[avonw]

A question directed to players who have been active in recent large ACBL tournaments:

When you took your cards out of the boards at the start of a match, were the first-time-used cards sorted?

In other words, did you take your cards out at the start of a match and find the hand was sorted, in suits, high-to-low (ace possibly low; ie KQJ...32A)?

[Mbodell]

Generally no. I certainly don't remember that ever. But I tend to count my cards face down in a way that may rearrange them (counting 3-3-3-4) so maybe I just never notice.

[inquiry]

In tournaments where the TD passes out hand records and the players duplicate the boards and then pass them on to the next table, the hands are almost always in suits for the first round of play, for obvious reasons.

For tournaments where they use dealing machines to duplicate the boards, the cards are not in suits.

[barmar]

Almost never seen this. If it's the first session of a tournament, and it's a team game where we shuffle and deal (few ACBL tournaments use predealt hands for Swiss Team or KO), they hand out new decks still in the boxes. It's pretty rare that they distribute suited decks in duplicate boards.

[RMB1]

inquiry, on 2014-August-10, 19:25, said:

For tournaments where they use dealing machines to duplicate the boards, the cards are not in suits.

They will be in suits if the hands were made from new packs (and the new packs come sorted).

[gordontd]

RMB1, on 2014-August-11, 05:17, said:

They will be in suits if the hands were made from new packs (and the new packs come sorted).

The problem with this being the case is that the packs (at least the ones we use here) have A next to 2 and so the players immediately move their aces (and no other cards) so that everyone can tell how many aces the other players have!

[Vampyr]

gordontd, on 2014-August-11, 06:14, said:

The problem with this being the case is that the packs (at least the ones we use here) have A next to 2 and so the players immediately move their aces (and no other cards) so that everyone can tell how many aces the other players have!

Then perhaps it is best to count the cards as mbodell above (I do it this way too). This way several cards will have to be moved.