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Sports Scheduling

This document summarizes several common sports scheduling problems including single and double round robin tournaments, balanced tournament design, bipartite tournaments, and the traveling tournament problem. It describes formulations and solutions used including graph algorithms, integer programming, constraints programming, and metaheuristics like simulated annealing and tabu search. Sports scheduling problems can be modeled as block designs, Latin squares, or graph problems and solved using techniques from operations research and computer science.

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Cristine Joyce Lucero
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172 views20 pages

Sports Scheduling

This document summarizes several common sports scheduling problems including single and double round robin tournaments, balanced tournament design, bipartite tournaments, and the traveling tournament problem. It describes formulations and solutions used including graph algorithms, integer programming, constraints programming, and metaheuristics like simulated annealing and tabu search. Sports scheduling problems can be modeled as block designs, Latin squares, or graph problems and solved using techniques from operations research and computer science.

Uploaded by

Cristine Joyce Lucero
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Sports Scheduling

Written by Kelly Easton, George Nemhauser,


Michael Trick
Presented by Matthew Lai
Introduction
• Paper covers tournament scheduling problems
• Single Round Robin Tournament Problem (SRRTP)
• Double Round Robin Tournament Problem (DRRTP)
• Balanced tournament Design Problem (BTDP)
• Bipartite Tournament Problem (BTP)
• Traveling Tournament Problem (TTP)
Sports Scheduling Terms
• Break – Number of times that a team has consecutive home/away games
• Tournament – A series of games in which teams play each other team
• Schedule – Mapping of games into slots (time periods) such that each
team plays at most once in each slot
• Mirrored/Partially Mirrored – DRRT mirrored such that teams play in
same schedule but with mirrored venues
• Compact – Schedule that includes minimum possible number of slots
• Pattern – A vector of home, away, or bye designations for a single team
over the slots of a schedule
• Complementary – Two patterns where each slot is complementary to each
other
• Pattern Set – A collection of patterns, one for each team
• Tour – A schedule for a single team in the tournament
• Trip – A series of consecutive away games
• Home Stand – A series of consecutive home games
General Overview – Solutions
used in Sports Scheduling
• Graph Algorithms
• Integer Programming
• Constraint Programming
• Metaheuristics
• Simulated Annealing
• Tabu Search
Single Round Robin
Tournament
• Formal Definition
• Input: A set of n teams T = { 1, 2, …, n }
• Output: A mapping of the games in the set G = {gij : i, j T, i < j}
To slots in the set S = {sk, k = 1, …, n-1 if n is even and k = 1, …,
n if n is odd}
• SSRT can be described as a Block Design Algorithm
• Described as (v, k, )
• Block Design Algorithm attempts to create subsets of size k using
the v elements of the set where each element can only appear in
 subsets
• SSRT is therefore (n, 2, 1)
SSRTP Circle Method - SSRTP-C
• Because the block design for SSRTP is resolvable, circle
method can be used
• Label teams , 1, 2, …, n-1. On day i, play i vs. , (i-1) vs (i+1)
…, () vs (). Each integer being reduced (mod n – 1) to lie in
interval [1, n -1]. Replace  with n
• Example: n = 8
Day 1 Day 2
8 vs 1 8 vs 2
7 vs 2 1 vs 3
6 vs 3 7 vs 4
5 vs 4 6 vs 5
• SRRTP-V is a similar algorithm to SRRT-C but includes venue
selection so that home/away games for each team are
somewhat balanced
Round Robin Tournament and
Latin Squares
• RRT can reduce to Latin Squares problems
• Much research has been done on Latin Squares and can be
adapted to solve RRT problems

1 2 3 4 5 6
1 6 2 3 4 5 1
2 2 6 4 5 1 3
3 3 4 6 1 2 5
4 4 5 1 6 3 2
5 5 1 2 3 6 4
6 1 3 5 2 4 6
Round Robin Pattern Sets
• Previous methods construct schedules by assigning team
matchups to schedule slots. The reverse process has also been
suggested to be an effective alternative
• Generate pattern set for each team after which compatible teams
can be paired
• Generating good pattern sets, therefore, is necessary for a good
schedule
Round Robin Pattern Sets (cont.)
• Patterns generated for each team will either be feasible
patterns, where patterns for the set of teams will generate a
RRT, or it they will be infeasible, where patterns cannot be
matched to form an RRT
• Whole set of necessary conditions not currently known
• Each pair must differ by at least one slot
• For DRRT, every pattern pair generated for any two teams must
contain, alternatively, a home and away pattern
• For all RRT, every slot in pattern set must include equal number of
home and away games
Balanced Tournament Designs
• Input: A set of n teams T = { 1, …, n } and a number of
facilities F
• Output: Mapping of the games in set G = { gij : i, j  T, i < j } to
slots available at each facility as decribed by S = { sf, f = 1, …, F,
k = 1, …, n – 1 if n is even and n if n is odd } such that no more
than one game involving team i is assigned to a particular slot
and the difference between the number of apperances of
team i at two separate facilities is no more than 1
BTDP-NO
• “Bracelet” algorithm – Works with 2m+1 odd teams
• Arrange teams 1 through 2m + 1 into an elongated pentagon or
“bracelet”. Indicate facility associated with each row containing
two teams.
• For each slot k= 1, …, 2m+1 give the team at the top of the
pentagon the bye. For each row with two teams, i, j associated
with facility f, assign gij to skf. Then shift teams one position in CW
direction
• Example: m = 2 1

