Calculating fixtures

[charlgerber]

Can someone please provide me with a good algorythm for calculating league fixtures? I know Ken Butler used to have a good one that could be applied to a league of any number of teams.... anyone out there? Thanks!

[IASocFan]

Say you have 8 teams. Start with
1-2
3-4
5-6
7-8.
Then keep 1 stationary and rotate the rest:
1-3
5-2
7-4
8-6
week 3
1-5
7-3
8-2
6-4
etc. for weeks 4-7. This works for any number of teams. If you have an odd number, one number becomes the bye team. Hope this was what you were looking for.

[IASocFan]

My objective was to provide a round robin schedule for a given number of teams. The teams are placed randomly. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish.

[charlgerber]

Thanks, this is a big help... I just need to tweak the algorythm a bit to ensure teams play home/away in alternate weeks. Is this the algorythm based on th graph theory?

[charlgerber]

Sorry, I initially misunderstood what you meant by rotating, but then I see you physically rotated them clockwise, ignoring 1.... it is now clear. Thanks again.

[IASocFan]

Originally posted by charlgerber
Is this the algorythm based on th graph theory?

I don't think so.

[Dr. Wankler]

It was my understanding that there would be no math required for membership on bigsoccer.

[charlgerber]

I wrote a Java program (with some tweaks) and this works very well. You should see the code - now that is a mathematical nightmare at first glance! But the result is great. The tweaks I made was alternating the home/away teams every second week, so now you get a "real" schedule with teams playing every 2nd game home/away. Only once in the season will a team play two consecutive home games and two consecutive away games.

But I'm also still looking for the other algorythm to compare the two.....

[IASocFan]

does your proram work with any number of teams?

[charlgerber]

I've tested it for 4,6,8,10 and 18 teams and it worked fine. I haven't checked for uneven numbers, but I am using it for specificly 18 teams, so my problem is solved.

I'll write JUnit test code to test the fixtures thoroughly for all sorts of criteria.