Tennis Doubles Round Robin

[reminthorn]

I'm a math dunce so appreciate any help I can get.  We play doubles every Wednesday.  We usually have between 5 and 15 people show up.  We like to play with different partners.  I'm looking for a round robin schedule that would cover 3 rounds of matches with each person playing with a different partner each time.  The odd number folks would sit out or warm up.  If there's already a schedule here for 5 players, 6 players, 7 players, 8 players etc. I've missed it.  HELP!!!!!!  

[Ian Wakeling]

With 8 or 12 players it is possible to arrange that all the partners are different, and that all the opponents are different, however some pairs of players will play on court together twice, once as partners and once  as opponents.  For any other number of players there is no good way to handle the byes, for example I have made a schedule for 15, but only 6 players get the full 3 matches, the other 9 only get 2 matches.  I haven't tried myself, but I am aware that there is software out there that may help, try an internet search for 'tennis doubles software'.

8 players
   (2 7 v 5 6)  (1 4 v 3 8)
   (7 8 v 3 2)  (5 4 v 1 6)
   (2 6 v 1 3)  (5 7 v 8 4)


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


15 players
  (13 15 v 8 6) (12 5 v 9 10)  (2 4 v 7 3)   (11  1 14)
  (14 13 v 9 4) (10 6 v 7 11)  (3 5 v 8 1)   (12  2 15)
  (15 14 v 7 5) (11 4 v 8 12)  (1 6 v 9 2)   (10  3 13)

[MARY_M]

I want to run a doubles tournament with 20 people playing 4 rounds. I realise thant everyone will not play everyone! Can you suggest a round robin format in which everyone plays 4 rounds
Many thanks  Mary M

[wbport]

You need to look into a swiss system for a tournament with that few rounds.  You could randomly assign pairings from a longer schedule but could still get several people with perfect scores who never played against each other.

[Ian Wakeling]

If you are looking for something similar to the 8/12/15 player schedules above then see Ed Pegg's page where he discusses How long can 20 golfers play in foursomes?, take any four of the 5 rounds and then convert each foursome of the kind (A B C D) into a doubles match (A B vs C D) and you will have a schedule where a player's 4 partners and 8 opponents are all different people.  I imagine you are playing for fun rather than running a serious competition, as wbport suggests whatever you do is unlikely to be fair, for example if you play the converted golf schedule, then the winner is much more likely to be someone who just happened to get assigned stronger partners and weaker opponents.