EBU Score teams error on manually created movement
Hi. We use Bridgemates with EBU Score. We have generated a number of movements for our weak / strong random teams events. Recently I created a new movement for 6 tables. It seems to work, but partway through the session, EBU Score repeatedly gives me the error message Error 9 (Subscript out of range) in procedure SaveNSPlayers of FormfrmSeating.
At the end we can fix it by adding a few players names into EBU Score..
I have compared the new movement to the old working ones, and I can't see anything that appears to be incorrect. Is someone able to help me fix this, please?
The problem has occurred with the 6 table staggered movement, though I suspect that the non-staggered movement also has the same issue.
Thanks
Peter Burns
Chichester BC
Comments
I don't think it's the movement, which seems to be ok. You can always check a movement by saving it under a new name in EBUScore - it will protest if there is a problem there. Is your version of EBUScore up to date?
The Staggered movement is invalid. In Rd 1 you have 6 v 1, 4 v 3, 2 v 5, 3 v 6, 5 v 1, 2 v 4 so Team 2 is NS at both Table 3 and 6! The remaining movement has the same Team at Tables 3 and 6! I am not sure what was the intended, but it has confused the program with an impossible Lineup.
The other nonStaggered movement looks fine.
I am a bit surprised that the validity check allowed this, so that code needs tightening up to disallow saving this movement.
I have just worked out a fix which in fact showed that Team 1 is EW at Tables 1 and 5 in Round 1. All the other Chichester movements are valid.
Thank you for this. Are you are able to share the fix, please, or is the staggered movement just not possible?
These random teams sessions are well supported (better than any normal teams event) because we pair a weaker and a stronger pair together in a team, and the weak pairs only play against other weak pairs, and the strong against other strong pairs. So the movements are basically 2 Howell movements, with the polarity swapped in half of the tables. For 6 tables this means that on the last round all tables require boards 21-25 (2* 5 boards between 6 tables). To make this easier to manage, I just started tables 4-6 on round 3 of the Howell, meaning that they required boards 21-25 on round 3 rather than on round 5, and could share 10 boards between 3 tables.
The Fix was just to the Validity check which shows the movement is not feasible. You cannot have a Teams NS pair or Teams EW pair playing at two different tables in the same same direction in the same round! I think you can redesign the staggered movement such that it is reordered and thus feasible.
I think you've slightly missed the point though Jeff. In a normal teams movement each team would have one pair playing NS throughout and one pair playing EW throughout. Peter wants to do something different: each team should have one pair playing at tables 1-3 throughout and one pair playing at tables 4-6 throughout, but they might each switch directions. As Peter said, it's two Howells with pair N in the first Howell scoring up with pair N in the second Howell (arrow-switching the second Howell so that this makes sense).
For more than 3 tables, Peter's movement also means that each team has one pair playing NS and one playing EW in each round. So it all works fine in the scoring system, except that presumably the TD has to tell the pairs to ignore the movement shown in the scoring devices, and you wouldn't get cross-imps calculated correctly.
But for 3 tables he has rotated the rounds of one of the Howells in order to avoid excessive board sharing. That's ought to work out fine, but it means that now sometimes a team has both of their pairs playing NS at the same time, so it's not supported.
There must be a workaround for this. Is there a way to define two sections and score up between them? Maybe even set it up as a teams of 8 and have the TD mark half the boards as not played?
Failing that, could you artificially double the number of rounds? Have tables 1-3 playing in round 1 and tables 4-6 playing in round 2, with the other pairs "sitting out" (but in fact you're going to play both "rounds" simultaneously)?
You can set up a mirrored movement with two sections, simply by creating a 3-table Howell movement with NS & EW reversed and using that for one of the sections.