We have an open Dart Tournament every week. The number of shooters varies from week to week. There are generally between 12 & 16, but we have had as many as 24. We play 7 games. Before each game every shooter draws a number which determines the board they shoot on, who they partner with & who they oppose. The problem with this is that the luck (or curse) of the draw can have you partnering or opposing the same player too often while partnering or opposing others not at all.
Board 1 = 1&2 vs 3&4
Board 2 = 5&6 vs 7&8, etc.
We have 5 boards available.
When we have multiples of 4, + 1, there's a bye.
When we have multiples of 4, + 2, there's a singles game.
When we have multiples of 4, + 3, there's a singles game & a bye.
When we have more than 21, 1 match waits for an open board.
When we have less then 12, we play singles rather than pairing up.
We do this on a weeknight & there just isn't enough time to run a complete round robin. It's agreed that changing the number & types of games is undesirable.
Seems there should be some way to make the schedule as fair as possible by having everyone draw a #, once, & create a schedule from there for all 7 games.
With the time constraint & variable # of shooters, I know it can't be perfect (Whist), but surely there's got to be a better way.
Goals simply would be:
1. Not partner with any shooter more than once.
2. Oppose all shooters as evenly as possible.
3. Rotate boards each game, keeping # of times per board as even as possible.
I've always thought there would be a simple solution to this but I now understand, after reading many posts here, that it's quite complex. I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions.
