Strong players all sit NS

[Chris Price]

As a director of a small club where a 7 - 12 table Mitchell is the preferred movement most sessions, I have found that the stronger players sit N.S. every session.
Can the director ask the members to alternate their positions to allow for a more evenly distributed competition?
Chris.

[asj]

Having the stronger players all sitting NS means that the weaker EW players compete against themselves and have the opportunity
to win from time to time. If you seed the seating, you are effectively condemning the weaker players to be cannon fodder.

[pwg]

The director clearly has the power to assign seating - Law 5 provides:
   "The Director assigns an initial position to each contestant (individual, pair or team) at
     the start of a session."
The question of whether the director should do so is one for the Club to consider. 
At my club, we normally allow contestants to select their own seating (especially
for those players who have difficulty moving).  I find that strong players like to play
against each other, and so tend to mix the seating up.
Every now and then, we randomly assign seating by drawing positions from a hat.  Special
events usually have assigned seating.

[Paul Sherman]

Chris, I agree with both of the above replies to your question. However, if you would like a diplomatic solution to this problem - that is, without ruffling the feathers of some of the stronger players - here are a couple of solutions to consider:

1. Announce that seating is by drawing cards: that is, an office bearer of the club stands near the door and as players come in, they take a card from that person who holds (say with 8 tables) 8 cards in spades from the Ace thru the 8 and 8 cards in hearts from the Ace thru the 8. Red cards sit NS and black cards sit EW.

2. Announce that as the tables fill up, players take a deck out of the boards and before shuffling, draw for seating. The higher card allows that pair to chose the direction they wish to sit.

However, I agree with ASJ that keeping all the strong players in one direction does give the lesser lights the chance to win from time to time which they may not if the strong players were equally distributed. You could, of course, seat all the strong players EW but the problem with that is that the weaker players are likely less adept at scoring and you may find a lot of errors on the travellers at the end of the day.

[bluejak]

In general the problem with some sort of assigning seating when you have not done so before is that players in clubs do not like change.  Unless you have frequent complaints it is usually better to keep this sort of thing unchanged.