Alternating card colours in Swiss events
So we normally have alternating card back colours (red black red black etc.) to avoid taking cards from or returning to the wrong board.
In Swiss events, in any given round, this doesn't guarantee that the first board of the set has a different card back to the last board - especially if there is an odd number of boards.
Is there any known technique for avoiding this?
Comments
I can think of two, neither as far as I'm aware that are used. And possibly not practical.
1) Have 3 card colours. I'm not entirely certain this will reduce confusion overall, because there's more variables. Also you'd have to replace a third of the cards, and I'm not sure the manufacturers even have more than two colours.
2) Alternate the colours for board 1 and be careful about the order you lay the boards out in. Which is a little bit extra effort but maybe workable.
Actually this guarantees they will have the same colour with odd numbers of boards.
If all sets go red-black-red-black, yes.
But some might go black-red-black-red...
Even then the sets which start (and end) with a even numbered boards will both be red, e.g. 8-14, 22-28.
If others are confused by Jeremy's comment - I guess black is not a colour. Others will disagree - but not here, please.