How to draw up a schedule so that 12 teams play each other once

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter Harrigan
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Peter Harrigan

I have 12 hockey teams in a competition and I want to construct a "draw". Is
there a universal model that I can use in cases where I have more or less
teams in the comptition?
 
One way of representing teams that play each other home and away in
some competition is to draw up a table with the team names across the
top row and down the first column like this:

TEAM A B C D E
A x
B x y
C x
D x
E x

It is usual for the teams down the first column to be the home team
and for the team across the top row to be the away team, so the game
marked y is between team B and team D (assuming the formatting holds
out). Obviously, a team can't play itself, so the leading diagonal of
this table is blanked out.

Within the cells of this table you can record the date each match is
due to be played, or the time if it is a one-day event, and after the
match has taken place you can record the score instead of the date/
time (or use another table for this).

If there is only one game between each team and home/away does not
apply (eg some tournament at a neutral venue), then you only need the
bottom triangle of the table (below the x's), rather like a mileage
chart that you see in road atlases.

Hope this helps.

Pete
 
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