We run a very casual Sunday morning session at a community centre. This is not a club, but the following is true:
- There is only one court.
- A highly variable number of people may turn up each week, from 3 to 12. There may be an odd or even number of people.
- We play until we get tired. Some people arrive late, others leave early.
- We don't care about levels or skill matching. Another way to put this is that we are equally matched not to worry about it.
- We are mixed genders, but not evenly.
Our aim per session:
- That across the session, everyone gets to play (or alternatively, rest) the same amount
- That across the session, the distribution of match ups are balanced (can probably express this as "no repeats")
- That plays/rests are evenly spread (so frequency of plays/rests are balanced)
- As a bonus, that all possible pairings are also covered
At the moment we create a list in order of arrival and then round robin (4 players if total is odd, 3 if it's even), mentally swapping partners if we see the same four people. This is easy enough to track, but we miss out on configurations if players are on the list with four or more players in between them. After a while we just nudge the list a bit to generate new pairs. This works okay on a casual level.
I think that the calculated tables on this site are what we want, except they're for doubles. Is it possible to read or convert them for doubles (eg by combining matches)?
I think whist tables would also work, except they seem strict about the number of players (4n), and there doesn't seem guidance about how to make them work for other numbers.
Any tips welcome!
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