[Gerben42]

The side condition was that they wanted to have as many opponents as possible, which means 2-board rounds.

[MickyB]

Ah - I assumed that was because of the perception that if you didn't play against a pair, you weren't competing against them.

IMO 3 board rounds is much better if the movement is well balanced, because it means more bridge and less moving.

[Limey_p]

The "web movement" is way to move boards so that a single large mitchell section will be played, and everyone plays the same boards. The *only* link to it I have seen is http://www.bridgeguy...ary/GlossW.html, scroll down to "web movment". I understand you need two or three sets of boards for 20-25 tables.

The ACBL's Delaware unit (www.unit190.org) frequently use this movment for their monday evening game - it is fun and seems fairer than playing within smaller sections.

So my suggestion for a two session tourny would be:

First session: One section, web movment, 2 bds/round.

Second session: two (partial) howells, one the original NS field & one the original EW.

Another option could be to run a "swiss pairs" - I've never seen one in the USA but I believe they are common enough in other parts of the world. Anyone care to describe this option for Luis?

[mike777]

I am a bit confused what does the Math have to do with choosing the "best movement"?

As usual it seems semantics are most important..what does best mean?

Perhaps "Marketing" to your paying customers is best? "know your customer"

[awm]

Swiss is a pretty random way to run things. The problem is that if you're continually playing against comparable opponents, you expect to have average rounds. If there's one pair (or team) that's substantially the best, they should still come out on top, but swiss events don't do a good job of accurately ranking the lower places.

Of course, one reason swiss teams are very popular is that they are random! Apparently there used to be more Board-a-Match events at regional tournaments here in the US, and as BAM is not very random, the same teams kept winning. People didn't like this, and so they switched to the much more random Swiss Teams format...

Anyways, if you're looking for a result that's somehow fair and accurate I recommend against Swiss Pairs. The only example of Swiss Pairs in recent times in the United States was the junior team trials a year and a half ago, and everyone involved with that was convinced it was pretty random.