Round vs Tournament Timing

[Dealing_Don]

The timed ACBL tournaments like Speedball are timed only per round and not per tournament. i.e. If a section finishes each of rounds 1, 2 and 3 of a 4 round tournament two minutes early, they still only receive 13.5 minutes to play round 4. This means that they could be stopped from playing their round 4, while others still have 6 minutes left (assuming other sections took their full 13.5 minutes in each of the first three rounds.

 

It seems that there should be a way to allow carryover time to be added to subsequent rounds if a round finishes early Cell phone companies have rollover minutes, why not BBO? :(

 

It seems like the rounds should be timed to end at the same time for every section, regardless of when they started the round (In speedball, these times would be 13.5 minutes into the tourney, 27 minutes into the tourney, 40.5 minutes into the tourney and 54 minutes after the tourney starts). Entire sections could "move" early (as is currently the case) if they finish early. If a section does finish a round early, they would still have until the stated expiration time to finish their next round, and the round after that etc.

 

This should not affect the ending time of the tournament nor affect the fairness as each section is still only alllowed to play a certain number of total minutes for the tournament. They are just "choosing" how to allocate those minutes among the rounds.

 

This should lead to a need for fewer board adjustments and result in an overall better run tournament.