[sandiem]

I was running 2 session tournaments today, under vNIBU128, in 3 sections Inter A, Inter B and Novice. The afternoon sections went fine although i set the Novice for 2 boards per round and it decided to play 3 per round!

In the evening I set up so NS in each section in the afternoon played in 1 event called Red and EW in one called Blue for both inter A and Inter B. I set +howell+ and +hm24+ for each and preloaded 24 boards. The A section decided to play a full howell of 34 boards and the B section said there were not enough boards loaded and crashed.

I had to scrap both events and restart, causing a lot of disquiet, especially as they were asked to pay again and it was a national event. Eventually, In order to get it played I just set up for 2 regular mitchells.

I'm sure I set it up right. Was logged on before the start under vNIBU128.

Can anyone tell me what went wrong? The events were #9734, #9758. #9671 & #9709

[diana_eva]

 sandiem, on 2020-August-02, 15:03, said:

I was running 2 session tournaments today, under vNIBU128, in 3 sections Inter A, Inter B and Novice. The afternoon sections went fine although i set the Novice for 2 boards per round and it decided to play 3 per round!

In the evening I set up so NS in each section in the afternoon played in 1 event called Red and EW in one called Blue for both inter A and Inter B. I set +howell+ and +hm24+ for each and preloaded 24 boards. The A section decided to play a full howell of 34 boards and the B section said there were not enough boards loaded and crashed.

I had to scrap both events and restart, causing a lot of disquiet, especially as they were asked to pay again and it was a national event. Eventually, In order to get it played I just set up for 2 regular mitchells.

I'm sure I set it up right. Was logged on before the start under vNIBU128.

Can anyone tell me what went wrong? The events were #9734, #9758. #9671 & #9709

There is no +hm24+ command.

There is something that looks like +hm18+ which is specific to ACBL mostly, but was made available to everyone else. In ACBL land everyone always plays 18 boards.

This is a fix number, it cannot be set to +hmX+ it has to be always 18.

[sandiem]

 diana_eva, on 2020-August-03, 01:14, said:

There is no +hm24+ command.

There is something that looks like +hm18+ which is specific to ACBL mostly, but was made available to everyone else. In ACBL land everyone always plays 18 boards.

This is a fix number, it cannot be set to +hmX+ it has to be always 18.

Thank you. That explains a lot . I don’t think it is very clear in the instructions for Howell that it is only for 18 boards that it can be used.
That still doesn’t explain why the B sections crashed with insufficient boards even though the same boards were loaded as for the A sections.

[diana_eva]

 sandiem, on 2020-August-03, 01:36, said:

Thank you. That explains a lot . I don't think it is very clear in the instructions for Howell that it is only for 18 boards that it can be used.
That still doesn't explain why the B sections crashed with insufficient boards even though the same boards were loaded as for the A sections.

I'm not sure what instructions you were given, so I cannot know how clear they are there.

But this is the "official" help file:

https://blog.bridgeb...small-tourneys/

[Gerardo]

+hm18+ is used to decide between howell and mitchell, and it is fixed at 18 at this time.

The one needed to curtail it is +rounds<number>+, in #9734 case +rounds12+ as you have 2 boards per round and 24 boards.

#9758 was also set as full howell, 7 tables so 13 rounds, so 26 boards needed, didn't have enough boards.

As tourneys were cancelled at the start, no player was seated, and so no player was charged.

If a tourney is cancelled after the start, all fees are refunded.

#9671 and #9709 had 1 board per round rather than 2, so they needed 19 and 17 boards respectively so 24 boards was enough for both.

[sandiem]

 Gerardo, on 2020-August-03, 04:07, said:

+hm18+ is used to decide between howell and mitchell, and it is fixed at 18 at this time.

The one needed to curtail it is +rounds<number>+, in #9734 case +rounds12+ as you have 2 boards per round and 24 boards.

#9758 was also set as full howell, 7 tables so 13 rounds, so 26 boards needed, didn't have enough boards.

As tourneys were cancelled at the start, no player was seated, and so no player was charged.

If a tourney is cancelled after the start, all fees are refunded.

#9671 and #9709 had 1 board per round rather than 2, so they needed 19 and 17 boards respectively so 24 boards was enough for both.

Thanks for that.

Does the +rounds<number>+ only apply to Howells? It seems with Mitchell’s the number of boards you specify is what is played.

As it happens in the 1st novice session I had only loaded 24 boards but it played a 27 board 5 table Howell with no problems. It just added 3 boards.

Why did it do that then and not with the evening B’s which would have needed about the same number of boards?

[Gerardo]

Yes, +rounds<number>+ only applies to Howells.

The first novice session was #9910. Somehow it had 48 deals available rather than 24, so it was able to manage 27.

[m00036]

 sandiem, on 2020-August-02, 15:03, said:

I was running 2 session tournaments today, under vNIBU128, in 3 sections Inter A, Inter B and Novice. The afternoon sections went fine although i set the Novice for 2 boards per round and it decided to play 3 per round!

Regarding the Novice section, note that Howell movements are not strictly based on the number of boards or the boards per round features. It will attempt to run a full howell that has a similar number of boards to the total requested, irrespective of the boards per round option. The only exception comes when the +roundsX+ option is used, but again the boards per round may change if appropriate.

Assuming you set up the session correctly though, it should be possible to arrange any Howell movement of your choosing (note that these "description strings" / "hacks" etc.! are not designed to be user-friendly, they are quick additions to BBO to assist specific users that have requested them without making large changes to the interface.