The case of the curious hand record

The technology used at the tournament here in São Paulo is amazing. For most of the events we can get complete results on-line, including hand records and a report of the contact and result at every table. We also get real time standings during each match and after each match we get Butler results, showing the score each pair would have achieved had the event been scored as an IMP Pair game.

I did see one curious thing in the board-a-match event. The hand record for the first session showed the wrong dealer for boards 15 and 17. One constant since the advent of duplicate boards has been that the dealer rotates through the North, East, South, and West positions starting with board 1. Thus South should be dealer on board 15 and North on board 17. Here North was shown as the dealer on 15 and East on 17.

The hands were correct at the table. They couldn't have been otherwise, since duplicate boards are standardized. Thus, this is the first case I've seen of fouled hand records.

I was curious how this could happen. I had presumed that the hand records are prepared by a computer program, and I couldn't imagine how it could make such an error. I asked the head director about it and learned that while the form is prepared by computer, the dealer for each board is entered manually. That being the case the mistake is easy to understand, especially at the end of a long tournament. I trust this item will be automated in a future version of the software!