A day off in the sunshine

Brighton - Day 4

Today I had a half-day off: scoring only the evening events. Instead I took a "half-day trip" through some childhood haunts and up into the South Downs (a range of hills behind Brighton - now designated a national park). A glorious day and the downs, the rivers and the Sussex villages looking pretty in the sunshine.

There is a lot going on at Brighton: today there were open events, novice events, seniors events and a club TD training course. The EBU Summer Meeting (Brighton Congress) lasts ten days from Friday evening through to the next Sunday afternoon. The first weekend is Swiss Pairs over four sessions finishing on Sunday afternoon, then the midweek events start with one session open pairs each day, an afternoon teams knock-out and non-standard events in the evenings. During the week there is a seniors congress with three sessions of pairs, followed by two sessions of teams. Away from the main hall there is the "Really Easy Congress" (workshops, seminars and bridge sessions) and four days of club TD training, including an assessment on the final day. The second weekend is Swiss Teams with the teams final all day Sunday. And not forgetting midnight "speed-ball" events at the weekend and on Wednesday.

The first "non-standard" event is the "Play With The Experts" Pairs: a simple one-session two-winner movement but you score up as if you are team mates of an international team who played the boards some time ago (as permitted by Law 6D2). There are prizes based on overall ranking, ranking in NS and EW separately, and ranking in each section. The NS and EW scores (in IMPs) are wildly different, so the overall rankings are determined by comparing scores with the average IMPs for each line; this also causes complications for artificial adjusted scores (and inevitably there was one).

I say "simple" movement: in fact we are using "web mitchell" movements that allow 26 boards to be played at any number of tables from 14 through 25. They involve the minimum of moving pairs and require two (or even three) sets of duplicated boards. Although originally two-winner movements, on subsequent days we will be using them as one-winner movements by arrow switching. We think this is the first time these movements have ever been used in this country.

The scoring program copes with the basic structure of "Play With The Experts" admirably. All I had to do was calculate the artificial adjustment and the average IMPs for each line for the overall ranking. I was still tabulating all the prizes when the hotel staff came to turn the lights out in the hall!

One player had psyched and subsequently gone for 2200. However there was a potential infraction by his opponents on the hand but the TD had ruled "result stands". The player was considering appealing the ruling and came to me to find out how much prize money he could win if he won the appeal. He quickly decided that the (modest) prize money he stood to win was far from enough compensation to exposing his result at the table to greater public notice. Another satisfied customer(?)