[pescetom]

I expect experienced directors would take this in their stride, but perhaps not all.

You are running a 7 table Mitchell of 21 boards pre-dealt with a dealer machine, not much can go wrong, right?
At the start of round 3 you are called to table 3 by NS complaining that they already played this board
(they realised straight away, before the auction).
There is no skip you could have missed, what is going on?
A look at the hand diagrams resolves the mystery, these are not the cards of board 13 but of board 12.
You locate board 12 at the next table and sure enough it matches the hand diagram.

How do you proceed, now and later?
Assume and mention your national regulations, if relevant.

[axman]

 pescetom, on 2023-March-25, 10:25, said:

I expect experienced directors would take this in their stride, but perhaps not all.

You are running a 7 table Mitchell of 21 boards pre-dealt with a dealer machine, not much can go wrong, right?
At the start of round 3 you are called to table 3 by NS complaining that they already played this board
(they realised straight away, before the auction).
There is no skip you could have missed, what is going on?
A look at the hand diagrams resolves the mystery, these are not the cards of board 13 but of board 12.
You locate board 12 at the next table and sure enough it matches the hand diagram.

How do you proceed, now and later?
Assume and mention your national regulations, if relevant.

The facts are unsatisfactory. What boards are on what tables and when. etc. what two boards have the same cards and who played/saw them?

[pescetom]

 axman, on 2023-March-25, 13:45, said:

The facts are unsatisfactory. What boards are on what tables and when. etc. what two boards have the same cards and who played/saw them?

The boards are 1-2-3 on table 1 round 1 and so on.
I think your other questions are answered in the post.

[blackshoe]

Board 13 is part of board set 5, which started on table 5, was played there in round 1, on table 4 in round 2, and table 3 in round 3. At this point board 13 is discovered to have been fouled by the dealing machine -- or more likely by the person running the machine. No matter. The director should correct board 13, so that it will have been played in one incarnation (duplicating board 12) in the first two rounds, and in its correct incarnation as board 13 for the remaining five rounds. Law 87B applies to these two groups:

Quote

Law 87B: In scoring a fouled board the Director determines as closely as possible which scores were obtained on the board in its correct form and which in the changed form(s). He divides the scores on that basis into groups and rates each group separately as provided in the regulations for the tournament. (In the absence of a relevant regulation the Director selects and announces his method.)

When the pairs who have already played "board 12" in its board 13 incarnation (Pairs 4 and 5 NS and EW) come to their scheduled time to play board 12, Law 15B applies:

Quote

Law 15B: If, after the commencement of the auction period, the Director discovers that a contestant is playing a board not designated for him to play in the current round, then:
1. if one or more players at the table have previously played the board, with the correct opponents or otherwise, the board is cancelled for both his side and his opponents.
2. if none of the four players have previously played the board the Director shall require the auction and play to be completed. He allows the score to stand and may require both pairs to play the correct board against one another later.
3. The Director shall award an artificial adjusted score [see Law 12C2(a)] to any contestant deprived of the opportunity to earn a valid score.

Quote

Law 12C2(a): When owing to an irregularity no result can be obtained [see also C1(d)], the Director awards an artificial adjusted score according to responsibility for the irregularity: average minus (at most 40% of the available matchpoints in pairs) to a contestant directly at fault, average (50% in pairs) to a contestant only partly at fault, and average plus (at least 60% in pairs) to a contestant in no way at fault.

In these cases neither pair concerned is in any way at fault, so both pairs involved at each table, pairs 4 and 5 E and W, are scored Average Plus for board 12

[mycroft]

So, learn from your teacher's mistakes, Padawan (no, not meaning OP). I think I have done every one of these things wrong at some point.

