Some Strange Movements and Programs

Barometer Individuals

Perfect Mitchell individual movements for non-prime numbers of tables don't always exist. Several years ago, I ran individual games with 10-14 tables or so and found some decent, if not perfect, movements for these games. They are all barometer games (it's really a nightmare otherwise) and are all curtailed movements, but in the sense of avoiding playing with/against the same players too often, they are optimal. (I think. It's been awhile.)

Anyway, I figure I might as well post the movements. I'm supplying two different forms of the movement. One is a compact description that consists of five columns, the four players and the boards. The players are divided into sections (these are all Mitchell games) so there'll be a player 1 in each column. The numbers represent which table player 1 will visit each round. The first row is the first round, the second the second, and so on. I also have master sheets for some of these movements, but they are just about as hard to read.

One minor criterion was that to select among equal movements, the movement pattern ought to be as regular as possible. I used a computer program to check everything but this, so there might be better movements. These are all expected to be guide card movements, by the way. I have guide cards for them if anyone cares.

Note that for 11 and 13 tables, perfect movements do exist and are nice and symmetrical.

Move Tables

Master Sheets

Rainbow Individuals

I experimented with non-barometer individuals and came up with these tables. They are much less uniform than the previous set, so are also guide card events.

Move Tables

Master Sheets

Programs

Makemove reads the move tables and builds the master sheet and guide cards. Here's C source.

Scorer reads move tables and scores various types of games, including rotating individuals. (Did you wonder why all these games had 3-board rounds?) It's rather hopeless in terms of user interface. To use it, one needs to type into a file a matrix of tables and boards with the scores in the right row/column. I suspect no one will want to use this if they have ACBLScore unless they happen to have a real need to run one of these perverse movements. Even then, it'd probably be easier to convince the ACBL to modify ACBLScore than to use this, but, hey, this is free.

A sanity check for vulnerability errors is helpful. All in all, I don't expect anyone ever to use this stuff (OK, I might someday, but I know the programmer). It's mostly here just in case someone is amused or wants to write a scoring program and wants to see some errors that someone else made in his first couple of attempts. And free is free. Caveat: I shall not fix the code if you find errors. I might be willing to accept updated code if you fix errors.
Jeff Goldsmith, jeff@tintin.jpl.nasa.gov, Sept. 11, 1996