[McBruce]

3 tables on New Years Eve, so I switched to +howell+ +rounds5+ +allavail+ +break3+ +bduration=3+ with 4-board rounds. Game begins and the players are really fast even at 6 mins per board, so I removed the break at the start of round 3, changing the description string to +howell+ +rounds5+ +allavail+.

Trouble. Clock now said 72 minutes remaining! I hoped when all pairs finished round 3 that it would end the round and move on, but nope. I first tried reducing the minutes per board to 0, which did not work. The only thing that did work was to go back to the original description and then reduce minutes to 3. Now we were able to move on and finish: our two C-pairs ended 5th and 6th and only the unlucky third overall pair did not win masterpoints!

Lesson: never remove the break, just reduce the minutes per board to something low enough that time will have expired if you want to move on.