0. TAKE YOUR TIME. Stop the game if you have to. Find out what happened, the extent of the problem, and work out what your solution is going to be and that it will work before doing anything. Yes, it's bad, and it looks personally bad, if you have to stop the game - even if it's someone else who made the boards. Oh well. It's worse to find a problem, fix it, and either create another problem or not completely have fixed the first one - and that definitely *is* your fault. So:

1. Determine if this is the only set of boards in play. If it is, great, you only have to fix enough to make the session play. I'm going to assume the answer is yes for now.
2. LOOK AT 14! Okay, so board 13 has the cards from 12. Does 14 have the cards from 13? If so, it's *12* you want to fix. Your hand records are all b0rked, but you can write a note explaining that - as long as everybody played the same cards in the same boards, we're good. Spend some of the session checking how far the misboarding went - when people get distracted like this, they do sometimes check the display and notice "oh, I dealt the last board into this one again. Let me fix it". But there won't be a problem, just helps your explanation later.
3. To fix 12, just deal a random board (or a not-in-play board in the boardset, if there is one) into 12 while table 3 are playing 10 and 11, and tell the pair 4s that their score on that board was cancelled, and we'll try to get the real board 12 played at a break or after. And yes, if that doesn't happen, A+/A+. Oh, don't pick "boards-in-play + 1" either unless you have to. Just in case.
4. Take your time. If you aren't sure that all boards in play are unique after your fixes, you're not done yet (and could get quite the surprise later). If the players miss a board or two because you're being careful and they get slow, it's still better than them missing a board or two when you're in a panic and may not have got it quite right. Note - I said a month ago or so that there were 2 times in my life that I've had to apply a double-foul to a board. This was one of them, when I "fixed the problem" but didn't get all of the problem.
5. Get your club to buy or replace the board stickers and apply them, and insist on turning on the "check board number" flag. SO IT DOESN'T HAPPEN AGAIN. You will be paid back if not the first time, then at least the second!

If it's not the only set of boards scoring in this game (Web, score across sections, multi-site game, Common Game,...) you have a much larger problem. Now you 100% need to find the scope of the problem, and it may be that you have to either break the "score across"[*] or foul all the boards 12+[**], or even stop the game and replay (much of) the first round with new boards[***]. Which is right strongly depends on your players, the amount of time available, and the importance of the game. (footnotes because I realized that my explanations were in "director jargon", which is great if you already know what to do. But like all jargon used correctly, the full explanations are long and confusing).

Now, some suggestions:

One thing I learned from my first Web foul was "it's better to foul a board a lot than a little". The "fouled at one table" formula is awful; in the ACBL, the "fouled at 2 or 3" isn't much better; Neuberg is "the best of all bad solutions" - and works best if the number of tables in each foul group is about equal.

A trick I was taught in the 8x3 and 12x2 "share-and-relay" was, instead of using the spare set just to kill the share, run the other set through the back half of the game. Partly it makes understanding somewhat easier for the players, but the big thing is if a board is fouled, then at least half the room has results from it for comparison, rather than just one table foul. Won't help in this case, because people play "through the board break", but in normal "fouled in duplication" cases, it is a better solution.

If it's something like the World-wide, where there is analysis, even with only one set of boards in play, it might even be worth stopping the game, replacing 13-24 with 25-36, and running with unusual boardsets; at least this way the analysis is readable without "yeah, but when we played this board fourth-in-hand was dealer and, at NV, opened 3♥ before we got a chance to have our nice 1NT auction like in the book".

[*]You can't "score across sections" if they're playing different boards. So you make it so that E scores only in E, and F scores only in F, just like we did years ago when it was shuffle deal and play or hand-scored travellers. It's not as good, by any means, but it's acceptable. Doesn't work in a Web, though, because there's only one section.
[**]I don't know how to do this in anything but ACBLScor, but somewhere you flag which times the board was played in "right" configuration, and which times it was played in "fouled" configuration, and the computer does the Neuberg magic. If it turns out that the boards were dealt 1,2,...12,12,13,...,16,18,19,...24, this is probably best - just foul 13-17 and let the rest of the game score as it would. But you absolutely need to know exactly what the boards look like!
[***]Cue the story of the WWPairs at a new club (with several experienced directors playing that could support the new director) and 21 tables in two sections 10 and 11. One TD (not me!) went up to show the cool new thing you could do, where you load the hand records into the bridgemate control software, and it would check out scores you should check (like 3♠=E in the 4-card fit) - and the room lit up like a christmas tree! Turns out, Section B had the boards for this game, and Section A - had the boards for tomorrow afternoon's game! STOP the game, get section B to go back to their first round tables, hand-duplicate the boards while A played the first round again, last board in the set first (dealing machine was not on site), and then twiddle their thumbs for the rest of the 20 minutes, then off to round 2 in all sections - because being late, or running a 10-round event, was worth it for the analysis booklets and the 6000 WW tops that everyone was paying for.

