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Originally Posted by gmo
I worked up something for you - is your configuration 4/4/4 and 4/5/5 in the two leagues? Tell me whatever it is and I can rearrange it into that and post it for you.
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AL 4/4/4 and NL 4/5/5 in the two leagues is correct.
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Originally Posted by gmo
Sounds like from your precise layout scheme and how far you say you got (done, just not pretty enough) you did a very good job considering especially the 14-team league is a tough configuration.
I do it by series rather than individual games. I start by determining how to layout all the series for one team, then lay out everything else off that. The first key is figuring how to fit the right number of games into a reasonable number of series and keeping home/away and overall splits even or as desired.
For three 4-team divisions I can do that one team, then all the division games can fall off from automatically. When that one is playing another division team, at the same time the other two division teams can be playing each other.
1vs2, 3vs4
1vs3, 2vs4
1vs4, 2vs3, etc.
If there are more teams, there are more options for laying out those more matchups, but they are still routine to do.
Likewise for interdivision and interleague games when that one is playing some other teams, I can matchup teams in that same division in a similar manner.
1vs5, 2vs6, 3vs7, 4vs8
1vs7, 2vs8, 3vs5, 4vs6, etc.
When there are odd numbers of teams in divisions like the 4/5/5 that forces interdivision and intradivision games to occur at the same time, which adds difficulty into the process of laying out the games. The ordering described below has to at least sort of go on while the layout is occurring.
Once all the matchups are schemed out into complete blocks where every team is accounted for I start ordering them - stuff like putting more division games toward the end of the season, trying to keep from having teams play against each other in series too close together, trying to clump homestands and roadtrips but not make them too long, trying spread the offdays around, etc.
After I get the order, then I begin the fine tuning. I have spreadsheet stuff I can set up to show how many games in a row a team is set to have overall, home, and away. If I need to open an offday maybe I move a game from one series to another matchup of the same teams in the same place, e.g., make a 4-game set of 1@2 a 3-game series while making a 3-game series somewhere else in the schedule the new 4-gamer between the teams. Too many home or away series in row or too many 1-series homestands and roadtrips - then I can flip series around, e.g., reverse a 1@2 series to a 2@1 series while elsewhere in the schedule reversing a 2@1 series to a 1@2 series.
That trial-and-error fine tuning can sometime take quite a while. Once I get everything (stuff like the standard current MLB things like no more than 20 days without offday and limited homestand and roadtrip lengths) apparently met that I want to, or at least as close as I can muster, I have a few final checks I have to do after I convert those series into all the individual games. I also can bump series around by a day to put some (more) variety in where the offdays fall.
The process seems hard to explain (compared to just doing it) and probably generally tear-inducingly boring. But if you were interested in more details I could surely oblige. If you were simply interested in getting the schedule and being done with it though, I more than understand.
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Not at all, this is exactly what I was looking for. I really wanted to try to put something together, and I guess what I had so far was a best effort. I think I did some things right, particularly in the fine tuning aspects (I ended up moving individual games around, trying to make homestands and roadtrips instead of 3 games home, 3 games away, 3 games home, etc.).
But I wasn't sure where to start, so I just kind of dove in on April 1 by scheduling the whole league one week at a time. I kept a running tab on Excel at the bottom of the page that started with the total number of home/road games each team would have against each other team, and then used the COUNTIF formulas to subtract the scheduled games automatically. It was never a problem of keeping a balanced schedule or the 81/81 home/road split because those were my two biggest goals going in.
The offdays gave me the biggest problem. When I reached the last month, I found I had some teams with 7 days off remaining and some had only 2 or 3, which made scheduling really difficult. I just ended up starting with the teams with few off days, filling in their entire remaining schedule, and working out from there. The teams with the most off-days left kind of got the shaft, because they ended up clumping together as 2 or 3 days off in a row. Not what I wanted, but we were ready to start the new season and I didn't want to hold things up to start the schedule over without getting some idea of where I was screwing up in the first place.
You said you'd worked something up, and I'd love to see it. I may have questions (if that's okay), but what you've already said helps immensely for the next time I try to work through one of these things.