Personal Preferences

How do I "want" to make a schedule?  Well, I do want to satisfy whatever requests/requirements are specified.  But I have more experience and comfort when that means something in a form like MLB has.  My tools have been developed to work more easily for such a form.  That is due in part to various factors that all can relate - I am familiar with and thus like the form, I believe other people tend the same way overall, and OOTP is probably geared toward that form.

What are the characteristics of that form to which I pay particular attention when building a schedule?

Circle Method - Part 7

Alternative layout methods

For the last (at least for now) entry about the circle method, we abandon the circle method. Particularly for team counts that are power of 2 (like 8 and 16), there are more symmetric things that can be done.

Circle Method - Part 6

For interdivision and interleague matchups

So far we have been building only for a single division. But this matchup generating scheme can be used also to set up interdivision and interleague matchups where the opposing divisions/leagues have the same number of teams.

Circle Method - Part 5

Balancing home/away

So far there has been no consideration of the home/away nature of the matchups as the goal has been to simply get all the matchups defined. But you could consider each "A v B" as "A @ B", such that "A" is away and "B" is home. Where does that put us toward even home/away splits for teams?

Circle Method - Part 4

Odd number of teams

For an odd number of teams there are a couple possible approaches. One team must always be left out - perhaps it will be playing interdivision or interleague games when it is the one left out. Ignoring for now what we doing with that left-out team, we can build the matchups the same sort of way.

Circle Method - Part 3

Examples showing 8 teams and 10 teams

Not doing anything spectacular here, just using the circle method to make matchups for a couple more scenarios.

Circle Method - Part 2

Using the algorithm instead of the brain

The circle method is a systematic way to determine the matchups without having to think much. There are other things you can find online that can provide more info. The way I will show things is not the only way to employ the method. The goal is to find something that works and is easy for you.

Circle Method - Part 1

Building round robin matchups

For a balanced schedule you want to make sure every team plays every other team some number of times. For almost any schedule through there may be at least "local" balance - e.g., you may want a team to play all its divisional opponents an equal (or nearly so) number of times.

How do you determine the matchups? First, we will charge straight in without any real plan and see where that takes us as we try to build a round robin that gets every team playing every other team.

What do you mean, "blogs aren't really a thing anymore"?

So I was gone for a while. A long while. I am back at it again, at least for now.

I am trying to pick up where I left off, which is pretty much the beginning of the road here. I am trying to make my tools better to get results I like better and more quickly.

I still have a tendency toward trying to make schedules that have characteristics like MLB. Recently MLB has lengthened the season to add a few more offdays across the season. That means now instead of 51 there are 52 halfweeks for the 162 games. With an additional halfweek for the All-Star break, the schedule generally spans from end of March or beginning of April to end of September to beginning of October. E.g., ignoring the overseas games Sea/Oak games earlier in March, 2019 spans from Mar28 through Sep29.

MLB schedules are great at limiting very short and very long homestands and roadtrips. At the top of my list in getting back into this is to try to find ways to minimize the single-series and 4-series homestands and roadtrips and maximize the 2- and 3-series homestands and roadtrips (i.e., usually 6-10 games). I do not expect to ever be getting great results in that regard like MLB since I want to churn out schedules quickly, but I want to find ways to get better.