[mycroft]

A short answer that probably should have headed the big one:

You need to get the game going, and you need to get a fair game that succeeds at what the game was intended for. ONLY RARELY will that be "play the exact boards in the exact order on the sheet". Almost always it will be "make sure they get to play 24-28 unique boards, scored against all the other pairs who played the same boards, and finish at about the right time, (with hand records)."

An acceptable solution, that gets the game played, is almost always the correct solution, even if there's a better one you work out later. But ensure that it *is* an acceptable solution before going with it.

Totally off-topic, but I was playing in a National Event where each section was two rows of the ballroom, 1-7 in one row, 14-8 the next. 6 or 7 directors go out with boards, and bang goes our set on 13. 15-16 doesn't look right...We're just getting to the point where the table agrees there's a problem, when two tables behind us call the director...Oops. Quick discussion backstage, "play what you got", and it all just ran. Okay, *I know* what they decided, why they decided it, and how they made it work. In fact, I ended up explaining it to at least two tables of National-level players who "I don't know why the boards are in a weird order, but the bridgemates tell me to play them, so..." Goal #1 is "Take the time to avoid making mistakes." Goal #2 is "You will make mistakes, despite #1. Be able to fix them. Think about how you would fix similar ones, or ways to avoid this mistake, or 'the right' fix to this mistake, in the 'down time'."

Like everything, "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

[pescetom]

 blackshoe, on 2023-March-25, 17:00, said:

Board 13 is part of board set 5, which started on table 5, was played there in round 1, on table 4 in round 2, and table 3 in round 3. At this point board 13 is discovered to have been fouled by the dealing machine -- or more likely by the person running the machine. No matter. The director should correct board 13, so that it will have been played in one incarnation (duplicating board 12) in the first two rounds, and in its correct incarnation as board 13 for the remaining five rounds. Law 87B applies to these two groups:
...
When the pairs who have already played "board 12" in its board 13 incarnation (Pairs 4 and 5 NS and EW) come to their scheduled time to play board 12, Law 15B applies:
...
In these cases neither pair concerned is in any way at fault, so both pairs involved at each table, pairs 4 and 5 E and W, are scored Average Plus for board 12

Thanks.
I'm not great at visualizing movements and as Director prefer to peek in the score program, but I think the pairs who have already played "board 12" in its board 13 incarnation are Pairs 4 and 5 NS and 4 and 3 EW, so we end up with 3 60-60 scores out of 7 on board 12, correct?

A bonus question: would you do the same if the boards involved were 1 and 5?

[pescetom]

 mycroft, on 2023-March-26, 10:12, said:

A short answer that probably should have headed the big one:

You need to get the game going, and you need to get a fair game that succeeds at what the game was intended for. ONLY RARELY will that be "play the exact boards in the exact order on the sheet". Almost always it will be "make sure they get to play 24-28 unique boards, scored against all the other pairs who played the same boards, and finish at about the right time, (with hand records)."

An acceptable solution, that gets the game played, is almost always the correct solution, even if there's a better one you work out later. But ensure that it *is* an acceptable solution before going with it.

Exactly. And from that point of view, our Director could have done worse, considering that it was his first time, with no training and he did encounter a formidable example of Murphy in action.

