[Vampyr]

gnasher, on 2012-April-03, 12:07, said:

Can't the caddies do it?

In any case the "waiting forever for the final team" seems like time enough to collect the boards, and then the caddies or whoever can give out the boards for the new round after that forever-long wait, while people are taking their places.

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2012-April-03, 12:30, said:

In any case the "waiting forever for the final team" seems like time enough to collect the boards, and then the caddies or whoever can give out the boards for the new round after that forever-long wait, while people are taking their places.

Although other technology has reduced the amount of time between rounds. At NABCs, they're now using BridgePad in Swiss Teams. They automatically report your IMPs and VPs as soon as both tables finish, and as soon as the last team finishes they display pairings for the next round. No more waiting for the directors to put the pairings onto a board on the wall.

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2012-April-02, 21:10, said:

OK. Misduplication is so rare, though, that it is not a very good reason for not using duplicated boards on a larger scale.

FYI, there was a misduplication of one set of boards in the qualifying round of the Silodor Pairs at the NABC 2 weeks ago. They were using a web movement, with two sets of boards in each section, and matchpointing was being done across 2 sections. In our section, one of the sets had a pair of boards swapped (the cards that should be in board N were in board N+1, and vice versa).

I'm sure ACBL will eventually get up to speed on preduplicating. I think it's only been about a year or so since we started getting preduped boards for all the pair games at NABCs. One step at a time.

[mgoetze]

Vampyr, on 2012-April-03, 12:05, said:

Yeah, perhaps the bulk of this thread should be moved somewhere else. A little help, mods?

gnasher, on 2012-April-03, 12:07, said:

Can't the caddies do it?

These two posts certainly fit well together.

[jillybean]

McBruce, on 2012-April-03, 01:01, said:

...another thread that has morphed past its title...

Yes, my fault sorry.

McBruce, on 2012-April-03, 01:01, said:

It might have something to do with the fact that in District 19, the same person (me) is responsible for producing Daily Bulletins, putting the Bulletins and results pages on the web, and preduplicating all the deals for the pair games ... and that there are only 24 hours in a day.

To heck with dealing machines, we must clone McBruce.
Seriously, why is it only you who has the job of duplicating boards? How do others (UK, OZ, NZ...) manage the logistics?

McBruce, on 2012-April-03, 01:01, said:

Most players here tend to read a lot into the words "Swiss Teams." They expect caddies, shuffling each round, the occasional round-robin (but they are prepared to storm the TDs table if they are made to play two of them), but not hand records. It took the better part of two decades for us to remove the terms "winning tie" and "losing tie" from the vocabulary. It will take a similar time, assuming we start now, to teach players that it's a 7 or 8-board match but they only get two to start, they'll get the boards they need eventually (some might be a different colour), and that it is important to pass boards as soon as they've played them, instead of dropping them on the floor or putting them under the other boards (usually upside-down so they don't accidentally replay them). Trying to make this sea change now simply results in chaos and anger. I know, I've tried, and quite frankly I'm tired of the abuse I get from players who want things as they've always been until they die.

Ok, I'm naive thinking I can stomp my feet and change the entire approach to the game in NA but if nothing changes, nothing changes. How wonderful it would be to have teams events with duplicated boards, a level playing field. Not only could I pore over the hands with my teammates but I could also compare my results to the teams in flight A. Promote the benefits, get people on board and it will happen.
It won't happen overnight, it will take time and there will be problems and disgruntled players, some players seem to enjoy griping more than they enjoy playing the cards. I'm sure people grumbled like mad when hand held scoring machines (BridgePads) were introduced but now you only hear them complain when the directors are slow to get the system started, or if it goes down during a game.

McBruce, on 2012-April-03, 01:01, said:

I think the compromise at the moment for District 19's Regionals is that some of the AX Swisses are running preduplicated boards for the second session, if you are in the top four or five matches (just which matches actually are the top four or five, is a guess -- the results do not come out simultaneously in an ACBL Swiss: ACBLScore matches pairs with similar scores when results are entered). For these AX Swisses they ask me to preduplicate four or five complete sets of 32 for four 8-board matches. In reality, if the players would stop complaining about anything new (or, more likely, blaming it, when their results are not as good as they'd hoped), we could preduplicate two sets of eight for each round to cover the top four matches. But the district has already spent over $5K on two duplicating machines (which for some reason cannot cross the US-Canada border), more extra money to ensure there are enough sets of boards at tournaments (preduplicating in advance requires more boards), and more extra money to compensate me for what I assure you is a very difficult and exhausting week, one which pays me less than directing would. In Penticton last year (a 3200-table Regional) I preduplicated over 120 36-board sets in six days, sometimes eight hours of work, AFTER an overnighter of preparing Daily Bulletins and posting results to the web. Oh yes, and I was sick as a dog all week, too. Adding Swiss Teams to the list of events that are preduplicated would require even more board sets (along with our suppliers entire stock, we needed eight sets of Vancouver's boards last year to have enough) and would require more trained operators to do the job.

