[mycroft]

Time to reread Hitchhikers'. SEP field. Big enough to hide a starship, never mind 3 boards.

[blackshoe]

 mycroft, on 2023-October-15, 11:27, said:

Time to reread Hitchhikers'. SEP field. Big enough to hide a starship, never mind 3 boards.

Heh. Yeah, it's been quite a while.

[barmar]

 mycroft, on 2023-October-13, 14:19, said:

"boards down a table unless I tell you otherwise" seems like a normal comment, and in a Mitchell, or a Web, or a bye-(no)relay, it's fine (though the lengths some able-bodied N/S players go to to not get up and carry the boards 3 feet are *spectacular* to behold), but as soon as all four players get up, it's SEP.

Our club has mostly been having 4-table, and occasionally 5-table, games. These movements have sharing between tables 1 and 2, and two bye stands (one with several sets that come from table 1, and another with one set somewhere in the middle). Table 1 has a stationary NS, so it's easy to train them to do the right thing, but the one in the middle is confusing. And I don't think we have anything on the guide card saying that the boards should be moved there.

[mycroft]

Yeah, for me I run 3 and 4 table (25.27 boards) with "I'll move the boards" and 5+ with "down a table (except at 1)" - but that's the 27-boarder with no relay.

The problem with 5 is that 1 is not the stationary table, so I can't just tell "table 1" to DTRT.

As I think I discussed above, I'm trying a new trick for this: Round 1 I put the boards (upside-down) on a side table at table 1 - it does prompt the players to keep that going. I take the "assembly table" boards and, instead of putting them as a train of 3-board sets, stack them at Table N. The web-trained players are getting that they take the next set off the top and play them; the people at table 1 are getting good at seeing boards upside down at their side and continuing the pattern; I can just swoop in at the correct time and move a stack of boards from 1 to N. It's reducing my "randomly put boards wherever" quotient, and especially the "there's stacks of boards on this table, that must be where they all go" pattern.

[blackshoe]

I once played at a club game where the director ran a web movement (standard procedure for this club at the time - and still, I think). The director brought me some boards and said "when you're done with these, they go out of play, put them on this chair." You would not believe the number of people I had to tell "no, you can't have any boards, these are out of play" or "Get you paws of those boards!"

Actually, you probably would believe it.

[mycroft]

And that is why I learned to tell both halves of that exchange.

"Please leave the boards on the chair when you're done." "Please get your boards from this chair. If there aren't any more, call the Director."

That goes along with my first Web Issue (capitals required), where Table 14 N, having about half a set of boards on the chair carefully (reverse) ordered, searched very carefully through the set for the lowest board number (13 and 14) and played those rather than the two on the top (25 and 26). They got 13 fine; 14 wouldn't enter in the bridgemates because the vulnerability was wrong (it wouldn't let -50 score with all vul). Now, I tell people "play the boards as they sit, please; you are playing them in reverse order").

[mycroft]

So, for reasons (half table, last minute), yesterday we ran the 8 table, 26-board Howell. I did what I said I do here - told table 1 (stationary 16) to just put their boards on the table when they were done (which they did one at a time, so they were all in reverse order. Ah well) and assumed table 8 would understand what to do with a stack of boards by their side.

We had the usual occasional "everybody gets up, nobody touches the boards, next people come in and wonder where their boards are/why they have these boards they've already played", but no issues. We had no "table 8's boards go walkies" or "random boards put where all the other boards are" issues - except for 23-24, which got picked up off the stack, played, and put back on 25-26. I guess the lure of "one set of boards" is even greater than I thought...