Truncated Match

[Phil]

In the weekly Swiss teams last night, we had seven teams. For 7, The director likes to run 4 matches x 6 boards with a 20 VP scale. The movement is "one up, one down (and compare)" followed by "two up, two down".

 

My partner and I sat stationary at A3 and our teammates played their 1st match at A4. For the 2nd match, our teammates were late getting to A2, but 4EW sat down at A2 incorrectly (they played two of the boards of the set before the error was caught).

 

How would you adjust this? PP to Team 2? Team 4? Pro-rate the VPs in our match?

[bluejak]

It took me some time to realise that you mean an American Whist movement and not Swiss: I think it was your use of the word "Swiss" that fooled me! :D

 

Two boards were unplayable and your team was not at fault. According to Law 12C2A you get Ave+ on each board, and according to Law 12C2B that is 3 imps.

 

Dependent on circumstance the TD might decide team 2 was not at fault [it is not really normal in American Whist movements to check you have the right opponents unless instructed to], or perhaps more likely he will decide they were partly at fault, or even directly at fault. They will thus get +3, 0, or -3 imps per board depending on what he decides. Note that in the first two cases the VPs will not add up to 20 but there is no reason why they should.

 

As for whether a PP is suitable for team 4, we do not often give PPs, but two boards were lost by their action: let us give them a PP of 0.5 VP.

[Vampyr]

Could your team not have played two substituted boards? (It doesn't sound as if you had played the teammates of the table your teammates were supposed to play at.)

[mrdct]

In the first instance I would be docking the TD's pay 25% for the night for not doing his job properly in keeping control of the movement which is particularly important for less familiar movements like this.

 

As for the scoring of the two unplayable boards, both team 2 and team 4 are at fault in that they didn't check that they had the right boards and the right opponents before they started the round, but as the TD is partially culpable, I'm just going to score zero imps on the affected boards and give a procedural penalty to your teammates for the slow play which lead to the whole problem.

 

I don't fully understand the movement. What does "one up, one down (and compare)" followed by "two up, two down" mean? How can there be any comparisons after the first match? Did the TD seed the field somehow to work out which four teams each team would play? Surely it would've made more sense to play a complete American Whist movement with 6 x 4-board matches where you simply go "boards up one table and pairs up two tables" and score-up all six matches at the end of the night.

[Phil]

Dave - my teammates are the two fastest players in the room. If they were lagged from the 1st set, it wasn't their fault. I am usually on their case about playing too quickly.

 

There are no comparisons after one match. We play an entire set of six boards and our opponents take the board to thei teammates for the replay.

 

The whist movement sounds like a BAM movement I've played in. This isn't what we did.

[bluejak]

American Whist movements may be divided up if you wish to allow for scoring. Or they do not have to be. But it is all the same thing.

 

If you are team no 1 out of 7 you can play team 2 then team 7, score if desired, then team 3 then team 6. That is part of an American Whist movement.

 

It is not a "BAM" movement since round robins are played as American Whist whether they are scored as imps or BAM: the form of scoring and the movement are two separate things.

 

A complete American Whist movement - which is what I would run with 7 teams - starts down 2, then down 2, then down 2, then down 2, then down 2, then down 2, then score. The paired matches are the first and last teams you play: the second and penultimate: the third and ante-penultimate [ok, the fourth ;) ]. It is always possible to shuffle it so that you can play one of the paired matches separately which is what they did for some reason.

 

For an odd number of teams, American Whist is dreadfully simple, and can be divided up as you wish, to play 6 matches on the trot, or any combination of two or four matches.

 

As for less familiar movements I though everyone knew American Whist! I stand corrected. :)

[gordontd]

There are no comparisons after one match.

What did you mean by "(and compare)" in your original post?

[mrdct]

I still no idea what is meant by:

The movement is "one up, one down (and compare)" followed by "two up, two down".

[bluejak]

Ok.

 

Let me put it simpler.

