No More Confusing Round Robin Algorithms

August 17, 2023

Trying to coordinate a Round Robin tournament can become confusing. You may spend time on creating a chart and figuring out Round Robin algorithms, just to show up at the tennis court and realize you can not understand what you scribbled down on a piece of loose leaf. Fortunately, Plan2Play provides a free Round Robin tool to make your tournament planning efficient and stress-free. If you are curious to understand how the Round Robin games are made this article explains all the algorithms.

In order to find out how many rounds you should plan you take the number of players n and then divide it by 2. You then take that number and multiply it by (n-1).

(n/2)(n-1)

In this equation for even players (n/2) is the number of games that can be run concurrently if there is an odd amount of players then it will be (n-1)/2 and one player will have a bye every round.

When planning matches you assign everyone a number, let’s assume you have 12 players.

Round 1:

12	vs	1
11	vs	2
10	vs	3
9	vs	4
8	vs	5
7	vs	6

After round 1 player 1 will stay in the same position and everyone will rotate in a clockwise fashion

Round 2:

11	vs	1
10	vs	12
9	vs	2
8	vs	3
7	vs	4
6	vs	5

You continue to rotate in this fashion until everyone has played each other.

Keeping track of score can be done by creating a grid system to write wins and loses.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	Total
1	X
2		X
3			X
4				X
5					X
6						X
7							X
8								X
9									X
10										X
11											X
12												X

Make your tennis planning simple

Tennis is a team sport, and round robins can be lots of fun. Hopefully this has created a greater understanding of how Round Robins work.

You can also use Plan2Play to quickly and efficiently create Round Robin tournaments for free! Want to play more than Round Robin? Use Plan2Play to schedule Free Play, Group Play and League Play!

TRY OUR FREE ROUND ROBIN TOOL