Pinball leagues

[abcdelmrs]

First off thanks for all the time and effort people have put into the schedules requested here.  I've been able to use the Excel version pointed to in one of the links to help schedule a head-to-head pinball league I'm planning for next year to have an acceptable "best fit" balance.

However, I'm having fits trying to adapt that along with other methods I've read about here into another pinball league I participate in where we play four player games instead of two player games.  Hopefully I can give enough details to see if there are some "best fit" scenarios.

1.  24 players are in the league
2.  Each month there are 5 pinball machines available for play
3.  Each month there are 6 rounds of "play" (but each person really only plays 5 rounds and sits out 1)
4.  Each member should play each pinball machine only once each month.
5.  The season lasts for 6 months.

While there is no way to avoid some people playing the same opponent twice in the same month, are there some "best fits" where these repeats can be somewhat evened out over the course of the six month league.

Thanks.

[Ian Wakeling]

I am sorry, but I can't see any way of solving this, I can only make a schedule for 1 month.  By the way, I count 15 opponents per person per month, so I don't see that there is an issue about 'twice in the same month'.   If it helps here is my 1 month schedule.

    Machine 1     Machine 2     Machine 3     Machine 4      Machine 5        Bye
  (11 20 15  2) (23  6 12 14) (17 21  1  8) (18 19  7  3)  (5 16 24 10)   (22  9  4 13)
  (12 21 16  3) (24  1  7 15) (18 22  2  9) (13 20  8  4)  (6 17 19 11)   (23 10  5 14)
  ( 7 22 17  4) (19  2  8 16) (13 23  3 10) (14 21  9  5)  (1 18 20 12)   (24 11  6 15)
  ( 8 23 18  5) (20  3  9 17) (14 24  4 11) (15 22 10  6)  (2 13 21  7)   (19 12  1 16)
  ( 9 24 13  6) (21  4 10 18) (15 19  5 12) (16 23 11  1)  (3 14 22  8)   (20  7  2 17)
  (10 19 14  1) (22  5 11 13) (16 20  6  7) (17 24 12  2)  (4 15 23  9)   (21  8  3 18)

Because of the way it is constructed, with groups of players (1 2 3 4 5 6), (7 8 9 10 11 12), etc. in the columns,  members of the same group can not play each other without violating the 4th criterion above.

[abcdelmrs]

Thanks.  Somehow the organizers of the four-player league had come to the conclusion that there was no way to avoid the "twice in the same month", so I just assumed that was the case.  It's great that you've come up with a way to avoid that!  I'm hoping I can take this one month schedule and just change which player gets assigned which number in order to try and balance things out over the whole season as closely as possible.  Maybe where each person plays most people N times and a few players N+1 times over the six monthly meetings.