I host beach volleyball tournaments on a regular basis, most of the tournaments are regular "round robin" style and played in a single day on 2-4 courts, but recently I've been doing a tournament style where partners switch for each game...giving everyone a chance to play with every other player, as a team. In beach volleyball teams are comprised of 2 players, so
Game 1 might be
Players 1/5 vs
Players 3/8 and
Game 2 might be
Players 5/2 vs
Players 7/3, etc.
My challenge is not necessarily figuring out which team should play *against* which team, but rather in balancing *how many times* a certain player plays *against* another *player*. I tried using the Ian Balanced Round Robin Excel spreadsheet to help randomize teams (and it's an amazing tool, BTW!), but I'm not sure I could figure out how to also factor in the amount of times a player would play *against* other players...so as to have a balanced amount of games where all players (as much as possible) will play against *most* other players, at least once...and not play against the same players a great number of times. I've spent so much time on this, including using AI to help...and while AI *can* create a nice random round robin pairing of partners, it doesn't seem to be able to add the element of balancing the number of times players will play against other players. Further, I've tried several online round robin tools and calculators, but haven't been able to find one that deals with the above-mentioned specifics.
Over the last year or 2 I've started chiseling away at an Excel spreadsheet to help figure this out...and after dozens of iterations, I find myself manually assigning each team...to try as much as possible to control who each player plays against. It's tedious and time consuming...and I'm mainly using Conditional Formatting to show me repeats. But even now I feel like missing the mark of doing this the right way and maybe it's time I ask for help!
Here's a look at my Excel spreadsheet for a Round Robin schedule that has:
- 8 Players (4 teams)
- 2 Courts
- Each Player plays *with* every other player once (requiring 7 games for this to happen)
- And "trying" to balance the amount of times each player plays *against* the other players.
When it comes to creating bigger tournaments (16 players/8 teams/4 courts), it's easier...because not every player gets to play with every other player (because of a lack of time in a 3-4 hour tourney)...so hand-picking the numbers based on a random drawing makes it easier to not have one player play against another player more than 1 or 2 times...
Any help along these lines would be greatly appreciated! Ideally a randomizer/generator like the one that Ian built, that allows for a few variables like:
- Number of Courts
- Number of Players
- Team size (normally 2, but sometimes 4)
- Number of Games
- *** Then Randomizes players into teams...while at the same time:
- *** Balances the number of times each player plays against another player (trying to keep it as equal as possible).
Thank you for reading this far...and for any help!
Best Regards,
Nathan