[pescetom]

Weekly we take part in a national simultaneous tournament with computer designated hands. We don't have a dealing machine and our directors are not willing to prepare all the hands in advance, so we get the players to prepare them in a preliminary round and then play a Mitchell movement.
This week we only had 5 and a half tables (11 pairs) which would have limited us to playing 20/16 hands each, not really enough. I'm worried that this might happen again in future. Is there some movement we could employ here that allows everyone to play at least 20 hands, without encountering the hands they prepared in the preliminary round?

[gordontd]

pescetom, on 2018-November-22, 07:51, said:

Weekly we take part in a national simultaneous tournament with computer designated hands. We don't have a dealing machine and our directors are not willing to prepare all the hands in advance, so we get the players to prepare them in a preliminary round and then play a Mitchell movement.
This week we only had 5 and a half tables (11 pairs) which would have limited us to playing 20/16 hands each, not really enough. I'm worried that this might happen again in future. Is there some movement we could employ here that allows everyone to play at least 20 hands, without encountering the hands they prepared in the preliminary round?

Maybe you should enquire of a nearby club whether they could deal the boards for you, or pay someone to do it by hand? I suppose you might try a five-table Mitchell with a rover, playing 6-board rounds. That would at least get you to 18 or 24 boards each, though it's fairly flawed solution. A final thought is to get people to sign up in advance whenever you have a sim pairs, to ensure you get a full number of tables, or have a standby pair to the same effect.

[pescetom]

gordontd, on 2018-November-22, 08:24, said:

Maybe you should enquire of a nearby club whether they could deal the boards for you, or pay someone to do it by hand? I suppose you might try a five-table Mitchell with a rover, playing 6-board rounds. That would at least get you to 18 or 24 boards each, though it's fairly flawed solution. A final thought is to get people to sign up in advance whenever you have a sim pairs, to ensure you get a full number of tables, or have a standby pair to the same effect.

Those are all good ideas although not easy to put in practice here. I don't think a rovered movement is allowed by the sim pairs regulations or supported by the imposed software, but I'll check. The people who would fail to sign up in advance are the same ones who arrive late but also the ones least likely to accept being sacrificed. The nearest dealing machine is in a club one hour's drive away, and only a Director would be authorised to access the deals in advance, so that's much the same problem as getting him to prepare the hands in the first place. He might be happier about supervising someone else paid to do it by hand, though, or even to share the work, especially if we could get players to sort the cards by suit at the end of the preceding tournament which is something else I thought of. Thanks.