[pescetom]

Apologies that this is not a ruling issue, but I did often ask for a f2f Director's forum and I do think that the right people will read here.

I was intrigued by this recent post on that other forum, both because OP must have been directing before most here were born and because he had an insight half a century ago that has been lost and could even remain so.
Unless I am missing something this seems a fine solution for clubs where players are familiar with Mitchell, want no sharing and want to play all the opponents, but get home before midnight.
Does anyone see a fly in the ointment, besides having to duplicate two full sets of boards?

[barmar]

The "Offline Bridge" forum is usually used for f2f directing discussions.

[pescetom]

Fair enough, please move it if you wish.

Any thoughts about the movement?

[blackshoe]

I don't mind director questions here that aren't strictly about rulings, as long as there aren't too many. :-)

[mycroft]

Looks interesting, but I don't need another one; I might just do that instead of the bye-relay if I ever do a 14x2, but I'm never doing a 14x2 :-).

[pescetom]

mycroft, on 2026-February-19, 20:54, said:

Looks interesting, but I don't need another one; I might just do that instead of the bye-relay if I ever do a 14x2, but I'm never doing a 14x2 :-).

I was intrigued by it for the much more basic 6 table club tournament.
Sharing is too much of a hassle for the players, keeping the players on time in a full Howell is too much of a hassle for Director.
Duplicating two sets seems a fair price to play (especially if you have a player that needs braille cards anyway).
Of course you need it possible in the scoring program, I asked.

[mycroft]

If you have two sets, just do the bye-relay (/relay-share, depending on your flavour of English) with one set running through 1-3, and the other running through 4-6. Same work as the "half-odd", just a different set of boards on 4-6 (17-24 and 1-4 rather than 9-12, 5-8, 1-4).

[pescetom]

 mycroft, on 2026-February-21, 00:20, said:

If you have two sets, just do the bye-relay (/relay-share, depending on your flavour of English) with one set running through 1-3, and the other running through 4-6. Same work as the "half-odd", just a different set of boards on 4-6 (17-24 and 1-4 rather than 9-12, 5-8, 1-4).

Yes I guess that works too, although it's less elegant.
Thinking about it, I could probably use Relay-Share (sic) to play the braille boards at table 1 only and start with non-braille boardsets 1 to 5 on tables 2 to 6? I've never been willing to duplicate two stacks just to avoid playing with braille cards at all tables, but if it also brings the fruit of a non-skip Mitchell then I guess it is worth a try.

[Come on Canada, 0-1]

[mycroft]

Yes, you can absolutely have one set of boards at one of the share tables and run the rest through (whether it's easier for table 2 to understand "send boards to 6" or table 1 "send boards to 5" is up to you). You lose when there's a fouled board (the braille card table gets a totally artificial score), but win if there are people who hate playing the braille boards, or if they wear more with more play. Remember the bye-stand table (and the instructions to the players on either side) though!

(this note added primarily to state that we are fine, we expect to *be* fine, and yes, it's a little scary)

[pescetom]

 mycroft, on 2026-February-23, 21:20, said:

Yes, you can absolutely have one set of boards at one of the share tables and run the rest through (whether it's easier for table 2 to understand "send boards to 6" or table 1 "send boards to 5" is up to you). You lose when there's a fouled board (the braille card table gets a totally artificial score), but win if there are people who hate playing the braille boards, or if they wear more with more play. Remember the bye-stand table (and the instructions to the players on either side) though!

Thanks, that is as I imagined: I would send boards from table 2 to 6 as they are both close to Director's seat. The bye-stand table at this point is effectively just a pending boardset at table 6, I guess? We usually have the boards not in play on a side table anyway. I would print out the sequence for tables 6 and 1 and print warning notes for EW at tables 1 and 2, at least the first time.

[My note was about the Olympic ice hockey final... but yes]

[mycroft]

Bye-relay (relay-share), 6 tables:

Pick two tables to share boards. With 2 sets of boards, it doesn't matter, so "standard" is 1 and last (or 1 and 2). With 1 set of boards, pick two consecutive tables that play fast and can understand "when you're done each board, put it on the chair. DO NOT WAIT to finish both." Expect them to not do it anyway until the other table asks for boards and the director rips the bottom one out from under the one played and reminds them that if they don't want to be distracted again, "when you're done EACH board, put it on the chair".

The bye-stand is between the tables *halfway around the room* from the share. So, the easy way to remember it is that bye-stand is between n/2 and n/2+1 (which means that the share is between 1 and last) - so here, share 1 and 6, bye-stand between 3 and 4. If you do 1 and 2, the bye stand is between *4 and 5* (2-3-4, 5-6-1). (Note: this is why I mentioned that if you weren't going to do two sets of boards circulating between 3 tables (and tell 1 and 4 to just keep boards, the director will move them), you needed to ensure that 3 and 4 know to use the bye-stand.)

So, theory out of the way, the way you seem to want to run this is:

• Pair needing braille cards N-S at table 1 with the entire case. Tell them to keep the boards, do not pass them anywhere.
  
• other boards go out 5-8(2), 9-12(3), *17-20*(4), 21-24(5), 1-4(6).
  
• boards 13-16 go on a bye-stand between 3 and 4.
  
• N-S table 2 is told to give their boards to 6, not 1.
  
• N-S table 3 is told to play their boards in order, and get them from the bye-stand - do *not* accept boards from N-S 4.
  
• N-S table 4 is told to put their boards on the bye-stand - do *not* give them to table 3.
  
• monitor the first round board move - better than even odds that one of the four N-S will do the wrong thing. My favourite is N-S just sticking the boards on their side table rather than on the bye-stand and round 3 the director trying to find boards. "N-S doesn't mean you are guaranteed to sit in your seat except to get coffee, you do sometimes have to actually get up." The worst, of course, is when table 3 accepts 17-20 from table 4 and only looks when the travellers show the wrong cards for 13 :-).

[knew what you were saying; thought about starting a new water cooler thread; decided I'd just put the message in my first post back after *flying from Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara Saturday* - when they finally fixed the internet.]