12 players, 4 rounds,

[EWS]

Have read through quite a number of posts and realize that to get perfection we need to take two more days off. Alas not happening!

We are 12 and ideally everyone wants to play with evryone at least once in foursomes. Whats the best we can do?

[Ian Wakeling]

There will be 12 pairs of players who never play together.  Also there will be 18 pairs who play together twice.  You could take advantage of this 2nd feature by assigning players into three ability groups, then each of the repeated matches would be with someone of equal ability.

 ( 9  7  6  5)  (1  8  4  2)  (3 11 12 10)
 (10  8  7  6)  (2  5  1  3)  (4 12  9 11)
 (11  5  8  7)  (3  6  2  4)  (1  9 10 12)
 (12  6  5  8)  (4  7  3  1)  (2 10 11  9)

Within the player groups (1 2 3 4) (5 6 7 8) (9 10 11 12),  all pairs play together twice.

The following pairs don't play together:
    1   6
    1  11
    2   7
    2  12
    3   8
    3   9
    4   5
    4  10
    5  10
    6  11
    7  12
    8   9

[EWS]

Thanks - I ended up using a threesome lay out that worked great until my host advised that we are now 14 people in the group!

Do you have any examples of  say 2 4somes and 2 3somes mixing it up to maximize face time over 6 or 7 rounds of golf?

Thanks

[Ian Wakeling]

I think the following will work, with players playing 3 games in threesomes and 4 games in foursomes.

(3 7 11 1) ( 8 13 6 12) (10 5 2) ( 9 14 4)
(4 1 12 2) ( 9 14 7 13) (11 6 3) (10  8 5)
(5 2 13 3) (10  8 1 14) (12 7 4) (11  9 6)
(6 3 14 4) (11  9 2  8) (13 1 5) (12 10 7)
(7 4  8 5) (12 10 3  9) (14 2 6) (13 11 1)
(1 5  9 6) (13 11 4 10) ( 8 3 7) (14 12 2)
(2 6 10 7) (14 12 5 11) ( 9 4 1) ( 8 13 3)

All pairs playing together either once or twice.