7 Table Mitchell or Howell
7 Tables – a 24 Board Howell or a 28 Board Mitchell – which is quicker?
We start at 7pm and I try to get us out of the door before 10.15pm.
Playing a 24 Board Howell movement being 3 boards less should take less time to complete; it should but does it? In my experience, with the Mitchell movement there is less time taken moving between tables as everyone knows here they are going but crucially, with a 4 Board movement I can make slower players average the 4th hand whereas with a 3 Board movement that last hand is already in play and cannot then be averaged.
What do you play with 7 Tables and why?
Comments
You could consider a hesitation Mitchell which gets you 24 boards and a movement that is easier than a Howell (don't forget the arrow switch though!).
Averaging a 4th hand is better than finishing late, but it's not a great solution since the board is played fewer times and there can be discontent over a pair getting average minus because of this; but 50/50 is not fair either since the non-slow pair is deprived of the opportunity of a good score.
I'd go with 8 by three and be clear about the schedule from the start, as Tim says the hesitation mitchell works well here. In practice 7 4 board rounds quite frequently are about as fast to play though, because you lose less time that way
If you have only three and a quarter hours, I would stick with a 24 board movement of 8x3.
With more time available, there'd be the three quarter Howell of 27 boards (9x3) as well as the 7x4 Mitchell and they take about the same time. Much slower is the Full Howell of 26 boards (13x2) which I would only use if we needed an all-play-all.
Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live
I am a playing TD and in my expereince the more chances they have to get it wrong they will take them and IMO the HM has more many more chances of them getting it wrong, the 8 x 3 Howell has less chances of them getting it wrong because there's a movement card
Make a movement card for Table 7.
I presume the slower members of my club are no slower/quicker than yours? . . . how long would you expect your members to take to get through a 7 x 4 board Mitchell or a 24 Board Howell?
Thanks Gordon - and what would that card look like e.g would it just say -- 'moving pars are instructed to play twice at table 7, first Ew and then NS' AND how do I make make sure that they Arrow switch on last round at Tables 1 to 6. Sooooooo many movng parts!
We use movement cards on every table for all movements except basic Mitchel movements...
These cards have the round number, NS pair, EW pair, board numbers and where each pair goes for the next round... such as:
Next round NS move to EW table 7; EW move to EW table 2
Round 1 NS 7 EW 14 Boards 21-24
Round 2 NS 13 EW 7 Boards 17-20
ETC
We have a bunch of laminated movement cards for different table numbers and movements and if we use something unusual, we print out the cards from ScoreBridge.
I am sure that there will be sets of movement table cards you can download and print off online, should you need them.
Our main session we tend to play 24 or 27 boards and normally we get through the full set, starting at 7pm with a cut-off at 10:15. On our faster (and more experienced session) we can rattle through 25 boards (3 tables, full Howell) in about 3 hours.
Yes, a table card saying something like that for table 7 should do it. For arrow-switching, just announce it before the start of the round and have a look to see that the boards seem to be facing the right way. Any tables that forget to switch can be unswitched in the scoring program.
Hi @Pont
I'll try to attach pdfs of the Table cards and Movement description for you.
7 table hesitation Mitchell 24 Boards
kind regards Steve
As TD I usually announce the Movement just before moving for Round 2.
e.g. The Standard move is Pairs up and Boards down for all tables apart from table 7, where Players arriving at Table 7 they will Play first as E/W, then switch to N/S for the next round. N/S will move to table 1 and revert to E/W.
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. Don't forget the Relay boards are between Table 3 and Table 4
Then Just before the Final Round 8, I ask to pay attention. there will be an Arrow Switch at all tables except table 7.
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I then personally go round and check the relevant tables have switched the boards. Hope this helps.
kind regards Steve
Thanks Steve that's VERY helpful . . . I have spent most of the day trying to do just that and it will be very helpful and of great comfort to see if I got it right or where I went wrong - thanks again (I've put a pint behind the bar for you :) )
Easiest is to print the movement cards out from EBU Score (or, I believe, ScoreBridge), and that way it all links together, whether you use scoring devices, or input the scores from the travellers. Like Martin, we have printed movement cards for all movements apart from straight Mitchells.
After printing up table cards for the 7T 25B Hes Mitchell, I've had 8 tables and 6 tables. I will try it next time I have 7 tables but looking at the many twists and turns in that movement I will be surprised if it is any quicker than a straight 27B Mitchell; we'll see.
Looking at what other Clubs do (an in particular my next neighbouring Club (that play 4 games every week (I have just one game each week)) when they have 7 or 9 tables they simple just do not play the last 4/3 boards. I have always strived to provide the fairest movement but I have to ask myself - is forcing slow players to average boards any fairer than simply not playing that last set of Boards? Which is 'fairest'?
Looking for the 'fairest' movement - ScoreBridge sometimes 'Comments' on a movement being recommended or inferior and I see that there is 7 Table, 12 Round, 24 Board Full Howell in there listed as 'EBU26 and ACBL' - it doesn't 'Comment' with any words like recommended or superior but can I take the addition of EBU26 and ACBL as an inference that it is better balanced movement than others?
The full Howell is the fairest, but also the slowest.