It was a bloodbath all the same.
I was South at table 5 in a side room and I was never consulted, so my first inkling of what was going on was when I called him on the last board to say that we had already played these cards. What actually happened (I discovered later) is that when called at the start of round 3 he figured out his error in duplication (*) and discussed with South (a senior player) what to do. The only real solution they could see was to redeal and restart the tournament from scratch, which they excluded as unpopular: so they decided to continue the tournament with the actual boards but score board 13 at the end as 60-60 for everyone
Of course there were repeated Director calls of "we played this hand already", but the players were told to play on regardless.
As a cherry on the cake, the score program corrupted when 60-60 was entered for all scores on a board
In the end things were restored and board 12 was scored as played which of course makes no sense, as several pairs had already played the same cards.

Luckily it was just a training tournament and nobody really cares about the result.
But I thought it poses an interesting problem of direction, partly because it is not (unless I am missing something) fully covered by the Laws and multiple solutions seem possible each with its own merits.

(*) the dealer machine is primitive and cannot read board numbers. It also occasionally flags a spurious error despite dealing the board correctly, which is probably what initiated his duplication mistake.

[mycroft]

First of all, the game ran and results were issued. That's a win. Let's go from there to victory, yes?

So, if it's a training tournament, frankly, the director's first error (as opposed to the first mistake) was "I have a problem. I don't have a solution in my head. Who do I go to to discuss?"

Because when it goes real, a new tournament director will not be doing it without support. Or at least, they really shouldn't be. Now is the time to learn that "you're not on your own, and if your solution has a problem, let's see if someone else has a better one, or at least can see a solution to the problem created by your solution."

Frankly, one of the reasons I hate one-director tournaments is that I have to spend much more time reviewing my solution, rather than bouncing it off the other director. Yes, even if I can text/email/call another TD with the question; it still doesn't have the in-time answer pattern (but will very much help with "how do I clean up from my solution" later).

If the answer to this is "you're it, have fun", then I think the first error is the training. But I highly doubt that.

The next error, in my mind, was "I have to come up with a solution RIGHT NOW, without disrupting the game." No. If there's a 5 minute stop in the game to get a solution set up that will avoid 10 rounds of "we played this hand already", you win. Sure, if you can get the game going without the 5 minute stop, great. But get an effective solution, implement it, and keep going.

If they came to me, again, the first question is "what is the intent of the game?" Is there any reason why we shouldn't run the boards as they sit (barring the double, of course)? Assuming the answer is "no" (and there's only one set of boards a single player will interact with), then I would give the same advice I did above. We have to kill board 13 at board 4, let them play 14; we now have 8-10 minutes to get a solution before board 12 is ready to be played at table 3. Let's find out if this kept going; if it has (almost certainly), let's put in a "special 12", cancel the result at table 4, and see if we can get table 4-4 to play the "new" board 12 sometime. Then review what happened, and see if there are any other potential problems. I don't expect there is, so let's find out how far the back-set went so we can memo the results properly, and prepare for all the complaints of the players next session about the hand records being wrong.

Or how to foul the boards.

Or whether somebody is going to play the "good" board 12 and the "bad" board 13 in the web (or the "good" board 24 and the "bad" board 23, or...), and what are we going to do about that? Possibly we have to replace the entire set of bad boards, and effectively NP/ throw out the first round?

Or, "do you want me to put 35 into 12 while you clean up the rest of it?"

Okay, they'd fail the test - frankly, they should be checking 1-and-17, or 1-and-24, and they should have caught this before the boards went out. But it's not a test, it's a training tournament. And training should be done "live-fire", sure - but that also means "open book, with assistance", the way it would be IRL.

Let's just make sure that the final error - failing to learn from the mistake, both how to make it work and ways we can avoid it in future - doesn't happen.

Oddly enough, the format of the tournament is a RA thing, not a Law thing. Matchpoint scoring and Fouled Board explains how to score what does happen, but how the problem is to be solved is delegated.

Let him know that it could have been a point-a-board team event (whether internal or mirror mitchelled :-).

