Dring Dring .... "Yeah?"
"Hi John, can you run the Mens and Ladies pairs for us please. It's an all play all 2 session event"
"Yeah, sure thing. Let me know a couple of days in advance what the final entry is so I can prepare the movements"
Dring Dring .... "Yeah?"
8 tables of men, 9 of ladies, entries are closed"
"Great, I'll make up the movements, and we can score on the night"
Middlesex and London are the two counties from which a large proportion of Internationals are drawn. This is a seriously good, high class field. I'd like to play in it myself, but actually play for London. It's a full 2 session event, playing around 42-48 boards. In the UK we have a superb movement book, and a little research shows me I have almost perfectly balanced movements for both fields and I can afford a late drop-out as it just means a sit-out. Being Middlesex it will be a truly International event with perhaps as many as 5 or 6 Nationalities represented. Here's a little picture of one of the movement cards I made up - the research, preprogramming movements, creation and lamination took me about 4 hours.
Picture here, click Back to read on
Come the day everyone sits down and there are 9 tables of ladies and 7 tables of men. The boards are on the table in the ladies and play has begun. I'm checking for late arrivals in the men, when I'm asked by a pair of ladies "Where do we sit?"
"Excuse me, Mr Middlesex-person, sir. Why have I got 9 1/2 tables of ladies and only 7 of men?"
"Duh! Let me look at the lists. Oh! No!"
Put yourelf in the position of the tournament secretary - you've received a single entry for 2 pairs; Let's call them Minesh & Sivam, Prasanna & Anusha. We know Minesh and Sivam, and it's no surprise to me that our tournament secretary doesn't know his Anshul from his Anusha, although he'd know his John from his Jane. I assure you Prasanna is as much help as Robin. Has the light dawned? We have a pair of ladies in the men's list, and coincidentally a last minute withdrawal of a men's pair. So I've got a 7 table men's competition and a 10 table lady's competition with a sitout, that I've started as for 9 tables and no prepared movement for either.
Over to you!
To cut a long story short, I fudged the 9 tables into 10 by dint of having strange sequences of pair numbers, and a bizarre board circulation, and on-the-fly worked out the 1st session movement for 7 tables for the men. This gave me three hours to work out the second session movements for both sections. I'll not explain how I resolved the problems of 4 sitting pairs of ladies, the fact the local bridge club had stolen all of the County bridge stationery, and the total lack of heating on a cold February day. All this was trivial compared to the grand scheme.
As it turned out, the movements I devised did meet all the requirements and the event went pretty well; but the scoring was a nightmare; my program simply didn't believe the pair and board numbering I'd had to use for the ladies, and so wouldn't construct the movement. I eventually scored it with no names at all and then edited them in at the end. This meant checking everything twice over.
Last Updated on 16 Feb 2005 1100 GMT
by John Probst