It is great that these games get duplicated boards.
The people playing in the top 4-5 teams of the AX swiss are smart people, with a just few cantankerous old codgers so introducing a new board movement shouldn't be insurmountable. Would a couple of "on the ball caddys" hovering around the tables be useful in faciliting this?
The requirement for extra work, equipment and boards would be reduced if we got smarter about sharing boards. I understand that it is unworkable to duplicate boards for individual teams.

Is the cross border dealing machine blockage a problem at the border or a problem between the units?

BTW, I am not suggesting you should or could do this yourself, I know you already go way beyond that of any other director I know.

McBruce, on 2012-April-03, 01:01, said:

At local sectionals we face pretty much the same problem: we need someone else to do the duplicating. I can handle the 12-16 sets for pair games that we need on a sectional weekend by making about half of them in advance and the other half on Saturday morning and between sessions. But during a weekend where I am directing 4-7 sessions, that's about all I can do. For a 40-table Swiss we would need ten sets of boards and significant time to preduplicate them, once for each session. We have just that many sets, but 5-8 of them are in use until we leave on Saturday night. Someone (not me) could come in very early on Sunday morning and preduplicate ten sets of 1-8 in about an hour or so. If they got the first three or four matches preduplicated before the game began, they would probably be able to keep up. But now you have more complications.

I see this would be very difficult as things stand.

McBruce, on 2012-April-03, 01:01, said:

What if ten extra teams show up?

They must have heard that you are providing duplicated boards and hand records?
How likely is this to happen and how do others cater for it?

McBruce, on 2012-April-03, 01:01, said:

What do we do when inevitably someone shuffles and one-quarter of the room follows suit before we figure out what's happening?

I assume the board would be compared as normal and the players would not get a hand record at the end.
Could and probably will happen a few times. This is the same problem as when duplicated boards were introduced to the club games but I think all of the players have caught on now.

McBruce, on 2012-April-03, 01:01, said:

How are we going to handle the huge job of picking up all the boards from all the tables AND putting out the next rounds' worth, in that hectic time when we are waiting forever for the final team to report? I have tried this at the club level in a smaller one-session team game (or Swiss Pairs) at the club, and the collecting of the boards and putting out of the next ones can be a daunting task.

Have the captains to bring the boards to you in exchange for the hand records.
There won't be a huge amount of boards if we are sharing boards, will there?

McBruce, on 2012-April-03, 01:01, said:

Another reason we in this area of the world have not embraced the duplicating machine as much as other areas is that our local supplier makes very nice quality old-style metal boards in beautiful colours that last. Understandably, neither he nor the district is interested in replacing these with the new type that is inserted into the duplicating machine, saving the operator time. When I have to both unload the cards and reload them one hand at a time, the best I can do, and it took a lot of practice to get this far, is about 100 boards an hour. Probably with the newer duplicate boards this can be improved to 125-150 per hour. Although I must admit that I wonder about these boards that open up so the cards can drop into them. Do they last as long as metal boards do? Hinges tend to wear out over time. Ask anyone who ever owned a dot-matrix printer (another feature of ACBL tournaments).

I was going to ask about the dot-matrix printer.

McBruce, on 2012-April-03, 01:01, said:

You really need to give the District time to adapt. They are looking at this new acquisition and noting that it is costing them a fair chuck of money, and while people who play pair games at tournaments appreciate it, it is not exactly producing more revenue in terms of increased attendance, at least not yet. Hand records in team games are not something you can wave a magic wand at and make happen: a combination of player resistance to new things, significant extra costs in equipment and operator labour for the organizers, and understandable resistance by Directors of new and potentially disastrous ways of organizing games, all create some large obstacles.

.
There are many problems and I'm sure other considerations and obstacles that I am unaware of. I also can't comment on the financial and staffing aspect.

[Vampyr]

jillybean, on 2012-April-03, 15:15, said:

I assume the board would be compared as normal and the players would not get a hand record at the end.
Could and probably will happen a few times.

What would the board be compared to -- the correct board? That would be very strange and probably illegal. If the shuffled board had been played a few times, the teammates of most of those who had played it would already have played the correct board.

I don't think we had this problem when introducing duplicated boards in the UK; perhaps David or Robin can comment?

