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Board Game Tournaments- Even Rotation

Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 11:09 pm
by Admiral Acbon
This past Friday and Saturday my friends and I held our "annual" (-ish) Settlers of Catan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catan) tournament. We ended up playing five regular games, then the top 5 played in the championship game. Rotation was determined by drawing numbers prior to each game. Numbers 1-5 played at one table, 6-10 at another, and 11-15 at the last one. For one game, three of us had just played against each other, and in the tournament there was a player I played against at least three times. We (including a college-educated statistician) are scratching our heads- how do we ensure that everyone plays against everyone else an equal amount of times?

Maintaining a two-evening event is pretty much set in stone, as would be playing with the 5-6 player expansion setup. Ditto for keeping an equal number of players per table. Four of us did play on an expansion board after the tournament was over and it still took an hour-plus (on average, games should end up noticeably shorter than with 5 players). We could probably go with anywhere from 4-6 players per table- fewer players = more games to set up, but more players = longer games. Overall player count could go a few one way or the other if necessary.

Anybody wanna tackle this, or maybe direct me to some type of online calculator meant for similar scenarios?