14 teams 1 location, varied time slots 4 days a wk

[ecarter511]

I have 14 softball teams in my league and we play at one location.  I'll have games 4 nights a week and I want to have 4 time slots on monday and tuesday and 3 time slots on thursday and friday (totallying 14 games a week) so that each team will play twice a week.  Plus, I need each team to have pretty close to the same amount of games during each time slot (ie.  I don't want one team to have to play 3 930pm games and another team play no games at 930)  Can anyone help?  This is driving me nuts!  I've used other schedule generators online and none of them have given me a balanced schedule yet.  I'm hoping someone has already had to figure this out once before and is willing to offer their help to me.  Thanks!

[wbport]

Whatever schedule you come up with, you will still have to do some tinkering:  be sure whoever is paired for the last game on Tues night (start of the next round) played on Monday.  Perhaps you would want to combine two consecutive rounds for each week to try to distribute the games more evenly.

My scheduler has a court balanced option here, but it assigns the "board numbers" (time slots here) randomly which may or may not be good enough.  This is an example of its output for 14 teams (first named team is designated Home):

                      13 or 14 teams
Rd                       Pairings
 1:  13-2   11-4    8-7   10-5    1-14  12-3    9-6  
 2:   2-1    7-9    4-12  14-8    5-11   6-10   3-13 
 3:  12-5    2-14  13-4    1-3   11-6    9-8   10-7  
 4:   7-11   5-13   3-2   14-9    8-10   6-12   4-1  
 5:  11-8    1-5   12-7   13-6    3-14  10-9    2-4  
 6:   5-2    7-13   6-1    8-12   4-3   14-10   9-11 
 7:  12-9    2-6   13-8    3-5    1-7   11-10   4-14 
 8:   6-3   10-12   9-13   8-1    7-2   14-11   5-4  
 9:  13-10   1-9    5-14   2-8    4-6    3-7   12-11 
10:  10-1   11-13  14-12   9-2    8-3    7-4    6-5  
11:   4-8    6-14   3-9   13-12   2-10   5-7    1-11 
12:   8-5   14-13   7-6    9-4   10-3   11-2   12-1  
13:   4-10   3-11   5-9    6-8    1-13   7-14   2-12 

One idea would be to have one round on Mon & Thursday with the other round on Tues & Friday.

[Ian Wakeling]

Rather than tinker with the schedule to fit the format, I think the secret may be to adjust the format to fit a schedule.  If you only played 13 games a week and used the following schedule...

        W1    W2    W3    W4    W5    W6    W7
Mon 1 (G D) (E M) (L A) (J N) (C H) (I F) (K B)
Mon 2 (I M) (L N) (K J) (B C) (F G) (D A) (E H)
Mon 3 (L C) (K F) (H I) (D E) (B M) (G N) (J A)
Tue 1 (J E) (B I) (C N) (A F) (D K) (H M) (L G)
Tue 2 (N F) (A H) (G B) (M K) (E L) (J C) (I D)
Tue 3 (K H) (J G) (D M) (I L) (A N) (E B) (F C)
Tue 4 (A B) (C D) (E F) (G H) (I J) (K L) (M N)
Thu 1 (D J) (I E) (N K) (C M) (L B) (A G) (H F)
Thu 2 (C I) (F J) (M L) (N D) (K A) (B H) (G E)
Thu 3 (H N) (G K) (B D) (L J) (M F) (C E) (A I)
Fri 1 (M G) (H L) (A C) (K I) (N E) (F D) (B J)
Fri 2 (E K) (M A) (J H) (F B) (G C) (N I) (D L)
Fri 3 (F L) (N B) (I G) (E A) (H D) (M J) (C K)

where the late night time slot on Monday has been removed, then

- every team will have played in every time slot on every day exactly once.
- every team will have had 6 weeks with 2 matches and one week with a single match.
- the team that plays only once in a week always gets the late night slot on a Tuesday.
- in any week a team plays their first match either on a Monday or on a Tuesday.
- in any week teams with a second match play it either on the Thursday or Friday.

There is some more information about where the schedule came from here.