[pescetom]

Apologies for posting in this forum, but for some reason there is no generic discussion forum for TDs.

Further apologies for appearing smug, but just wanted to mention (given another thread about late arrivals) that yesterday evening I managed something unheard of in Italy: a regional pairs final that started exactly on time (despite many people arriving from 100-200km distance) and played 13 rounds of 2 boards in exactly 3h 15m (with only a couple of time penalties to show I meant business), with everyone happy and on their way home well before midnight.

I was also pleased that the FIGB system did its job, so I was able to impose that players could enter the results on their phone and see how they had scored on a given board, but not see the classification until the end. Still waiting to be able to hide the diagram and scores until they have finished the last board in the round, but that will come.

[jillybean]

Time penalties, phones at the table, wow

[axman]

pescetom, on 2025-November-27, 16:03, said:

and played 13 rounds of 2 boards in exactly 3h 15m

able to impose that players could enter the results on their phone and see how they had scored on a given board, but not see the classification until the end. Still waiting to be able to hide the diagram and scores until they have finished the last board in the round,

Are you talking about humans? Keep this up and the next industrial revolution will be based on insane asylums.

[pescetom]

 jillybean, on 2025-November-27, 20:08, said:

Time penalties, phones at the table

Two board rounds make timekeeping easier than with three or more boards. On the one hand it's harder for the players to catch up after one slow board, but on the other hand it's very clear 5 minutes before the end of round which tables are behind and there is time to monitor who is playing slow and then warn.
In my experience slow play penalties are accepted with equanimity, so long as the players know they are coming and do not feel that their side was not at fault.

Another winning point for phones at table is that they know all about the Howell movement before the bell rings for next round.

[axman might suspect that our bell is from a 19th century lunatic asylum. It is actually from a 1960s primary school, which gets nostalgic smiles from visiting players]