IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v259y2017i3p1180-1190.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scheduling double round-robin tournaments with divisional play using constraint programming

Author

Listed:
  • Carlsson, Mats
  • Johansson, Mikael
  • Larson, Jeffrey

Abstract

We study a tournament format that extends a traditional double round-robin format with divisional single round-robin tournaments. Elitserien, the top Swedish handball league, uses such a format for its league schedule. We present a constraint programming model that characterizes the general double round-robin plus divisional single round-robin format. This integrated model allows scheduling to be performed in a single step, as opposed to common multistep approaches that decompose scheduling into smaller problems and possibly miss optimal solutions. In addition to general constraints, we introduce Elitserien-specific requirements for its tournament. These general and league-specific constraints allow us to identify implicit and symmetry-breaking properties that reduce the time to solution from hours to seconds. A scalability study of the number of teams shows that our approach is reasonably fast for even larger league sizes. The experimental evaluation of the integrated approach takes considerably less computational effort to schedule Elitserien than does the previous decomposed approach.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlsson, Mats & Johansson, Mikael & Larson, Jeffrey, 2017. "Scheduling double round-robin tournaments with divisional play using constraint programming," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 259(3), pages 1180-1190.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:259:y:2017:i:3:p:1180-1190
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2016.11.033
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221716309584
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2016.11.033?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rasmussen, Rasmus V., 2008. "Scheduling a triple round robin tournament for the best Danish soccer league," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 185(2), pages 795-810, March.
    2. Martin Henz, 2001. "Scheduling a Major College Basketball Conference---Revisited," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 49(1), pages 163-168, February.
    3. Rasmussen, Rasmus V. & Trick, Michael A., 2007. "A Benders approach for the constrained minimum break problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 177(1), pages 198-213, February.
    4. Bhim Singh & Alka Adya & A.P. Mittal & J.R.P. Gupta, 2006. "Modelling of DSTATCOM for distribution system," International Journal of Energy Technology and Policy, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 4(1/2), pages 142-160.
    5. Henz, Martin & Muller, Tobias & Thiel, Sven, 2004. "Global constraints for round robin tournament scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 153(1), pages 92-101, February.
    6. Rasmussen, Rasmus V. & Trick, Michael A., 2008. "Round robin scheduling - a survey," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 188(3), pages 617-636, August.
    7. Larson Jeffrey & Johansson Mikael, 2014. "Constructing schedules for sports leagues with divisional and round-robin tournaments," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 10(2), pages 1-11, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David Van Bulck & Dries Goossens & Jo¨rn Scho¨nberger & Mario Guajardo, 2020. "An Instance Data Repository for the Round-robin Sports Timetabling Problem," Management and Labour Studies, XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business Management & Human Resources, vol. 45(2), pages 184-200, May.
    2. Li, Miao & Davari, Morteza & Goossens, Dries, 2023. "Multi-league sports scheduling with different leagues sizes," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(1), pages 313-327.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alex Krumer & Reut Megidish & Aner Sela, 2020. "The optimal design of round-robin tournaments with three players," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 379-396, June.
    2. Rasmussen, Rasmus V. & Trick, Michael A., 2008. "Round robin scheduling - a survey," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 188(3), pages 617-636, August.
    3. Hoshino, Richard & Kawarabayashi, Ken-ichi, 2011. "A multi-round generalization of the traveling tournament problem and its application to Japanese baseball," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 215(2), pages 481-497, December.
    4. van Doornmalen, Jasper & Hojny, Christopher & Lambers, Roel & Spieksma, Frits C.R., 2023. "Integer programming models for round robin tournaments," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 310(1), pages 24-33.
    5. Rasmussen, Rasmus V., 2008. "Scheduling a triple round robin tournament for the best Danish soccer league," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 185(2), pages 795-810, March.
    6. Durán, Guillermo & Guajardo, Mario & Sauré, Denis, 2017. "Scheduling the South American Qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup by integer programming," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(3), pages 1109-1115.
    7. Kendall, Graham & Lenten, Liam J.A., 2017. "When sports rules go awry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 257(2), pages 377-394.
    8. Rasmus Rasmussen & Michael Trick, 2009. "The timetable constrained distance minimization problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 171(1), pages 45-59, October.
    9. Van Bulck, David & Goossens, Dries, 2023. "A traditional Benders’ approach to sports timetabling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(2), pages 813-826.
    10. Ribeiro, Celso C. & Urrutia, Sebastian, 2007. "Heuristics for the mirrored traveling tournament problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 179(3), pages 775-787, June.
    11. D Briskorn, 2011. "A branching scheme for minimum cost tournaments with regard to real-world constraints," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 62(12), pages 2133-2145, December.
    12. Li, Miao & Davari, Morteza & Goossens, Dries, 2023. "Multi-league sports scheduling with different leagues sizes," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(1), pages 313-327.
    13. Deren Çağlayan & Emin Karagözoğlu & Kerim Keskin & Çağrı Sağlam, 2022. "Effort comparisons for a class of four-player tournaments," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(1), pages 119-137, July.
    14. Ryuhei Miyashiro & Tomomi Matsui & Shinji Imahori, 2012. "An approximation algorithm for the traveling tournament problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 194(1), pages 317-324, April.
    15. Michael A. Trick & Hakan Yildiz, 2011. "Benders' cuts guided large neighborhood search for the traveling umpire problem," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 58(8), pages 771-781, December.
    16. Briskorn, Dirk & Horbach, Andrei, 2009. "A Lagrangian approach for minimum cost tournaments," Manuskripte aus den Instituten für Betriebswirtschaftslehre der Universität Kiel 647, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.
    17. Guillermo Durán, 2021. "Sports scheduling and other topics in sports analytics: a survey with special reference to Latin America," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 29(1), pages 125-155, April.
    18. Jaeseob Han & Seung-Hyun Jeon & Gyeong-Ho Lee & Sangdon Park & Jun-Kyun Choi, 2023. "Power and Frequency Band Allocation Mechanisms for WPT System with Logarithmic-Based Nonlinear Energy Harvesting Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-27, July.
    19. Nicolau, Juan L., 2012. "The effect of winning the 2010 FIFA World Cup on the tourism market value: The Spanish case," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 503-510.
    20. Michael A. Trick & Hakan Yildiz & Tallys Yunes, 2012. "Scheduling Major League Baseball Umpires and the Traveling Umpire Problem," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 232-244, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:259:y:2017:i:3:p:1180-1190. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.