Generating a sports league schedule is a challenging task due to the variety
of different requirements which have to be addressed.
The basic problem for scheduling a sports league may be
formulated as follows. The league consists of 2n teams, each team has to
play against each other team exactly k times. In order to schedule
these n(2n-1)k games, (2n-1)k rounds are available,
where each team has to play one game in each round.
Thus, for each round t=1,...,(2n-1)k one has to determine which teams
i,j play against each other in this round and for each of these pairings
i-j, whether it is played in the home stadium of team i (home game for i)
or in the home stadium of team j (away game for i).
We are working on algorithms to solve different sports league
scheduling problems.
Especially, we develop construction methods for schedules with specific
properties
(e.g. fairness issues, tournaments on a single court):
Constructing methods for sports league schedules
In cooperation with two league administrators from the TTVN
(Tabletennis federation of Lower Saxony) we developed a system which
is able to automatically generate schedules for table tennis leagues:
Publications:
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D. Briskorn, S. Knust [2010]:
Constructing fair sports league schedules with regard to strength groups,
Discrete Applied Mathematics 158, 123-135.
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A. Drexl, S. Knust [2007]:
Sports league scheduling: graph- and resource-based models,
Omega 35, 465-471.
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G. Kendall, S. Knust, C.C. Ribeiro, S. Urrutia [2010]:
Scheduling in sports: An annotated bibliography
Computers and Operations Research 37, 1-19.
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S. Knust [2006]
Turnier- und Sportligaplanung,
36. Algorithmus der Woche.
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S. Knust [2008]:
Scheduling sports tournaments on a single court minimizing waiting times,
Operations Research Letters 36, 471-476.
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S. Knust [2010]:
Scheduling non-professional table-tennis leagues,
European Journal of Operational Research 200, 358-367.
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S. Knust [2011]
Scheduling of Tournaments or Sports Leagues,
in: B. Vöcking, H. Alt, M. Dietzfelbinger, R. Reischuk, C. Scheideler,
H. Vollmer, D. Wagner (eds.): Algorithms Unplugged, Springer, 267-275.
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S. Knust, D. Lücking [2009]:
Minimizing costs in round robin tournaments with place constraints,
Computers and Operations Research 36, 2937-2943.
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S. Knust, M. von Thaden [2006]:
Balanced home-away assignments, Discrete Optimization 3, 354-365.
- S. Knust: Classification of literature on sports scheduling
- Constructing methods for sports league schedules
