I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use the snake, but to me it makes a lot of sense. If I’m looking for board 9 and find board 8, it’s nice to see that I’m still close. But there isn’t that much of a difference between the two.
I’ve seen rooms use both. The “snake” is standard at CCA events, and it’s what I used to number boards for the PA state scholastics when I was the chief. US Chess national events may or may not use the snake, depending largely on what the chief TD wants to do. US Chess events often use drop signs at the ends of rows, so snaking the board numbers is not as crucial.
I would think that, generally speaking, the larger the room, the more useful the “snake” becomes.
The two methods of numbering is generally the same.
CCA uses the snake board numbering so like “Mulfish” said, if one is toward the end, the player can find next number right beside him/her.
US Chess scholastic nationals uses parallel with board tents pre-made. Do note that they also have drop signs (signs that “drop” from the tables) with that aisle’s board numbers associated to it.
In addition to your example diagram, I would suggest a center aisle since that would reduce the “walk around the world” and then depending on the sections, I would either do double snake or double parallel.
Just my two cents,
Acerook
P.S. echoing Mr. Reed’s comments beat me by 4 minutes.
I have tried using the serpentine numbering pattern a couple of times, and my experience is that it tends to confuse people. In both events we had multiple problems of people sitting at the wrong board because they got mixed up. Neither event was a scholastic - all the players involved were experienced adult players. I don’t advocate using this pattern.
Some players are confused no matter what system you use. In a small event with only a few tables per row, the parallel system works fine. For larger events, it is easier and faster for the TDs to set up the snake system. All large events should put up drop signs at the end of the tables to help the more spatially challenged find their boards. At most of the big tournaments I have seen players looking for boards that were two or three rows away. Of course, those players did not look at the drop signs that were available to read. The kids figure out the board numbering systems faster than the adults.
I can get why people might get confused and wander around too long to find their table. I am astounded, however, that experienced adult players could sit down at the wrong board because of the numbering system. Poor layout on the tables, maybe. But how hard is it to sit down at the right board number? I think you could layout the board numbers randomly and people should still not sit at the wrong tables. They will never come back to one of your events, but that’s another topic.
A number of games at events where I worked, regardless of the organizer, have ended with a win by forfeit at the default time where both players were in the room on time. The following is a partial list of explanations I have uncovered.
Player misreads the pairing number for the board number. (A good reason not to include pairing numbers on printouts, but it’s a default in many cases, and is labeled properly when included in any case.)
Player walks into wrong room and just sits down. (Popular at events with multiple playing halls and multiple schedules.)
Player walks in late, finds an empty spot and sits down without looking at the pairings.
Player reads board numbers upside down (19 becomes 61, etc).
Player finds correct board, but at least one player is seated there incorrectly. Instead of confirming pairing details, player just finds an empty seat with the right color in that vicinity. (More seen at scholastics, but not totally foreign to open events.)
Normally, a player who encounters any of these phenomena asks about their opponent’s whereabouts during the default period, which gives the director a chance to verify the pairing details the player has. Also, floor TDs usually note which paired boards don’t have players, and update their lists regularly throughout the default period, which helps reduce these forfeits as well. However, even that bit of due diligence is powerless to help, for example, a player who comes in and sits down at a board where no game is scheduled.
I know of at least one instance where the player knew the person he was to play, saw the player two boards away, and still sat down at another board number. Both players assumed they were at the correct board. Within a few minutes other players came in to play at those boards. Each of the confused players found out he was not only at the wrong board, but in the wrong room, too.
In one tournament I was at, the TD who did the pairings did not change the board numbers for each section to reflect the sectional layout. That meant that there were Board #1, 2, 3, etc. for each section, though each section started with a different 100’s number. For several(!) rounds, players found people from other sections at their designated boards until it got corrected.
Yes, I meant “all but five”. See my earlier post in this thread; I can’t believe the board number pattern would cause any intelligent adult to sit at the wrong board number.
That’s what I would think, too, but both of the times I tried it we had two rounds (not round one in any of the four cases) where an adult (a B player, two A players, and an Expert) sat at the wrong board because he was confused by the serpentine numbering pattern. At the risk of repeating myself…you can’t make anything foolproof; fools are far too clever.
No, Mike, you can rest assured; you were not one of them…I need to correct myself on one point. I was talking from memory - always dangerous at my age - so I looked it up, and the four players who managed to sit at the wrong boards were two B players, one A player and an Expert.
People get confused when they expect the numbering to be one way based on their experiences, and then the numbering actually is some other way. If they’re not used to the serpentine numbering pattern it’s much more likely to confuse them than if they regularly encounter it. Also, adults tend to be less malleable in their thinking than kids, so are more easily confused by something like this.
beat me by 4 minutes.
Did you really mean “all but five”, or “all five”?