Suggestions for Materials

The game should be played as paper-based as possible. The action of settling the trades should be done manually but the record-keeping can be via a spreadsheet. OK Materials:-

1) Cards for the two packs - ideally use cards similar in size and thickness to a business card - they need to be shuffled, dealt and not be transparent. Therefore you need 40 for the first pack and 100 for the second pack.

2) Trading cards. There should be a deal ticket for each buy and each sell, so again the size of a business card works well, enough to write the dealer, the counterpart, the buy or sell size and price. Card is better as the MM needs to stand in the pit with a pack and deal quickly. In a recent game we closed just over 100 deals, so you need north of 200 cards or ones that can be reused

The best way to deal in the pit is for one member of the IB to come to the pit members, ask for a price, deal, enter the details on their ticket, then take the pit members deal ticket and hand it over to the person who is running the settlement. Presenting both sides of the deal massively reduces settlement burden.

3) ID tags. Each group of HF, IB and Pit members should come up with a two letter identifier and display on a badge when dealing, this speeds up the settlement process.

4) Pads etc, very useful for each group to keep a tab on their outstanding positions. Ultimately the prime record of each deal lies with the settlement person. More on their role in following blogs.

5) Spreadsheet for settling trades, once entered the deal size and economics are binding.

6) Alarm for the MM to sound the end of each trading session (pen on a glass works!)