9 Player Volleyball Tournament

[rdunnivan]

I want to play a volleyball tournament with 9 people.  There would be 9 games total with one person sitting out each round.  A round would consist of 2 courts with doubles on each side.  Instead of teams, each individual would play with a different partner each game.  Over the course of the 8 games a person plays, he should be partnered up with each other player once and partnered against each other player twice.  Is this mathematically possible?

Thanks in advance for any help,
Rick Dunnivan

[Ian Wakeling]

Hi Rick,

This is mathematically possible. For multiples of 4 players see the 'whist' schedules that you can find by following the schedules button above, for (4n+1) players there are some more examples here including a schedule for 9 players.

Ian.

[rdunnivan]

That worked perfectly ... thank you for the help.

[rdunnivan]

I would like to revisit this by trying to figure out how to make each game as evenly balanced as possible.  For example, when the two best players played together, ideally, their opposition would be two of the higher ranked players (I have my own ranking system in place to determine this). Mathematically, is there a way to figure this out?

Thanks
Rick

[Ian Wakeling]

There is only a little flexibility to influence this. If you have ranks R1 to R9, then assign the player names to the schedule so that one of the games in the last round is

R1 R2 vs R3 R4.