Expert: Rick Bundy - 3/23/2009

Question
this is my first year doing league schedules,  i have a 3 team league and a 5 team league, how would you set the playing schedule so each league played a 15 game season

Answer
Joe:  Thank you for your question.

Here is a set up for a round robin schedule, for each league.  For all teams to play each other an even number of times, you would need to play less than 15 games for the season, or more.

3 team round robin:

1 X 2
3 X Bye

1 X 3
Bye X 2

1 X Bye
2 X 3

That is one round.  Each team plays 2 games, and has one bye, per round.

Seven rounds would create 14 games per team.  Eight rounds would create 16 games per team.


5 team round robin:

1 X 2
3 X 4
5 X Bye

1 X 3
5 X 2
Bye X 4

1 X 5
Bye X 3
4 X 2

1 X Bye
4 X 5
2 X 3

1 X 4
2 X Bye
3 X 5

That is one round.  Each team plays 4 games per round, and has one bye per round.

Four rounds would get each team a 16 game schedule.  Three rounds would get each team a 12 game schedule.

An odd number of teams, equates to an even number of games played per round, per team.

I don't know if this helps or not.  If you have the ability to add games, or subtract games from your schedule, you can make this format work for you.

Yours in  baseball,

Rick