[mghatiya]

Hi All,

I am keen to understand if there is a clear guideline on what should be the time allotted to play per board.

From whatever I have read, it appears 7 minutes are allotted per board if only one board is in play per round. As the number of boards increases, the time per board reaches about 6.5 minutes.

However, other than this guideline I couldn't get anything which states how does the time per board change on the basis of whether the game is being played with bidding boxes or not, being played with screens or not, whether it is a team event or pairs event, whether it is a knock out stage game or a league event game etc.

Does the time allotted per board change on these things or it remains same?

I did quite a bit of searching here and there but couldn't find anything. But intuitively I do feel that time allotted per board should change on the basis of some of these things.

Please guide.

Thanks,
Mukesh

[blackshoe]

There are general guidelines, but I think no authority has specific regulations on this. Haller, et. al., discuss this briefly in Movements: A Fair Approach. They give an example of a session with 10 3 board rounds where you want 5 minutes at the beginning to make sure everything is set up right, then 7 minutes per board, with a 15 minute break somewhere in the middle. So:

Start time: 5 minutes
Playing time: 7 minutes per board X 3 boards = 21 minutes
Move time: 2 minutes
Round time: 21+2= 23 minutes X 10 rounds = 230 minutes
Break time: 15 minutes
Total time: 250 minutes

Clubs in my town do it a bit differently. They start from the premise that the game should last three hours, no more, no less. Then they figure out how many boards they're going to play, usually 24, 26, or 27.
Divide 180 minutes by that number, and that's how many minutes per board. If you think about that, you probably won't be surprised when I tell you a session never ends on time. It usually runs about 15 minutes over.

Whatever you do, I strongly recommend that your directors make sure to pay attention to what's going on in the game. Don't ignore slow play, or you'll lose control of the game. Call the round when it's time, and make sure that players move then and not before. Don't allow people to bug other tables who are still playing for boards before the round is called. Makes sure that if a table is still playing when the round is called, they pass the boards they've finished to the next table.

I hope this helps.

[gordontd]

Playing time when using screens is usually increased to somewhere around 8 - 8.5 minutes per board.

[pran]

I have been familiar with a standard to allocate 7 minutes per board and 2 minutes per round.

So the standard allocation for a round with for instance 2 boards/round is 16 minutes, 4 boards make it 30 minutes.

The use of bid boxes does not change this, but screens do increase the time somewhat.

[sfi]

mghatiya, on 2018-December-05, 21:03, said:

However, other than this guideline I couldn't get anything which states how does the time per board change on the basis of whether the game is being played with bidding boxes or not, being played with screens or not, whether it is a team event or pairs event, whether it is a knock out stage game or a league event game etc.

Does the time allotted per board change on these things or it remains same?

The Australian Bridge Federation allocates 8 minutes per board when playing behind screens, which never feels like quite enough time but does allow 64 boards to be played in one day (10am - 8pm). The WBF is more generous - someone said they allocate something like 8:45 per board, which has always felt like too much but their schedules don't ever seem to have that many boards in a day. Somewhere between those numbers should work out well.

[pescetom]

The italian bridge federation imposes 7m 30s without screens, 8m 00s with screens at pairs and 8m 30s with screens teams.

[gordontd]

pescetom, on 2018-December-06, 04:01, said:

The italian bridge federation imposes 7m 30s without screens, 8m 00s with screens at pairs and 8m 30s with screens teams.

This is slightly surprising, unless there is extra time for moving between rounds, since pairs events need more time for moving from table to table.

[pescetom]

gordontd, on 2018-December-06, 08:46, said:

This is slightly surprising, unless there is extra time for moving between rounds, since pairs events need more time for moving from table to table.

That's the way it is, no extra time for moving between rounds. The TD is also derogated up to 5 minutes extra per teams encounter if necessary "in consideration of the time needed to shuffle hands and explain systems", so the maximum average times at teams are effectively from 7m 40s (20 boards) to 8m 15s (6 boards) without screens and from 8m 15s (20 boards) to 9m 10s (6 boards) with screens.

[barmar]

A common formula around here for clubs and local tournaments (no screens) is 6 minutes/board + 3 minutes/round. This leads to 15 minutes for 2-board rounds, 21 minutes for 3-board rounds.

[pescetom]

barmar, on 2018-December-06, 10:32, said:

A common formula around here for clubs and local tournaments (no screens) is 6 minutes/board + 3 minutes/round. This leads to 15 minutes for 2-board rounds, 21 minutes for 3-board rounds.

Sounds about right to me, although we have some pairs who would be hard pushed to finish 4 boards in 27 minutes.

[gordontd]

pescetom, on 2018-December-06, 10:26, said:

That's the way it is, no extra time for moving between rounds. The TD is also derogated up to 5 minutes extra per teams encounter if necessary "in consideration of the time needed to shuffle hands and explain systems", so the maximum average times at teams are effectively from 7m 40s (20 boards) to 8m 15s (6 boards) without screens and from 8m 15s (20 boards) to 9m 10s (6 boards) with screens.

You play with screens and hand-shuffled boards?

[pescetom]

gordontd, on 2018-December-06, 12:37, said:

You play with screens and hand-shuffled boards?

That's what the regulations say and it can still happen here. Not that I often get to play with screens at my current level, but I do a lot of shuffling

[RMB1]

pescetom, on 2018-December-06, 15:29, said:

..., but I do a lot of shuffling

We hardly do any shuffling as player or TD. Sometimes we shuffle and deal replacement boards at teams, as TDs; even then we sometimes make two copies with a dealing machine, so they can be played at both tables at the same time.

[barmar]

In the US it's still very common to use hand-dealing in team games. Even in our NABC+ Swiss Teams, I think they only use pre-dealt boards on the final day, and maybe only for the top few tables.

I was playing a regional bracketed KO a month or so ago, we got pre-dealt hands starting with the semi-finals.