Planning a tournament schedule "We'll see you in the final!" you say to your opponents after a game in the pool play of a tournament. But sometimes it turns out that you meet them just a couple of games later during the knockout! This is likely to happen if, after the pool play, the teams are numbered thus: Pool A B C D Rank in pool 1st 1 2 3 4 2nd 5 6 7 8 and then have a standard knockout (1v8, 2v7, 3v6, 4v5, etc.). If, for example, 5 beats 4 and 1 beats 8 (not implausible), then the teams that started out as 1 and 5 play each other in the second round of the knockout -- and 1 and 5 already met in the pool play; and the same goes for 4 and 8, who already met in pool D. This situation can arise in the other pools too if 7 beats 2 or if 6 beats 3, so it must be quite a common occurrence in tournaments that are scheduled in this way. Similar problems can also arise after cross-over games too. For example, at the 1995 Nationals, Strange Blue played in a pool with PhatEds and then lost a crossover game with the Bears; our next game was then with PhatEds. I think Bliss and Skunks had a similar experience. Wouldn't it be preferable to have a tournament schedule in which this couldn't happen - so that each team meets as many other teams as possible? (Not that we didn't have fun playing PhatEds twice!) As the Druids have demonstrated for years at their fine tournaments, it is actually quite easy to set up a schedule such that teams who've played each other in a pool are guaranteed not to meet in the first two rounds of an eight-team knockout. All that is required is to number the teams in the four pools thus: 1 2 3 4 7 8 5 6 and proceed with a normal knockout. I hope that this note may help tournie organisers plan even better tournaments. David MacKay, Strange Blue mackay@mrao.cam.ac.uk ------------ More ideas for sixteen-team tournaments, added June 2000: If the conventional format "pools of 4 then 1-8 knockout and 9-16 knockout" is used, then the following seedings seem good: 1 2 3 4 7 8 5 6 10 9 12 11 16 15 14 13 -------------- It is also possible to add the following "peer games" after the pool games in the above format: 1v3, 2v4, 5v7, 6v8, 9v11, 10v12, 13v15, 14v16 -------------- If an extra crossover game between 5-8 and 9-12 is to be included to allow 3rd rank teams a chance to get into the top 8, then the following seeding is good: 1 2 3 4 7 8 5 6 12 11 10 9 14 13 16 15 The top 4 and bottom 4 could play peer games (1v3, 2v4, 13v15, 14v16) while the crossover games (5v12, 6v11, 7v10, 8v9) are happening. --------------- Finally, here is a seeding for a tournament with pool games followed by peer games at all levels, then a 5-12 crossover, then 1-8 and 9-16 playoffs. 1 2 3 4 7 8 5 6 11 12 9 10 13 14 15 16