[pescetom]

 mycroft, on 2023-March-26, 13:13, said:

First of all, the game ran and results were issued. That's a win. Let's go from there to victory, yes?

So, if it's a training tournament, frankly, the director's first error (as opposed to the first mistake) was "I have a problem. I don't have a solution in my head. Who do I go to to discuss?"

Because when it goes real, a new tournament director will not be doing it without support. Or at least, they really shouldn't be. Now is the time to learn that "you're not on your own, and if your solution has a problem, let's see if someone else has a better one, or at least can see a solution to the problem created by your solution."

Absolutely. And if I was a bit upset about what happened, it was because the club put a new director on the line without due training or support, and even failed to consult with the two certified directors who were playing.

 mycroft, on 2023-March-26, 13:13, said:

Oddly enough, the format of the tournament is a RA thing, not a Law thing. Matchpoint scoring and Fouled Board explains how to score what does happen, but how the problem is to be solved is delegated.

Do you think Fouled Board and 15B together explain how to score what did happen?
Because I'm not wholly convinced about that yet.

[blackshoe]

 pescetom, on 2023-March-26, 10:19, said:

Thanks.
I'm not great at visualizing movements and as Director prefer to peek in the score program, but I think the pairs who have already played "board 12" in its board 13 incarnation are Pairs 4 and 5 NS and 4 and 3 EW, so we end up with 3 60-60 scores out of 7 on board 12, correct?

A bonus question: would you do the same if the boards involved were 1 and 5?

Standard Mitchell. Board 13 starts on table 5 (13, 14, 15; 15/3=5). So 5 NS and 5 EW in the first round. 2nd round, the board moves to table 4, and 3 EW does also. so 4NS and 3EW in round 2. The problem was caught at the beginning of round 3, so no more problem. I got the pair numbers wrong originally through typing too fast. :-(

If it were boards one and five it's essentially the same problem, but for specifics I'd have to know which one was fouled.

[blackshoe]

 pescetom, on 2023-March-26, 11:05, said:

But I thought it poses an interesting problem of direction, partly because it is not (unless I am missing something) fully covered by the Laws and multiple solutions seem possible each with its own merits.

I'm not so sure it's not fully covered, nor do I think there's more than one reasonable legal solution (leaving aside "redeal all the boards and start over"). I could be wrong. :-)

[blackshoe]

 pescetom, on 2023-March-26, 14:50, said:

Are you certain Fouled Board explains how to score what did happen?
Because I'm not.

It tells you how to split the field into groups. It doesn't tell you how best to score each group. "He divides the scores on that basis into groups and rates each group separately as provided in the regulations for the tournament. (In the absence of a relevant regulation the Director selects and announces his method.)"

[pescetom]

 blackshoe, on 2023-March-26, 21:14, said:

It tells you how to split the field into groups. It doesn't tell you how best to score each group. "He divides the scores on that basis into groups and rates each group separately as provided in the regulations for the tournament. (In the absence of a relevant regulation the Director selects and announces his method.)"

Sorry, I forgot this is daytime for you guys
See edit above, my doubt was more about how 15B then applies.

[blackshoe]

 pescetom, on 2023-March-26, 21:21, said:

Sorry, I forgot this is daytime for you guys
See edit above, my doubt was more about how 15B then applies.

Not sure what you're getting at, as it seems straightforward to me. What am I missing?

[mycroft]

Scoring what did happen? Not really. RA regulations apply. Frankly, there's no difference between A+/A+ for everybody on board 13 and NP for everybody on board 13 (except the first pair, oh well; and one A+/A+ for them on board 12 okay), and frankly that's probably fine - "board 13 isn't valid per 6D" (okay, not the letter of the Law, but certainly the spirit), "so it is being taken out of play for scoring purposes." Probably best, really, from the E-W perspective (half of them will hit 13 first, half will hit 12 first) if we NP both boards out of play.

