Paper Travellers
Does anyone's club(s) still use paper travellers? Do you have any hints and tips to minimise mistakes on them? Do you penalise for repeated messes? (WB 2.8.2b, but see note 1)
The common "negligence" problems I see are:
- First board scoring on the board-row, not the NS-number row
- Table(s) after a sit-out scoring one-row off
- Partial entries, e.g. omitting declarer or tricks-won
- Illegible entries/corrections
Strangely the result seems to agree with the contract, so that's getting checked. (And if it doesn't, the recorded score 'trumps' the recorded contract.)
Please don't suggest going digital; if we did we'd have everyone sitting EW and never get a game played.
Comments
Occasionally, if the "lady who understands BridgeTabs" is away ill or on holiday, we have to resort to travellers. Because of your first two problems, we have bought blank travellers, where North has to actually write in the North/South pair number as well as the E/W one. We still get errors.
We tried getting East to initial (or at least tick) the traveller but this added exactly zero value, we still had 3H making 8 for plus 120 or similar.
The most annoying is when they write their names on the back of the first traveller and we get John/Mick playing against Margaret/Barbara when we have at least 3 Barbaras, two Margarets, 3 Micks/Michaels and umpteen Johns.
Frustratingly, because the younger of the pair I'm now thinking of is 94, he sits North and makes frequently illegible entries on the traveller - his partner just cannot write at all, so we ensure the North at the next table checks each score at the end of each round.
And we've now ditched curtain cards at last.
The "best" I've seen so far was South on Table 2 calling the TD on round 3, to complain that their row was already completed. Their partner had scored the first two rounds as Pair 4.
To make it worse, North had been using the table number as a mat to lean on when scoring.
I did wonder about asking the sit-out table to complete their travellers (even if EW sit-out) with "SIT OUT" to mitigate #2.
One of the clubs I frequent ask for one of the two completed score cards as well as the paper travellers as an insurance policy.
As I am about to step up to the plate to act as the scorer, I am all in favour of this - although I might spend some cash for a set of bridgemates.
(Any traveller queries, you should at least check that the right boards are at the right table for the right round).
when we have to we use travellers without pre-filled pair numbers and set the scoring program to expect scores in the order played .... that way people have to write numbers in the columns (they do still get it wrong but you know from the order the results appear in which numbers should have played the board that round
Peter Bushby Suffolk