Howell movement

[Bill Lentz]

This relates to the use of acblScore in a U.S. club game. In a six table Howell, pairs at one table sit the wrong direction for all three boards. acblScore allows a fix by using the Edit Movement command to swap the pairs for that round only. Practice in our club is to assign average minus to both pairs because “changing movement is unfair to field” and one of the two pairs might have received an advantage against the other pair. Is there a theoretical basis to using EDMOV vs assigning average minus?

Thanks
Bill

[Wes Powers]

Yes. It's always better to use actual bridge results than artificial
adjustments.

[Bill Lentz]

That is my understanding too. I guess what I should have asked is “Is there a theoretical basis to not modifying the movement?”

[Wes Powers]

Not sure I understand the question, but I think the answer is No.

It's true that modifying the movement will wreak havoc with the balance,
so some pairs may be compared more or fewer times than they should.

But the edited movement represents what was actually played, so that's
what you should do.

I suppose you could switch up other tables in later rounds to try to
restore the balance, but it's subject to great potential for error, and
I don't think it's worth the effort.

Besides, a lot of Howell movements are unbalanced to start with....

Wes

[Peter Smulders]

As I understand it editing the movement was done with the purpose of
improving the balance. Of course if you can improve the movement by
simple means there is no "theoretical basis" for not doing so. Not to
mention handing out average minus, which only makes things worse. If you
show us the complete movement (I don't have access to acblscore) I will
tell you the optimal balance that may be obtained by swapping pairs.