Skipping a Round

16248

I was Directing 12 tables yesterday in a Hesitation Mitchell. Not my favourite movement but at least I had a missing pair so I could avoid board sharing.
We like to finish by 10:30 and it was going slowly. Well before half way I could see that we were getting late.
I was prepared to miss out the last round but I remember recently reading that this is problematic with Hesitation movements as all the arrow switches come at the end.
I thought about missing out an earlier round but couldn't see an easy way to do this with EBU Score and BridgeMates. I presume I would have to get all players to move, enter two boards as Not Played and move again.
Apart from the time it would take I was not confident that all would do this correctly. :) In the event we ran ten minutes late and I played the last round with an opposition player wearing a winter coat with a taxi waiting outside.

So my question is : Is there an easy way to miss out a round in EBU Score with BridgeMates?

gordonrainsford

Easiest would be to change the movement so that you only played twelve rounds and arrow switched the final round. You do this by changing the movement in the movement page, taking care to retain all results, then go in to the Bridgemate page and update the movement from a future round that has not yet been started.

16248

@gordonrainsford said:
Easiest would be to change the movement so that you only played twelve rounds and arrow switched the final round. You do this by changing the movement in the movement page, taking care to retain all results, then go in to the Bridgemate page and update the movement from a future round that has not yet been started.

Thanks but that is far too complicated. All my experience so far suggests that any attempt to change anything in Select Movement once Bridgemates have started will end in disaster. I would never touch the Movement Library.

gordonrainsford

@16248 said:

@gordonrainsford said:
Easiest would be to change the movement so that you only played twelve rounds and arrow switched the final round. You do this by changing the movement in the movement page, taking care to retain all results, then go in to the Bridgemate page and update the movement from a future round that has not yet been started.

Thanks but that is far too complicated. All my experience so far suggests that any attempt to change anything in Select Movement once Bridgemates have started will end in disaster. I would never touch the Movement Library.

Then your options are the other solution you have already rejected, of getting all tables to put in two NP results for one round, or finishing a round early and recognising that the lack of arrowswitch was undesirable.

JamesC

What would happen, hypothetically, if you were to simply pause the Bridgewater software and update the movement from round N+1, without changing the movement. Would that prompt the Bridgemates to skip a round?

It occurs to me that devising a hesitation Mitchell with the arrow switches earlier in the round probably isn't so difficult, and may be useful at club level.

Robin_BarkerTD

Update movement updates the movement data not the round.

For Pairs (rather than Swiss Pairs) you should try and update the movement from some round in the future - after the current round and before the round(s) where the movement actually changes. It was sometimes necessary to reread all results after update movement (if 'retain results where possible' did not happen properly).

The biggest gotcha with update movement is if there are multiple sections with different boards-per-round. You want to put an arrow-switch on round 9 of a 3-board section, which is playing round 7. If you update the movement from round 9 you will delete the scores for rounds 9 and 10 which are already in play in the 2-board section.

gordonrainsford

@JamesC said:
It occurs to me that devising a hesitation Mitchell with the arrow switches earlier in the round probably isn't so difficult, and may be useful at club level.

There are some who put the arrow-switch round/s at the beginning of a movement rather than the end for precisely this reason, and EBUScore has this as an option.

gordonrainsford

Thanks ** [Name & original comment removed at contributor's request]**. Welcome to the forums - I can see you will be useful here!

Robin_BarkerTD

** [Name & original comment removed at contributor's request]**: Thanks
Gordon: That might be a feature to use with Swiss events where, in the first session, one section does not play the last match and one section does not play the first match.

gordonrainsford

@Robin_BarkerTD said:
Gordon: That might be a feature to use with Swiss events where, in the first session, one section does not play the last match and one section does not play the first match.

Yes, that seems likely, though we would still have the problem that we either have to repeat the assignments from the unplayed round 1 for round 2, which upsets the calculation of Swiss Points, or have new assignments and create a random set of opponents against whom you can't be drawn. In fact, even with the latter case, it might still give you Swiss Points from the unplayed first match. Something for Mitch to look into when more pressing things have been dealt with.

Robin_BarkerTD

Getting off topic ... but I think we now know how to delete the unplayed round 1 assignment (by marking the teams as missing before doing the manual assignment ... re-assignment ... de-assignment)

16248

@gordonrainsford said:

@JamesC said:
It occurs to me that devising a hesitation Mitchell with the arrow switches earlier in the round probably isn't so difficult, and may be useful at club level.

There are some who put the arrow-switch round/s at the beginning of a movement rather than the end for precisely this reason, and EBUScore has this as an option.

I have found Hesitation Mitchell with User Defined Arrow Switch in the software and may try this next time.
Thanks.