Doubles Group Schedule for the Winter Season

[rarnold2000]

Hello,
I am at a total loss and I'm not even sure this is the right place to ask my complicated question  :-?
I have to organize  a tennis "flight" for 12 slots/positions (either 12 women or 16 with some sharing a slot.  We play once a week for 22 weeks.   We will have 2 courts so eight will play each week and 4 will have byes.   What I'm looking for is a schedule which:

Has people playing WITH and AGAINST as many different people as is possible in just 22 week.

Gives each person the same number of byes or as close to the same number as is possible.

Doesn't have anyone in 2, 3, 4 times in a row and than out with byes 2, 3, or four times in a row.  The best, of course, would be play twice, then have a bye, but this might be asking too much.

Doesn't have the same four players always having  bye at the same time.  For example, I wouldn't want 1 through 4 to always have byes together an 5 through 8 to always have byes together and 9 through 12 to always have byes together.

I will add one more glitch, but I don't think this factor could possibly be taken into consideration without an MIT computer genius doing it.  We play on one soft hartru court and one hard court.  It would be lovely to even that out for players.  Okay, forget I ever mentioned this.

 Has anyone seen a schedule that would fit this.  What can I do:  I would never be able vto figure this out on a computer. Thank you so much


                      

[Ian Wakeling]

The following schedule may be useful if you have 12 players.  Although you asked for 22 weeks I think 21 weeks is a better choice since then it is possible to have people play 7 times on the hard court, 7 times on the har-tru court and have 7 byes.  Perhaps you could rank the women after 21 rounds and have a play-off for prizes in the 22nd week.  In terms of the doubles play, all pairs of players partner each other at least once and at most twice, and all pairs of players oppose each other at least twice and at most three times.  The schedule has come from a computer program which unfortunately has no way of spreading the byes evenly through the 21 weeks, but you could rearrange the order of the 21 rows to improve this.

    hard            har-tru         byes
(2  7 v  4  9) ( 3  6 v 11  8) ( 5 10 12  1)
(3  8 v  5  7) ( 1  4 v 12  9) ( 6 11 10  2)
(1  9 v  6  8) ( 2  5 v 10  7) ( 4 12 11  3)
(8  7 v  4 10) (12  1 v  3  5) ( 6  2  9 11)
(9  8 v  5 11) (10  2 v  1  6) ( 4  3  7 12)
(7  9 v  6 12) (11  3 v  2  4) ( 5  1  8 10)
(6  2 v 12  5) ( 7  4 v 11  1) ( 8 10  3  9)
(4  3 v 10  6) ( 8  5 v 12  2) ( 9 11  1  7)
(5  1 v 11  4) ( 9  6 v 10  3) ( 7 12  2  8)
(7 11 v  6  4) (10  8 v  2  1) (12  3  9  5)
(8 12 v  4  5) (11  9 v  3  2) (10  1  7  6)
(9 10 v  5  6) (12  7 v  1  3) (11  2  8  4)
(1  2 v 11  5) ( 8  7 v 10 12) ( 9  3  6  4)
(2  3 v 12  6) ( 9  8 v 11 10) ( 7  1  4  5)
(3  1 v 10  4) ( 7  9 v 12 11) ( 8  2  5  6)
(1  7 v  2  9) ( 4 12 v  6  8) (10  5 11  3)
(2  8 v  3  7) ( 5 10 v  4  9) (11  6 12  1)
(3  9 v  1  8) ( 6 11 v  5  7) (12  4 10  2)
(3 12 v 10 11) ( 8  4 v  2  6) ( 1  9  5  7)
(1 10 v 11 12) ( 9  5 v  3  4) ( 2  7  6  8)
(2 11 v 12 10) ( 7  6 v  1  5) ( 3  8  4  9)

Hope that helps,

Ian.

[Richard A. DeVenezias]

Posted on behalf of R***D:

(April 17, 2010 )
Thank you so very much for sending me this schedule.  I haven't had a chance to look it over carefully as I am about to leave the house, but I really look forward to working with it.  A 21 week schedule works just as well for us as one with 22.  I can't believe you were able to spread everyone over the two court surfaces.  Thank you, thank you.