2 5 Facility 1

3 4 Facility 2
Bipartite Tournament
• Input: Two teams with n players T1 = { x1, …, xn } and T2 = {y1, …,
yn }
• Output: A mapping of the games in the set
G = { gij : i  T1, j  T2 }, to the slots in set S = { sk, k = 1, …, n }
such that exactly one game including t is mapped to any given
slot for all t  T1  T2
• In other words, given two groups, ensure that each member of
one group plays the members of the other group.
• Not just limited to teams of players, but can also encompass
Leagues and conferences of teams.
• Also equivalent to Latin Square
Graph Algorithm
• Sports Scheduling problem can also be solved as a graph
problem
• The sports schedule would be represented on a graph with 2m
teams, as a graph K2m with 2m different edge values or colors.
Edge [i, j] would represent a game between team i and team j
where i and j are vertex nodes.
• SRRT prblem can be presented as a 1-factorization of K2m such
that each vertex is not connected by any two edges of the
same value. In this way, by taking the 1-factor of a certain
value, you receive a perfect matching of pairs.
• This graph should be oriented such that the directions indicate
the home/away orientation of the game
Graph Example
2
1 3

6 4
5
Sports Scheduling Problems
• Minimum Breaks Problem – minimize number total breaks,
home stands and road trips. With even teams, only two
feasible schedules exist with no breaks. With odd teams, many
more schedules exist
• Geographical Location – Ensure that geographically close
teams do not play each other consecutively to ensure
maximum fan attendenance
• Divisions – Sports leagues often arrange teams into divisions
based on geographical closeness. Therefore, matchup
inter‑division games on weekdays and intra-division
Integer Programming
• A mathematical optimization or feasibility program where
some or all variables are restricted to integers.
• Let binary variables xijk = 1 if i plays j in slot k and xijk = 0
otherwise for i < j ∈ {1, …, n } and k ∈ { 1,… n – 1} for even n.
In Basic SRRTP the IP problem should satisfy the following
constraints :

• The first constraint guarantees that every team plays exactly


once in each slot. The second ensures that each team plays
every opponent exactly once.
Constraints Programming
• Constraints Programming is a programming paradigm with a
combinatorial approach for solving hard optimization
problems.
• CP for sports scheduling, as implemented by Martin Henz,
performed the steps differently from IP. It first assigned teams
to patterns before matching teams in games. This constraints
programming solution for sports programming reported ran
on the order of minutes as compared to the 24 hour run time
from the Integer Programming
Traveling Tournament Problem

• Input: A set of teams T = { 1, …, n }; D: an n x n integer


distance matrix with elements dij; l, u integer parameters.
• Output: A double round robin tournament on the teams in T
such that
• The length of each home stand and road trip is between l and
u inclusive
• The total distance traveled by the teams is minimized
• With the maximum value of u = (n – 1) , this problem becomes
a traveling salesman problem. For a small u the team must
return home often, increasing travel distance. For u = 1, the
problem becomes on of finding a feasible solution.
Combining IP and CP to Solve
TTP
• To solve this problem, a hybrid method using both Integer
Programming and Constraints Programming was used. These
two different models are used in a parallel algorithm known as
the parallel branch and price algorithm. Each individual team
tour is represented as the columns of this column generating
algorithm. The Constraints Programming is used o solve the
pricing problem to determine the solution to the minimum price,
in this case, travel distance. The Integer Processor will attempt to
determine the tours for each team in the tournament that will
best solve the home stand/road trip constraint of the problem.
Additionally a CP model is also used as part of a primal heuristic
that is run on a separate processor on the side that will attempt
to look for a good, but not necessarily best solution by using the
solutions generated so far by the other parts of the algorithm.
Metaheuristics: Simulated
Annealing
• Simulated Annealing is a generic probabilistic metaheuristic
for global optimization problem of locating a good
approximation to the global optimum of a given function in a
large search space. The algorithm starts from a current state S.
It probabilistically decides between moving from the current
state to some neighboring S’ state.

• In this TTSA algorithm, the regions containing infeasible


schedules penalize the algorithm to discourage it from
remaining in the area.

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