[Trinidad]

gnasher, on Oct 22 2009, 12:18 AM, said:

mrdct, on Oct 21 2009, 09:50 PM, said:

In Australia whilst barometers in club games are fairly rare, the overwhelming majority of clubs would use predealt hands for their duplicates as the punters would simply go elsewhere if they weren't getting a hand-record at the end of each session.

For a Barometer-scored event you need one set of boards per table (or perhaps per two tables if you share). Even in a small club, compared with a normal pairs that's an order-of-magnitude increase in the amount of preparation required.

That's true.

I used to play quite a few barometers when I lived in Stockholm and I directed a few too. For the bigger events at BK S:t Erik, like their famous "julkul" before Christmas, they have one and a half dozen suitcases with boards lined up. And when I say "suitcase", you need to think "emigration", not "vacation". As a rough guess, I would think that each suitcase contained about 100-120 "wallets".

When TDing, you pick up the boards from the table during the round, as soon as they are finished. Between the rounds you would bring in the boards for the next round. You would typically have a large stack of wallets on your right hand. You would keep the pile straight by having it leaning against your body and pressing it down with your chin. Your left hand takes the boards of the stack and throws them on the table. (You can't put them on the table, since then you will need to bend and the stack will fall.)

Those were the days!

Rik

[mrdct]

In the barometer pairs events that I've played in, the barometer format isn't introduced until the final when the field is broken down into a final, plate and a number of consolation sections, so you get some efficiency with the boards being able to be physically played in each section. In a field of 28 tables broken down into 4 sections of 7 tables each playing a 13-round 2-board Howell movement, you could actually run the movement with 4 sets of boards if you had boards shared between 2 tables, but for comfort sake and to keep things moving it would be best to deal 7 sets of boards; but we are still only talking about an extra 3 sets on top of the 4 sets you would need anyway for a non-barometer movement.

I'm not sure what the market rate is for a predealt set of boards, but I can't imagine it's much more than US$20 to hire a set of boards that's been predealt.

[blackshoe]

Locally, it's $4 a set Probably more in other places - I know that the pair we had visiting from NYC a few weeks ago were very surprised at our $6 per player table fee. Seems where they play in NYC, it's $18.

[Mbodell]

gnasher, on Oct 21 2009, 02:18 PM, said:

mrdct, on Oct 21 2009, 09:50 PM, said:

In Australia whilst barometers in club games are fairly rare, the overwhelming majority of clubs would use predealt hands for their duplicates as the punters would simply go elsewhere if they weren't getting a hand-record at the end of each session.

For a Barometer-scored event you need one set of boards per table (or perhaps per two tables if you share). Even in a small club, compared with a normal pairs that's an order-of-magnitude increase in the amount of preparation required.

Yeah, although around here the directors generally duplicate their own board sets, and most of them duplicate their next "session" boards while directing the current session. Sometimes they need to do it on their own at some other time. As others point out, for it is 15-20 minutes a set. for non-barometers this isn't a huge deal, although might be tough for a playing TD to squeeze in.

The other (fixed cost) investment is just number of boards for a barometer. As in the materials to have something like 10-20 sets made instead of the 2 board set many directors have.