would be tight considering I needed to seed the field and the lack of mobility at this club), last TWO rounds arrow switched

With the board sharing today, I made very frequent forays into our novice/intermediate Section B to borrow many boards used at the sharing Tables 1 and 2 to assist in keeping the pace of play up.

Observations:

1. Despite making multiple announcements emphasizing (begging!) to please confirm the correct compass direction on the switched rounds, someone still is going to screw it up. I just received a phone call about (another) compass error that happened in today's game in the last round. I'm being blamed by some due to "my silly arrow switch". This definitely shows a disadvantage of having an arrow switch at the end of the game.

Bud H

Give reusable arm bands to NS so that when you check for orientation it will be easy to figure out that everyone has got it right before they move.

regards
axman

[BudH]

The phone calls were about data entry errors (wrong contract compass position) during a switched round.

The players were playing with the correct cards - but despite my warnings, Bridgemate data entry and opponent verification were flawed.