Ian was kind enough to share the details from one of his off-line dialogs:
Golf foursomes for 2 teams of 8.
Although Richard's
social square is for 16 players without any team structure it can be transformed into a schedule for 2 teams of 8.
Taking the social square exactly as it appears on the message board, relabel the players as follows:
A,B,C & D become A1,A2,A3 & A4;
E,F,G & H become A5,A6,A7 & A8;
I,J,K & L become B1,B2,B3 & B4 and finally
M,N,O & P become B5,B6,B7 & B8.
This gives:
Round
0 (A1,A2,A3,A4) (A5,A6,A7,A8) (B1,B2,B3,B4) (B5,B6,B7,B8)
1 (A1,A5,B1,B5) (A2,A6,B2,B6) (A3,A7,B3,B7) (A4,A8,B4,B8)
2 (A1,A6,B3,B8) (A2,A5,B4,B7) (A3,A8,B1,B6) (A4,A7,B2,B5)
3 (A1,A7,B4,B6) (A2,A8,B3,B5) (A3,A5,B2,B8) (A4,A6,B1,B7)
4 (A1,A8,B2,B7) (A2,A7,B1,B8) (A3,A6,B4,B5) (A4,A5,B3,B6)
Round 0 is not used since each foursome is made up of 4 players on the same team, however the other 4 rounds are all balanced with 2 players from each team, furthermore each player will play with 4 different members of their own team and with all 8 players of the opposing team.
Notice that each team is divided into two groups of 4 who never play together in rounds 1 to 4 (these are the brackets from the unused round). This property can be utilized to ensure a mixture of player ability within each foursome. If the players are ranked by handicap then the strongest 4 players from each team are assigned to A1-A4 and B1-B4 and the weakest 4 players to A5-A8 and B5-B8, then every foursome consists of a strong and weak player from both teams.
Friday, October 28 2005 4:42 pm
Round robin was
word of the day