Round Robin Tournament Scheduling

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Title: Mixed Doubles Tennis Round Robin - Whist?
Post by: phxtennis on October 06, 2016, 06:31:12 AM

I would like to apply the Whist algorithm to a doubles round robin tennis tournament with 16 players, but I want it to be for MIXED doubles.  That is, I want each pairing to be a man and a woman (8 men and 8 women).  I don't see how to do that.  Everything else about the Whist algorithm is what I want (avoid playing with the same person more than once, avoid playing against any person more than twice).  Is there a different name for the algorithm I'm looking for?  Any help you can provide would be appreciated.

Thanks, Jay

Title: Re: Mixed Doubles Tennis Round Robin - Whist?
Post by: Ian Wakeling on October 06, 2016, 10:55:13 AM

Mixed doubles is more complicated than Whist, and the bad news is that there is no easy algorithm to make schedules of any given size.   The complication arises as follows - in Whist you can partner and oppose all other players, so there is some symmetry.  However if you have mixed doubles with 2n players, then there are n possible partners, n possible opposite sex opponents, but only n-1 same sex opponents.  The commonest way around this asymmetry is to make a spouse avoiding schedule which reduces the partners and opposite sex opponents to n-1 possibilities each.

There is an example of a 16 player schedule here.