Tennis Mixed Doubles Round Robin

[Arthur494]

I am looking to organise a mixed doubles tennis tournament of 16 men and 16 women on eight courts in eight rounds.  

Not all the players need partner or oppose every other player, but (obviously) each match must consist of two mixed pairs.  

Is it possible to achieve this with the condition that no two players play more than once in the same match (as either partners or opponents) and that there is a reasonable degree of mixing?  

I had a solution but it consisted of the men playing in two exclusive eight man groups and not mixing at all.

tia

[Ian Wakeling]

I think the solution that you have already must be a schedule like the one at the end of this topic.
This does meet your criteria. If you assign group A to the men and group B to the women, then the men and women are divided into two subgroups (1..8) and (9..16) with the same gender opponents always being taken from different subgroups.

I don't know how to construct a similar schedule such that it doesn't have this sub-group property. However, if you don't tell the participants that the sub-group structure exists, which you have assigned randomly, then I don't see that there is a big problem.

From the perspective of a single player all they will perceive is that they have been scheduled to play against 8 randomly selected players of the same gender.

As long as you only post the current round and next weeks play on the notice board, your participants are unlikely to discover the hidden structure as they would need to keep notes and compare them with one another.  The mixing is still optimal in the sense that a participant's 8 partners and  16 opponents are all different.

Ian.

[Jeff]

Also, this schedule might work for you. (http://www.jdawiseman.com/papers/tournaments/carry-over/co_16.html)
You might need to alter it slightly.  Use only half the weeks and combine columns 1 and 2, 3 and 4, etc. for your pairings.
Jeff