[mrdct]

At present there is a 4-pair minimum for a pairs tournament. I have a need to run a 2-pair pairs tournament and fully appreciate that a winner will not emerge.

Basically, I have a 5 table (10-pairs) pairs event being played at a face-to-face bridge club but one of the 9 pairs will be offsite. What I want to do have the absent pair "sit" at the stationary table in a baromtered howell movement and when "real" pairs come to that table they sit at a couple of laptops in the director's office and play against the absent pair on BBO. There are obviously a few security issues, but the prize money isn't overly significant and I'll make the absent pair ineligible for prize money anyway. I'll also need to deal an extra set of boards or two to cope with the barometer movement.

The impediment I have, however, is the 4-pair minimum for BBO pairs tournaments. Would it be possibly to change the minimum to 2 pairs?

[mink]

Even if you had a tourney with only 2 pairs, the real problem would be that at the end of the round the tourney advances to to next board which the players in the director's office should not see as maybe they have to play it face-to-face later.

The following solution is possible even without any software change at BBO:

I assume you are non-playing director. Pre-arrange the boards for the tourney (easy if you have a duplimate machine) and make a lin-file with all the boards. Take a non-barometer Howell-movement where at table 1 the N-S-pair is stationary and plays the boards in numerical order. Assign the absent pair to be this N-S pair. Now you need 3 computers at the playing site: 2 for the pair that plays against the absent pair on the E-W seats of the virtual table one, and one computer for you, the director. Use your computer to open a teaching table and load the lin-file there. After each board played, you, the director, have to click on redeal on your computer in order to advance to the next board. When it is time to switch from one round to the next, just wait until the pair at the other 2 computers left, the click redeal before then next pair arrives.

This way, you need only 1 set of boards at the playing site. If your tourney is so big that you have to play in 2 sections with 2 sets of duplicated boards, you can even have 2 absent pairs, provided you have 2 additional computers for the opps of the second absent pair. The E-W pair that sits at the virtual table can write the results into the traveller sheet the normal way, but as the absent pair cannot check if this is done correctly, you should do the check for the absent pair.

I think this is a great idea for disabled players who cannot come to the club.

Karl

[inquiry]

Run a teaching table... you load the hands for them....