Share and relay Mitchell movement

The relay Mitchell adopts the same movement procedure as the standard Mitchell, with the N-S pair stationary and the E-W pairs moving up one table and the boards moving down one table. The difference lies in the arrangement of the tables and the distribution of the boards. The boards are distributed as usual, with set one on table one, set two on table two, and so on until exactly half the sets of boards have been distributed.

The next set is placed on a relay table, at which there are no players and which is usually a small side table placed there for this specific reason. The rest of the sets of boards are distributed normally with the next available set going on the next table in play and so forth.

With the director starting out with the same number of sets of boards as there are tables, it is obvious that there will not be a set for the last table as one set is on the relay table. This last table (without a board-set) will share boards with the first table for the duration of the movement.

The boards still move down one table at each change except now the boards that were shared at table one and the last table, move down to the second last table. With N equal to the number of tables in the movement, the boards on table 1/2 N + 1 will move on to the relay table and the boards on the relay table will move on to the table 1/2 N.

With the share-and-relay it is not possible to have stationary boards.