 

First match [one up from home table]:

1v7 2v1 3v2 4v3 5v4 6v5 7v6

Second match [one down from home table]:

1v2 2v3 3v4 4v5 5v6 6v7 7v1

 

Now you can "compare", ie return to your team-mates and score.

 

Third match [two up from home table]:

1v6 2v7 3v1 4v2 5v3 6v4 7v5

Fourth match [two down from home table]:

1v3 2v4 3v5 4v6 5v7 6v1 7v2

 

Back home and score.

 

The board movement is down 1 after first match, down 1 after second match, down 2 after third match.

 

To be fair, I would not have described it as "one up, one down (and compare)" followed by "two up, two down" but I am sure this is what is meant.

[Bbradley62]

That's actually a cool movement :-) You could also play the fifth and sixth rounds, giving you a complete round robin, in a format that lets you periodically know the standings.

[Bbradley62]

Two full boards sounds like an awfully long latenes. If EW3 were late getting to A2, is it because they were still at A4, or because they were taking a smoking break? Or did EW4 go to A2 before the round was called?

 

It sounds like you were sitting there waiting for your opponents to show up while they were actually playing two boards at the wrong table. If your teammates were still at A4, then EW5 was also hanging around waiting for a place to play. I'm guessing you had a playing director who couldn't hover to try to speed the slowsters along.

[Bbradley62]

Two boards were unplayable and your team was not at fault.  According to Law 12C2A you get Ave+ on each board, and according to Law 12C2B that is 3 imps.

Would this be subject to adjustment based on what happened at the other table when the boards were first played? If EW2 went down in a cold slam, does Team 3 deserve more than 3 IMPs for the board? Conversely, if NS3 went down in a cold slam, do they now deserve +3 because of the foul?

[bluejak]

Two boards were unplayable and your team was not at fault.  According to Law 12C2A you get Ave+ on each board, and according to Law 12C2B that is 3 imps.

Would this be subject to adjustment based on what happened at the other table when the boards were first played? If EW2 went down in a cold slam, does Team 3 deserve more than 3 IMPs for the board? Conversely, if NS3 went down in a cold slam, do they now deserve +3 because of the foul?

That is a complicated question. Law 86D allows an assigned score when there is a favourable result in the other room. If the score is unusual and obtained by the team who would be getting Ave+ then I think the answer is Yes. Otherwise I suggest just sticking with the normal average scores.

[Phil]

Two boards were unplayable and your team was not at fault.  According to Law 12C2A you get Ave+ on each board, and according to Law 12C2B that is 3 imps.

Would this be subject to adjustment based on what happened at the other table when the boards were first played? If EW2 went down in a cold slam, does Team 3 deserve more than 3 IMPs for the board? Conversely, if NS3 went down in a cold slam, do they now deserve +3 because of the foul?

Naturally, we had two good results. One was +500 against a silly 1N overcall and the other was a game that wasn't obvious to bid.

 

The director prorated the score. We won by six, so he scored it as winning by nine. Obviously wrong, but it didn't matter this time either, since neither of our teams were in contention.

[mycroft]

To be not fair, the way Bluejak describes it is absolutely correct, and "one-up, one-down, two-up, two-down" is a simple and accurate way to describe how a 5-table RR, with comparison after rounds 2 and 4, works.

 

You have to look at the phrase as "E-W, always in comparison with their home table, where their N-S sits".

 

The odd-round switchover spiel is "When you're done with this round, E-W take the boards back to their home table, and go down <X> tables *from there*," where X is how many tables they went up from home for this match. Of course, it doesn't make sense to half the people here, either.

 

Also of course, I don't "Swiss" a 7-table game either (because the Swiss method ends up with two head-to-heads and one three-way, and there is *always* a bad matchup in round 4 in the unfortunate head-to-head); I run 6 5-board matches, and I run it with the compare-at-the-end American Whist League movement (because compare after 2, 4, and 6 takes way too long - my people haven't yet figured out that when they're done, they actually have to report the score).