bridge schedule

[sue]

I want to make a schedule for 28 teams that play for 8 months. Each month four teams play each other. is it possible to make a schedule and have no two teams play each other more than once?  Also, keeping numbers 1 - 7  in the first column, 8  - 14  in the second column, etc.

    1  8    15   22
    2  9    16   23  
    3  10  17   24
    4  11  18   25
    5  12  19   26
    6  13  20   27
    7  14  21   28

I think i need a miracle.

Thank You,
Sue Colella
    

[sue]

I want to make a schedule for 28 teams that play once a month for 8 months.
Each month  four teams play each other. Is it possible to make a schedule and  have no two teams play each other more than once?  Also, keeping numbers 1-7 in the first column, 8-16 in the second column, etc.

Sincerely,
Sue

[Ian Wakeling]

Sue,

Unfortunately, what you are asking is impossible.  Arranging players in columns in the way that you have specified means that a player can never play against the other 6 players within their column.  This limits the total number of opponents to 21.  However in 8 months of play a player must have 24 opponents, and as there is only a pool of 21 to choose from, this means that some of the opponents must be the same.  All may not be lost, if you reduce the requirement to 7 months of play, then you can have all 21 possible opponents exactly once - to do this the use the foursome schedule for 28 players that you can find in the attachment available in this thread.

BTW you can only see attachments if you are logged into the forum.

Ian