The ACBL are in a fortunate position -- all of the wrinkles have been ironed out by someone -- in some cases probably by everyone. So if the desire is ever there, they can draw from the experience of NBOs who have introduced duplicated boards and never looked back.

[jillybean]

Oh, I was thinking the board would have been shuffled between rounds, after both pairs had played it. If boards are moved between teams before both pairs have played it, obviously there would be nothing to compare.

[Vampyr]

jillybean, on 2012-April-03, 16:04, said:

Oh, I was thinking the board would have been shuffled between rounds, after both pairs had played it. If boards are moved between teams before both pairs have played it, obviously there would be nothing to compare.

I am not sure what you mean by between rounds, but it is only in Norway that they have to resources to ensure that both tables in a match play the same actual physical boards.

[the hog]

Phil, on 2012-April-03, 09:44, said:

I have not been following this thread at all. Titles with the word 'cheating' tend to make me uncomfortable.

Over here, I have never seen pre-dooped boards for a swiss. Well, the exception is the Open Swiss or maybe the 3rd day of the NA swiss, but even then I (believe) they only use pre-dooped boards for the last few matches, and sometimes for only the teams in contention.



You remember the hand you played without a record? Not that difficult if you are paying attention.

All 28, even part scores? I am getting too old for that. Besides if you have hand records you can keep them for a long period of time and go over them when you are deciding where you or your system loses Imps.

[squealydan]

Phil, on 2012-April-03, 09:44, said:

You remember the hand you played without a record? Not that difficult if you are paying attention.

I'm with the hog on this one. I'll be playing up to 120 boards over the weekend in a Swiss tournament. Without hand records, my new partnership's learnings would be restricted to maybe half a dozen memorable howlers in bidding or defence plus a general feel for where our system isn't working optimally. With hand records we'll be able to go through and see exactly where the smaller swings are being won and lost. I'd definitely feel I wasn't getting my money's worth without the hand records.

[mgoetze]

Advice to those wanting to introduce preduped boards in the ACBL: announce often, loudly and clearly: "don't shuffle the boards!!!"

[Trinidad]

Vampyr, on 2012-April-03, 16:12, said:

I am not sure what you mean by between rounds, but it is only in Norway that they have to resources to ensure that both tables in a match play the same actual physical boards.

That is so easy that they can even do that outside of Norway.

You set up four rows of tables. The rows start with table numbers Open 1, Open 11, Closed 1 and Closed 11. These tables share the red board set 1-8. At O2, O12, C2 and C12, they will use the blue board set 1-8. At O3, O13, C3 and C13 they use the green board set 1-8. I think you get the picture.

If you have 16 board matches with two halves of 8 boards, you will let O1, O11, C1 and C11 play the red board set 1-8 in the first half. At O2, O12, C2 and C12 they will play Red 9-16. At O3, O13, C3 and C13, they will play Blue 1-8. That will save you even more duplicating.

Rik

[gordontd]

A nice solution, but who takes the boards from O1 to C11? Surely the players don't go past their team-mates at C1 or O11? And, if you have caddies to do it, doesn't that count as "resources"? And of course you need a room that lends itself to four columns of tables.

[Trinidad]

Does a non playing TD count as a resource?

Here in the Netherlands and Sweden (where I got my TD training) the TDs usually move the boards.

Rik

[blackshoe]

What if they're busy gossiping in the kitchen? Around here that often seems more important than actually paying attention to the playing room.

[Trinidad]

blackshoe, on 2012-April-04, 10:26, said:

What if they're busy gossiping in the kitchen? Around here that often seems more important than actually paying attention to the playing room.

I think a reasonably efficient TD can do both.

Rik

[gordontd]

Trinidad, on 2012-April-04, 10:07, said:

Does a non playing TD count as a resource?

Of course! Unless you have a lot of TDs, I can see this taking up most of the TD's time. Certainly I think we would need to have fewer tables per TD if they were going to move the boards for every four tables. And my earlier point still applies about having four columns of tables.

[RMB1]

When we first played duplicated boards in Swiss Teams in the annual London one-day event, we shared physical boards between the four tables in two complete matches. The tables were arranged in squares, with the tables in a match positioned diagonally, and the eight boards rotated round the tables.

This had some practical limitations: it needs an even number of tables in each row and column, and eight board rounds, and means overhearing the other table in a match is more likely.

[Phil]

As a player, if I had to choose between hand records and having to share boards with multiple tables (like in a relay bye-stand movement that so many directors seem to favor), or having to make the boards and having no records, then I would opt for the latter.

[blackshoe]

Trinidad, on 2012-April-04, 10:55, said:

I think a reasonably efficient TD can do both.

Rik

Perhaps, but I was commenting on what does happen, not what might.