Movements

[Peter W]

I'm setting up a new system for a club that plays a lot of 3-5 table movements based on table cards from various sources, some of which appear to be irregular/non-standard and most of which are not clearly labelled. I'd like to use the Movement Library to check which are in the  'Supplied' set and then use the 'New' - 'User' - 'Define Matrix' route to set up the others. I have two problems: 1) It would be useful to be able to view the Table Cards corresponding to a 'Supplied' movement so that I can do a straightforward visual comparison, whereas it seems like I can only print them. Am I missing something? 2) I haven't worked out how to transfer a set of irregular/non-standard Table Cards to a 'New' 'User' 'Movement Matrix' - is there a simple mapping that I can't spot?

[Mirna]

1. You can print table cards to a pdf printer, but the easiest way to look at them is by looking at the matrix as this is sorted per table/round, where boards are represented with a set letter.

2. You can create a new movement by filling in the matrix. If you click on Help on the matrix screen this will give keying instructions for filling in the matrix. Alternatively you can import an existing 'supplied' movement from bridgemove.mdb and modify it if the movement is similar.
I would think for 3-5 table movements it is quite quick to create a new matrix. The procedure would be -
 - In Movement editor click on User and New
 - Type in movement name - this can be changed later if necessary
 - Enter Number of tables, rounds, sets, boards per set (can be changed later) and winners
 - click on matrix and fill this in - but read Help for keying instructions - Repeat fill, diagonal fill, right arrow key etc

[Peter W]

Thanks Mirna, I had started down these routes but then got confused when I tried to view movements using the 'Scorer'/'Open Event'/'Define Movement'/'View Movement' button sequence - which seems to display in a different format? I think I'd wanted to view table cards for Mitchell variants (set up via the top 'MITCHELL' option on the 'Define Movement' screen), which I couldn't get at via the 'Movement Library' route. Anyway, your reply has set me straight and should make 95% of what I need to do straightforward.

[Mirna]

The Scorer'/'Open Event'/'Define Movement'/'View Movement' stems from the olden days of manual scoring. A scorer would have a bunch of paper travellers in hand and would define a movement. Then before the scores were manually entered, the scorer would check that the correct movement was chosen/defined. This format is therefore a 'traveller' format. Also typically table cards were not printed for Mitchell movements. If you wanted table cards, then you would typically print them from the Movement Library in advance of movement being defined. However I can see that it would be quite nice to be able to see table cards via the event path. Matrix is really a 3 dimensional entity table/round/boardset and perhaps View movement should allow for this. Will think about it.

[Peter W]

Thanks Mirna - I've got everything set up now but when testing have spotted a minor issue with end of round instructions. I set up a 4 tables, 28 boards, 7 rounds 'Howell - Superperfect' movement and set 'Missing Pair' as 6 (the club often ends up with a half table). I then played through the whole movement as a test and everything was OK except that the end of round instructions were incomplete if a pair was to move to a table where they would be sitting out. For example at the end of round 1 on table 4 - pair 4 E/W is instructed to move to table 2 N/S but pair 5 N/S are given no instructions but need to 'Sit Out at this table'. Likewise at the end of round 2 on table 2 - pair 7 E/W is told to Sit Out but not that they need to move to table 4 to do so. In all there are 7 such incomplete messages relating to the missing pair, one per round. At the end of the 6th (and thus penultimate round) table 3 is simply told that it is End of Session (because the last sit out, in round 7, happens there) so pair 7 N/S and pair 5 E/W are not told where to go. We will just have the movement cards on the tables for the time being, so this isn't terribly significant - but I thought you'd like to know.

[Mirna]

Thank you, Peter. This needs looking into. We are working on a new release. Will try and incorporate it into it.
UPDATE - this now works correctly (19 /7/2019)

[Peter W]

Mirna - I'm sure you have lots of ideas and requests for new features but setting up for a small club that uses a limited range of movements led to a thought. Could you perhaps add a 'Favourite' (or equivalent) field to the movements database table, a tick box for it on the Movement Editor and 'Favourites' & 'All' radio buttons on the event Define Movement screen, with the 'Favourites' option filtering the drop down list of movements?

[Mirna]

I wonder if you enter Number of Tables before you look at the list of movements. If you don't, you will get a complete list of movements from the movements library. If you enter Number of Tables first, you will get just the movements for this number of tables. Would this be sufficient to satisfy your requirement?

[Peter W]

Thanks Mirna, I was aware of that behaviour and it does help. I've trained a few willing club members to deal with the system when I'm not available and anything that makes things simpler for them is a bonus. For the new club I'm setting up I've renamed the movements they use to match the names they're used to, and added a * at the beginning of each movement name so they they stand out in the list. It will all work fine on that basis.

[AlaninMY]

Hi Mirna,
I would like to echo Peter's request. I have noticed the same issue when we run a Howell movement with a 1/2 table. For the last round a pair often does not get told where to go. Now we know about it we look out for it but the first time it happened I sent a pair home early!

Also like Peter I have a reserve to run things in my absence and her biggest worry is movement selection. A favourites list would be great.

[Mirna]

Hi Alan,
Nice to hear from you.
The round instructions will be improved in the next release - we are working on it now. However the case of the sitout on the last round will still be there as it is a bit more involved. (I tried it with another scoring program and BridgePads and they have the same problem. Haven't had a chance to test it with Bridgemates.)
One way around it is to not define missing pair at all. So instead of setting up a 4 table Howell with a sitout, you define it as 4 full tables. This way all round instructions will always be there. However when somebody plays against what would be missing pair, they should enter No Play for every board not played. At the end of the session you will get a message "28 scores missing" if the missing pair would have had to play 28 boards. The result calculation is still the same as if you originally entered the missing pair. In my experience people sometimes enter pass instead of no play, which of course is incorrect. You can spot this easily as the message will say "27 scores missing".

Re favourite movements, at the moment I would prefer to leave things as simple as possible, may reconsider it in future. However if you have a set of favourite movements used in the club you can create your own user movements and perhaps prefix the movement name with something that stands out - like Peter put an asterisk in front of the movement name.
To create the user movements that are identical to the ones in the movement library, you would need to import them from the file c:\ClubData\xdb\bridgemove.mdb.
Hope this helps
Mirna

[Reg Hull]

Favourites – My thoughts

I have used Scorebridge and Pairs Scorer/ EBU Score for many years and rarely used the "favourites" function despite having movements in there.
In the main a lot of clubs do not use a vast range of movements and many have a sheet of paper telling the scorer what movement to use for a number of tables. This is despite the having the option of using favourites. However, it gives them the ability to put extra notes e.g. Always put Table 5 in the middle for this movement.

I see at least 4 problems with favourites: -
1)   It's an extra tab. A user has to remember to use “favourites tab” not the “standard.” one
2)   It starts to move away from the simplicity of BridgeScore
3)   What happens if the movement is not in the favourites? Will panic set in because they do not know how to find the “non - favourite” movement?
4)   You blinker yourself to potentially better movements that are available.

By putting the number of tables in and getting the available movements works for me.

[Mirna]

UPDATE re table cards

When View movement via 'Scorer'/'Open Event'/'Define Movement'/'View Movement' button, you can now view movement in the traveller format OR table card format as from BridgeScore release 4.0.0. As from this release you can also view table cards for teams.