Co-ed Tourney

[rdunnivan]

I would like a 8 or 12 player whist style schedule where the players are half boys and half girls.

Every game would be co-ed and would involve a different partner of the opposite sex for each person.  I realize it wouldn't be practical to play every possible combination for time purposes.  While staying with 9-12 games, what would the best breakdown be for maximizing the number of different partners and different opponents?

For example, with 6 of each sex, Boy1 would play 6 games (once with each girl) and 12 opponents.  What would be the best way to spread out those oponents?

[Ian Wakeling]

There are no good solutions to this problem as it is not possible to balance the opponents.  The following schedules should be about the best possible, where some pairs never oppose and other pairs oppose twice.

[(M4 F4)v(M1 F2)] [(M2 F1)v(M3 F3)]
[(M1 F4)v(M2 F3)] [(M4 F2)v(M3 F1)]
[(M4 F1)v(M2 F4)] [(M3 F2)v(M1 F3)]
[(M4 F3)v(M2 F2)] [(M3 F4)v(M1 F1)]


[(M4 F6)v(M6 F4)] [(M2 F2)v(M5 F3)] [(M3 F1)v(M1 F5)]
[(M2 F1)v(M4 F4)] [(M5 F5)v(M1 F3)] [(M6 F6)v(M3 F2)]
[(M2 F5)v(M4 F2)] [(M1 F4)v(M6 F3)] [(M3 F6)v(M5 F1)]
[(M4 F3)v(M5 F6)] [(M6 F2)v(M1 F1)] [(M2 F4)v(M3 F5)]
[(M2 F6)v(M1 F2)] [(M5 F4)v(M6 F5)] [(M4 F1)v(M3 F3)]
[(M2 F3)v(M6 F1)] [(M4 F5)v(M1 F6)] [(M5 F2)v(M3 F4)]

In the area of mixed doubles the only balanced schedules are ones where the players are spouse pairs who never meet. See this post for more details.