I don't think 15B applies. They are supposed to play board 13. They are playing board 13. The fact that the deal that should have been in board 13 is actually in 14, and they have the cards from 12, doesn't make this "a board not designated for [...] play in the current round". It's if anything a deal where the "cards were dealt without shuffle from a sorted deck", as mentioned above.

[pescetom]

OK, I found the time to explain why I was unhappy about your proposed solution for board 12 and its basis in law: I may well be wrong.

 blackshoe, on 2023-March-25, 17:00, said:

Board 13 is part of board set 5, which started on table 5, was played there in round 1, on table 4 in round 2, and table 3 in round 3. At this point board 13 is discovered to have been fouled by the dealing machine -- or more likely by the person running the machine. No matter. The director should correct board 13, so that it will have been played in one incarnation (duplicating board 12) in the first two rounds, and in its correct incarnation as board 13 for the remaining five rounds. Law 87B applies to these two groups:
....

All fine by me so far [with the addition that Like mycroft, I would first check board 14 and set them to playing that; then check board 11; then go make three espresso coffees, one to decide how to proceed and two for NS table 4 who failed to notice that they played the same board twice ]

 blackshoe, on 2023-March-25, 17:00, said:

When the pairs who have already played "board 12" in its board 13 incarnation (Pairs 4 and 5 NS and EW) come to their scheduled time to play board 12, Law 15B applies:

Quote

Law 15B: If, after the commencement of the auction period, the Director discovers that a contestant is playing a board not designated for him to play in the current round, then:
1. if one or more players at the table have previously played the board, with the correct opponents or otherwise, the board is cancelled for both his side and his opponents.
2. if none of the four players have previously played the board the Director shall require the auction and play to be completed. He allows the score to stand and may require both pairs to play the correct board against one another later.
3. The Director shall award an artificial adjusted score [see Law 12C2(a)] to any contestant deprived of the opportunity to earn a valid score.

This is where I start to get perplexed.
See my emphasis in the quote of 15B.
It seems to me that this law was intended for the situation where a player has already played an unfouled board n and obtained a bridge score, which has been registered on the traveller of board n, and is now for some reason playing or about to play board n again.
That is related but not equivalent to the situation in your proposed solution as I understand it (or indeed what happened during the actual tournament).
When board 12 comes around to table 5 on the last round then NS are NOT playing a board not designated for them to play: they are designated to play board 12 as part of the movement, they have no bridge score registered against it, and the bridge score they did earn playing the same cards on the fouled board 13 in the first round is due to be discarded by the zealous Director

Sure, the spirit of that Law applies here all the same, but it seems to me an overbid to consider that it applies directly or was even intended to cover this situation.

 blackshoe, on 2023-March-25, 17:00, said:

In these cases neither pair concerned is in any way at fault, so both pairs involved at each table, pairs 4 and 5 E and W, are scored Average Plus for board 12

As mentioned previously, I think there are three results that will require Ave+ rather than a bridge score (rounds 4,5,7).
I could live with 5 bridge scores out of 7, but 4 out of 7 starts to look like too much variance to me.
Also, I am not comfortable that a pair who scored a probable bottom playing bridge on this same layout in the first two rounds will now be scored Ave+.
At that point I think I prefer other solutions, even if borderline legal.

The simplest (but perhaps least legal) solution would be to just tell everyone to not play board 12 and enter 'Pass' into the scoring app, then score it as 'not played'. Easy for players to understand and accept, and no less fair than 4 out of 7 I would think.

A more elegant alternative would be to leave board 12 in play where possible, then at the end poll a selection of players about whether it makes any difference if EW are vulnerable or who is Dealer on board 12 (the answer is no, it's an automatic 4♥ for strong NT or strong club) and then transpose the bridge scores obtained playing board 13 in the first two rounds onto the traveller of board 12 (as split scores with "opponents" getting AVE+ as appropriate).
This too is legally creative, but I think it reflects the spirit of 15B2 (even more so if the vulnerability was actually identical, unlike here).

