[BudH]

I've spent the better part of a week creating some external ACBLscore game movements which are Hesitation Mitchells to deal with 7 1/2, 11, and 11 1/2 tables which when I get to use these, I am looking forward to all the complaints I will be receiving. (But anything is better than that H8ROVER ridiculous 7 1/2 table movement.) As is likely at other clubs, these players DETEST change and "new fangled" movements. However, I have found after some exposure a few times, the complaints lessen.

Because our club unfortunately has tables arranged like:

....9..10..11
8...7...6...5
1...2...3...4

I have made Table 1, near the Director's desk, the pivot table, to make it much easier to monitor the pair movements there.

[Side note: I am trying to arrange 9 and 10 table games by eliminating the Table 6 position in the diagram above and using a far more normal circular type pattern - again, with grumbling from some players who didn't even try to give me a reason they were against it!]

After arrow switching a standard 9-table Mitchell last week in an NAP game with overall awards and listening later to some mild complaining, I am thinking it might be better to get the arrow switch over with in the first round (or two) and let everyone enjoy the rest of the session. This also would ensure when I hand boards out that the arrow switch is made before I give a table their boards.

Any thoughts on having the arrow switches at the beginning instead of the end of a session in a Scrambled Mitchell?

[gordontd]

BudH, on 2015-July-17, 20:33, said:

Any thoughts on having the arrow switches at the beginning instead of the end of a session in a Scrambled Mitchell?

It makes no difference, so do whatever keeps your players happy.

[BudH]

I just realized a good reason for the early arrow switch. Despite warnings to players about taking care to put the correct compass direction in the Bridgemates, surely at least 1 of 44 (first two rounds of 11 table Hesitation Mitchell) will be entered incorrectly due to the arrow switch - but the Director can then check contracts entered for errors and correct them after arrow switching is finished.

[GreenMan]

Also, seems to me the arrow switch is more likely to happen properly early on than late when people are tired and may not pay attention to unusual instructions and some tables have fallen behind.

[BudH]

The biggest problem I forsee is having stationary pairs put their ACBL numbers as North-South and not as East-West due to them playing East-West cards the first round. (usually I have players play the first board to get the game started and then enter Bridgemate player information since I will have activated the Bridgemates a few minutes after start of play)

[lamford]

"Am I bovvered?" - Lauren Cooper

[FrancesHinden]

I think the problem with having it early is that one or both of two things will happen:
- if you do it on the first round, people will not understand who is NS and who is EW for the remainder of the session. Particularly if you arrowswitch two rounds.
- you will get lots of people asking on later rounds if they need to arrowswitch or not, or continuing to do it

[blackshoe]

BudH, on 2015-July-19, 03:22, said:

The biggest problem I forsee is having stationary pairs put their ACBL numbers as North-South and not as East-West due to them playing East-West cards the first round. (usually I have players play the first board to get the game started and then enter Bridgemate player information since I will have activated the Bridgemates a few minutes after start of play)

Not all that familiar with bridgemates (or bridgepads either, though that's what we use here). So I don't know for certain if this will work, but... If you're going to arrow switch, the easiest way to avoid this problem would seem to be to assign pair numbers 1 through N (N being the number of tables) to the pairs who start NS at those tables, and pair numbers N+1 to 2N to the EW pairs. IAC I don't think the devices will care, when you arrow switch, that a pair who started as NS is suddenly EW for a round. It's the scoring program that needs to care, and I know that ACBLScore can handle arrow switches.

[BudH]

Had 11 tables in my club game I directed, so for the first time I used my 11 Table, 12 Round Hesitation Mitchell with Round 1 ONLY switched (one round switched is reasonable, since two rounds switched is too much by about the same degree as one round is too little).

I definitely had the Bridgemate situation wrong for the player number entry. The stationaries should have put themselves in as East-West but I told them otherwise. This caused me significant time in changing all the ACBLscore player names and then changing all the names in the Bridgemate software for 40 individuals (all but the pivot table).

Good news was I heard some positive comments from players about not using the typical 9-round, 27-board, miss two opponents and two board sets movement. We also discussed the game with our game directing staff afterward at a monthly meeting and it was agreed we would try to use that movement most of the time if the director felt comfortable with it. (Several were playing in yesterday's game and experienced the pivot table so now are aware of how the movement works.)

I decided the player number entry problems at the start outweigh the "director has time to see who screwed up the compass direction in switched round contracts and correct them before the end of the game if I switch the first round instead of the last round".

So I am going back to last round(s) switched and our other directors agreed when they say how much I had to correct with those player names!

[Vampyr]

It is a problem that players often don't hear or listen to announcements, but that seems to be outweighed by the problems you experienced! Did you also have trouble with players being unsure which pair was to move after Round 1?

[BudH]

Player movement was never an issue.

Having moved the pivot table to Table 1 next to the Director station so I could easily coach, I found the NS players coached their EW opponents!