[lukasz]

Is it possible to introduce the Howell movements in small tourney's?
Some tourneys have 6 pairs and 5 rounds and are not swiss or survivors -
so NS's play 2x with some EW's...

[Gerardo]

Nah, f2f movements make sense f2f, where board duplication costs are high.
Online, there must be better things, taking advantage of the zero cost board duplication.

[Elianna]

Actually, I don't believe that Howell movements were meant to save on board duplication (if I recall correctly, they don't) but they allow all of the field to play each other (or for some Howells, most of the field). And as Lukasz pointed out, if you're playing in a small tournament (say 6 or 8 pairs) then it might be more fun to play against ALL the other pairs, instead of a bunch of boards vs. the same half of the field.

[hrothgar]

Gerardo, on Jun 10 2005, 05:27 AM, said:

Nah, f2f movements make sense f2f, where board duplication costs are high.
Online, there must be better things, taking advantage of the zero cost board duplication.

Issues like board duplication are incidental to bridge movements.

Bridge movements are designed to minimize variance. This can be achieved by ensuring that each pair is matched against every other pair in the same section using a fully meshed movement.

In the "online" environment, the main issue is balancing convenience versus accuracy.
Most of the movements that I see in online bridge are designed to produce reliable torunaments and minimize down time. Producing "accurate" tournament seems to be incidental...

[MickyB]

Yes, it would be nice to see Howell or Mitchells with an arrow switch - the current Mitchells basically have two separate fields and two winners.

Unlike F2F tournaments, it is not uncommon to have 8 board tourneys involving 40 pairs, wouldn't surprise me if it is not at all possible to produce a fair movement for these.

Some of Dr John Manning's work on the fairness of movements can be read on Chris Ryall's site.

[helene_t]

Now I'm confused - I thought that you were guaranteed to meet different opponents except in unclocked tournaments?

[inquiry]

helene_t, on Jun 10 2005, 08:43 AM, said:

Now I'm confused - I thought that you were guaranteed to meet different opponents except in unclocked tournaments?

Play in a seven round pair event on BBO with four tables sometime, and you will see the flaw in this logic.

[MickyB]

Yup - the fifth round will be against your first opps

[pigpenz]

inquiry, on Jun 10 2005, 07:45 AM, said:

helene_t, on Jun 10 2005, 08:43 AM, said:

Now I'm confused - I thought that you were guaranteed to meet different opponents except in unclocked tournaments?

Play in a seven round pair event on BBO with four tables sometime, and you will see the flaw in this logic.

very true.....thats the problem with small tourneys.....even at matchpoints it becomes more BAM......imps even more unfair as the hands that have the possiblity of creating swings will not be fair to everyone it will depend on what where and when.

[Gerardo]

hrothgar, on Jun 9 2005, 11:45 PM, said:

Gerardo, on Jun 10 2005, 05:27 AM, said:

Nah, f2f movements make sense f2f, where board duplication costs are high.
Online, there must be better things, taking advantage of the zero cost board duplication.

Issues like board duplication are incidental to bridge movements.

Bridge movements are designed to minimize variance. This can be achieved by ensuring that each pair is matched against every other pair in the same section using a fully meshed movement.

Yes, but online you can use the simpler (IMO) round robin. f2f movements take into consideration the boards at each table, we don't need to do that. RR also balances directions (any pair half at NS, half at EW). Not sure, but bet any pair compares with any other pair the same number of times.

At this point the movements in BBO are very simple (no change of direction, swiss(-like) with playbacks, unclocked will always have playbacks, indys can have several playbacks, etc). I think that will be addressed someday, I don't know when though.

When doing that, I'd go for a round robin rather than a traditional f2f movement. I may be biased by background though (got interested on this while playing chess, which don't have the boards issue, so I understand well the RR, also the swiss (done by hand), which is more complex on chess, because you must alternate colors (think it like any pair must switch directions at each turn, which 2 in a row in same direction allowed if needed (you must balance later) but not 3 in a row). It can be done without playbacks.

Now, think about an f2f swiss PAIRS for, say, 50 tables, and you'll see my point about board duplication costs. Here, zero cost just makes it possible, but I think there are better movements than Mitchell/Howell/etc on a zero cost environment.
For example, for fully meshed, round robin.

[redfish32]

They have already done it, we played a BBO Howell yesterday.

[gordontd]

redfish32, on 2020-May-09, 09:34, said:

They have already done it, we played a BBO Howell yesterday.

That's what comes of responding to a post 15 years after it was written