[Vampyr]

Bridge clubs are starting to hold online games, and here in England we want one-winner games. I should think that programming an arrow switch, either automatically or that the director can implement would be trivial.

Also some games will be small and requiem Howell movements. I know that there were people running online matches before the lockdown, and it does kind of surprised me but nobody ever wanted an all-play-all. What is surprising is that Howell movements were not available from the very start, but there is some sort of quasi-Swiss movement you have that could no doubt be modified. Just use pair numbers as the criteria for matching up, of course you have to assign directions carefully so as to maintain balance, but we were all doing this before computers were involved in any way, so it should not be too hard.

[Gerardo]

Howell movements are available now for virtual clubs, on demand.

EBU decided all the clubs should have it, so they do.

Arrow switched games are not implemented,
development efforts are focused elsewhere at the moment,
so don't think they will happen anytime soon.

[pescetom]

Gerardo, on 2020-May-01, 02:37, said:

Howell movements are available now for virtual clubs, on demand.

EBU decided all the clubs should have it, so they do.

Is there any reason not to extend availability to all tournaments with a suitable number of tables?
That would be a significant improvement and the hard work has already been done.

[McBruce]

Gerardo, on 2020-May-01, 02:37, said:

Howell movements are available now for virtual clubs, on demand.

EBU decided all the clubs should have it, so they do.

Arrow switched games are not implemented,
development efforts are focused elsewhere at the moment,
so don't think they will happen anytime soon.

To be clear, they are not really "Howell" movements, but they are just as good for online purposes.

The algorithm is: split into maximum 15-table sections, then within each section, the lowest numbered NS stays while other NS pairs go up a table each round, switching to EW after being NS at the highest table, and going from lowest EW to second lowest NS at the other end. I call this the 'volleyball' movement, since I first encountered it in high school gym class when we split into six teams and played a complete round-robin using the method.

Since virtual games have everyone playing the same boards at the same time, this works fine. No arrow switch is needed, but you could probably make an argument that movement balance is not optimal when you don't complete the cycle, but I think the software also distributes the best players fairly well so missing a few pairs doesn't give big advantages. Plus it is simple and fast, a plus with the system handling so many at once. In ACBL virtual 18-board games, I try to run these volleyball movements with 12, 14, 16 pairs or 32 or 34, otherwise switching to a 9-round Mitchell. (We're still under the impression that 18 boards, the minimum for full ACBL masterpoints, is the ideal number since online tournament averages before this all began were much shorter.)

Actual Howell movements are a bit more complicated since they need to take into account a second dimension, that of pairs playing different boards at different times.

[Vampyr]

Could you not have a barometer Howell?

Also, do BBO really seed games? Even games run by a club or NBO?

[barmar]

Vampyr, on 2020-May-04, 20:56, said:

Also, do BBO really seed games? Even games run by a club or NBO?

If the game has multiple sections and it's stratified in the same style as our ACBL games, we distribute players evenly among sections according to their masterpoints (if it's an ACBL game we use ACBL points, otherwise we use the higher of BBO or ACBL points) so that there's a similar number of A, B, and C players in each section.

[pescetom]

McBruce, on 2020-May-04, 20:52, said:

To be clear, they are not really "Howell" movements, but they are just as good for online purposes.

Still sounds good to me, and thanks for the explanation.

But (BBO) are they (or will they be) available outside of virtual clubs ?

[McBruce]

Looks like the Howells are not subdivided into 15-table maximum sections: one of my virtual games got to 20 and it was one section.

I have in my database of games two 16-table, 18-board, 9-round games, one run as a two-section Mitchell (with a revenge round), and one as a Howell. Both paid 2.40 to the first place pair overall. The Howell paid 18 pairs a total of 15.39 points, the Mitchell paid 16 pairs a total of 14.44 points. (Double both figures since each member of the masterpoint winning pairs got the awards.) B and C pairs grabbed about the same number of higher strat awards so the two games were fairly comparable. I'm sticking with Howells.

One irate local "Karen" (look it up) claimed to not like Howells, and after some discussion, it turned out that her problem was that the results list is longer and it looks worse if you have 42% and are 35th of 40, than 32% and 8th of 8. Yes, you read that right: last out of 8 looks better than sixth-last out of 40 with a much-better score. Some people....