[TMorris]

At the club I play at this question is irrelevant. There are enough people unable to move (or at least move very easily) that sitting NS if you can actually move is very unlikely. I play there about 5 times a month and so far this year have sat NS 3 times. (If you sit at a table where both pairs can move then you toss for seating rights but at least half the time you will either be asked to move to fill up a table where a stationary pair is sitting or your chosen table will become a swivel table). The idea of a director being able to balance the directions by having equal number of good and bad pairs in each direction is not a practical consideration.

[campboy]

Siegmund, on 2012-July-12, 08:45, said:

(One director here insists on arrow switching 3 rounds of a 9-table game. That makes it even more important to choose where to sit, in a very odd way.)

Yuck. That's less balanced than not switching at all.

[32519]

The Links Bridge Club in Johannesburg, South Africa may well be one of the largest clubs anywhere. On any given Saturday afternoon they can have up to 100 tables divided into sections A-H. The players get assigned into the relevant section based on their last four average scores. The lower the average, the higher the section you are allocated to.

Assigning or calculating a score goes like this:
Winning the A section = a score of 0, second place = 2, third place = 4, etc.
Winning the B section = a score of 2, second place = 4, third place = 6, etc.
Winning the C section = a score of 4, second place = 6, third place = 8, etc.
The same pattern gets repeated all the way down to section H.

Using your last four scores ensures that you need to be on your game every week, not just 1 random lucky week.

With this scheme for seating arrangements you get players of similar skills playing against each other. Everyone wants to play in the A section because then you can announce “I know something about this game called bridge.” When it comes to national selection, interprovincial selection or interclub selection, it is the players who are consistently in the A section who inevitably progress further. Conversely if you are assigned to the H section every week, your game sucks. The only way you can get into a higher section is to up the standard of your own game.

A club with enough players can look at doing something similar to ensure that players of equal strength are playing against each other. A Mitchell movement is used.

[Siegmund]

In the ACBL you are allowed to run a 'handicap game', where half the masterpoints are awarded based on any of several ways of compensating for player strength and half in the usual way -- and in party bridge there is often a progressive movement with winners moving up and losers moving down a a table so the room is 'sorted' by the end of the party -- but I find it quite odd to run a club game in that way. Maybe it makes more sense in a 100 table club.

Of course I find it quite odd that anyone anywhere likes Swisses, too but a lot of people do.