Help! Whist table for 16 players with a catch....

[andrewwatters]

Okay, I need help before this event on saturday.

I have used the whist table for 16 players on this site last weekend.  We are sailing boats and doing a round robin so that you are paired-up with each person but also racing against each as well.  

The problem is that we would have to wait for the last team to finish before we could start the next one. These races/matches would be called "tables" in the rotation on the site.

So imagine 16 players and 12 boats (courts for example), how can I make it so that there is no waiting and the races would continue to roll?  I have tried moving the matches around so that it could work, but its killing me!

someone help me, there must be a simpler way to do this...

Andrew in San Francisco

[Ian Wakeling]

If you used the 4 tables from round 1 (taken from Whist 16) in order for the first four races, and then the next 4 races were taken from round 3 in reverse table order, then the 5th race would not contain any people from the 4th race and so the waiting would be minimized.  I am not certain, but I think it should be possible to rearrange all the rounds like this, some the right way around, some in reverse until the whole schedule was played out.

But I am not sure that I have fully understood the question, surely 8 boats is enough?

Ian.