[blackshoe]

Oh, I agree. Six bucks a set seems much more like a reasonable price. But as I said, there is that fear.

[WellSpyder]

blackshoe, on 2011-April-07, 09:11, said:

Oh, I agree. Six bucks a set seems much more like a reasonable price. But as I said, there is that fear.

Or indeed eight bucks. (I don't think your "bucks" are exactly equivalent to NickRW's "pounds sterling" )

[blackshoe]

No, they aren't.

[NickRW]

Eh. I think we're agreed that four of these "$" is low and nine of these "£" is a bit much and somewhere in the middle is about right.

[jeffford76]

The club with a dealing machine around here (Seattle area) charges $15/set to make boards. A couple of the other clubs pay it as it's becoming very hard to get people to play without premade boards and hand records. Some of the other clubs have a person hand deal the boards before the session.

[Vampyr]

jeffford76, on 2011-April-07, 11:46, said:

The club with a dealing machine around here (Seattle area) charges $15/set to make boards. A couple of the other clubs pay it as it's becoming very hard to get people to play without premade boards and hand records.

Blackshoe, this latter might be the case where you live -- if the dealing machine owners decided to charge more, the clubs might be forced to pay it in order to compete.

Quote

Some of the other clubs have a person hand deal the boards before the session.

This does not seem to me to be much of an economy measure. It probably takes only about a minute to deal a hand from a hand record, but two or three to get all the cards in order first. Then there is taking the cards out and putting them back in the boards, taking the boards in and out of the box, maybe checking the hands or at least doing some spot-checks... Even at minimum wage this sounds expensive.

[gordontd]

Our club charges £10 a set, and I don't think that's unreasonable: the machine cost us a couple of thousand pounds, servicing it costs about £200 a year, we pay someone to operate it, we need to replace cards, we duplicate hand records, and we're helping our competitors provide a better service.

When I used to deal boards for a club by hand, it took me about 1 hour a set (without duplicating or paying for the hand records to be produced). Any less than £10 a set and it wouldn't really be worth our while.

[pran]

Vampyr, on 2011-April-07, 12:11, said:

Some of the other clubs have a person hand deal the boards before the session.

This does not seem to me to be much of an economy measure. It probably takes only about a minute to deal a hand from a hand record, but two or three to get all the cards in order first. Then there is taking the cards out and putting them back in the boards, taking the boards in and out of the box, maybe checking the hands or at least doing some spot-checks... Even at minimum wage this sounds expensive.

15 boards/hour was the very best we could achieve when we hand dealt boards from (computer generated) hand records. This included cards from the board, presorting, dealing and cards back to the board.

I don't know how many boards make up a "set"; in Norway $15 (or about £9) at the current exchange rate (plus freight when apliccable) would typically pay the rent of between 40 and 55 pre-dealt boards (for instance 2 copies each of about 25 boards)

[NickRW]

gordontd, on 2011-April-07, 17:49, said:

Our club charges £10 a set, and I don't think that's unreasonable:

You certainly wouldn't get the committee of my club to bite on that! 3 sessions a week = over 1500 quid for the year. After two years we'd have bought a machine for you! Not to mention the time and cost of transporting the darned things. We MUCH prefered to have our own machine.

Nick

[axman]

pran, on 2011-April-07, 18:00, said:

15 boards/hour was the very best we could achieve when we hand dealt boards from (computer generated) hand records. This included cards from the board, presorting, dealing and cards back to the board.

If you are duping by hand you might want to deal straight from an unsorted deck. When I was duping it took about 100 sec per board.

[gordontd]

NickRW, on 2011-April-07, 18:01, said:

You certainly wouldn't get the committee of my club to bite on that! 3 sessions a week = over 1500 quid for the year. After two years we'd have bought a machine for you! Not to mention the time and cost of transporting the darned things. We MUCH prefered to have our own machine.

Nick

Well of course! No club that plays three times a week would pay someone else to do it. But it's not as though we're actively soliciting dealing for other clubs - they ask us, and that's the rate that just about makes it worth our while.

[Vampyr]

axman, on 2011-April-07, 18:32, said:

If you are duping by hand you might want to deal straight from an unsorted deck. When I was duping it took about 100 sec per board.

I would have thought that face-up dealing would be a lot slower than face-down. It seems very difficult.

[mjj29]

Vampyr, on 2011-April-07, 21:31, said:

I would have thought that face-up dealing would be a lot slower than face-down. It seems very difficult.

When I was dealing for the university club here I asked the players to sort the cards at the end of each session - which takes hardly any time for the players as it's ~1 board each, but meant I could deal 24 boards in about half an hour. I also have a mechanism for dealing which does not leak any knowledge of the hands to me, as I was also playing them.