The only completely legal alternative I can see is mycroft's solution, redeal board 12 to a new layout (I would have chosen equal to board 24 in the current deal file, so that we at least have a diagram and DD analysis to consult, even if the two cannot be reconciled in the scoring program or the results display). Which is perfectly fair (there was even time to replay the first two results) and was workable here, although there are potential software issues in having cards and leads different to the image in the scoring program (I could probably hack a copy and replace of one board inside the deal file then refresh the scoring program, but others are not capable) and it would not be acceptable during a national simultaneous tournament (unlike the creative solution above).

I'm comfortable that this last solution of a new layout for board 12 is at least wholly legal, but it's not as if the Laws actually prescribe it, nor is it always practicable as I see it.
I imagine it did not occur to the Lawmakers to update Law 15 to deal with errors only possible with those new-fangled dealer machines

[pescetom]

 mycroft, on 2023-March-27, 09:27, said:

Scoring what did happen? Not really. RA regulations apply. Frankly, there's no difference between A+/A+ for everybody on board 13 and NP for everybody on board 13 (except the first pair, oh well; and one A+/A+ for them on board 12 okay), and frankly that's probably fine - "board 13 isn't valid per 6D" (okay, not the letter of the Law, but certainly the spirit), "so it is being taken out of play for scoring purposes." Probably best, really, from the E-W perspective (half of them will hit 13 first, half will hit 12 first) if we NP both boards out of play.

I don't think 15B applies. They are supposed to play board 13. They are playing board 13. The fact that the deal that should have been in board 13 is actually in 14, and they have the cards from 12, doesn't make this "a board not designated for [...] play in the current round". It's if anything a deal where the "cards were dealt without shuffle from a sorted deck", as mentioned above.

Thanks for this, missed it as I was replying to much above.
I agree that NP both boards out of play looks acceptable for a club game (especially if a simultaneous tournament or other aggregation so requires).
And I too think that 15B does not apply.

[mycroft]

It's difficult, because the Law doesn't cater to this - and it's not a unique case. Add in all the "well, E-W were switched in duplication in section A, but correct in B", or other reasons we frequently have multiple "identical" sets of boards in play.

I think it should be down to RA regulation, and I think there should be a regulation. It could also be a "WBF commentary note". I'm not sure it should be specific in the Law, because of the multiple cases that would need to be handled.

And yeah, if it's a "club game with a trainee director", rather than a "trainee tournament with an experienced club director needing to learn how to ramp to the next level of speed", then 100% the first fail comes from the conditions of contest - the director needs to know who to bring problems to. Hopefully easier problems to solve than "hey, it's round 3, and I just found that two boards have the same cards in them" (I'd have hoped the first problem was "they said they played Brozel, but it's actually Cappelletti. So now...?" level, but frankly, would expect it to be "I called the round and table 2 is just starting board 6...?" level, but oh well. In at the deep end, I guess). This is not a "training wheels" situation (or not only) - Director is never, or at best should never be, a solo job.

[pescetom]

I had a look to see whether it was feasible to insert a new layout for a board into the scoring program and phone app.

There is no possibility to edit a board set (change set 4 from 10=11=12 to 10=11=24) which would be the perfect solution.

As I imagined, it is very simple to edit the .PBN for the deal to reposition and renumber boards:

Quote

....

[Board "24"]
[Dealer "W"]
[Vulnerable "NS"]
[Deal "N:J76.AQ9.A53.A963 A954.T7.KQ96.K75 32.J6543.72.JT84 KQT8.K82.JT84.Q2"]

[Board "25"]
[Dealer "N"]
[Vulnerable "All"]
[Deal "N:543.J764.954.J97 AJ982.KQ85..Q653 7.AT3.AKQJ872.K4 KQT6.92.T63.AT82"]

....

It is also possible to import the .PBN multiple times without complaints, at least before the tournament starts.
I'll try this during a tournament (some lesser one) to see if it still works then and if the phone app picks up the new layout correctly.