An instance data repository for the round-robin sports timetabling problem

The sports timetabling problem is a combinatorial optimization problem that consists of creating a timetable that defines against whom, when and where teams play games. This is a complex matter, since real-life sports timetabling applications are typically highly constrained. The vast amount and variety of constraints and the lack of generally accepted benchmark problem instances make that timetable algorithms proposed in the literature are often tested on just one or two specific seasons of the competition under consideration. This is problematic since only a few algorithmic insights are gained. To mitigate this issue, this article provides a problem instance repository containing over 40 different types of instances covering artificial and real-life problem instances. The construction of such a repository is not trivial, since there are dozens of constraints that need to be expressed in a standardized format. For this, our repository relies on RobinX, an XML-supported classification framework. The resulting repository provides a (non-exhaustive) overview of most real-life sports timetabling applications published over the last five decades. For every problem, a short description highlights the most distinguishing characteristics of the problem. The repository is publicly available and will be continuously updated as new instances or better solutions become available

Balancing the Game: Comparative Analysis of Single Heuristics and Adaptive Heuristic Approaches for Sports Scheduling Problem

Sport timetabling problems are Combinatorial Optimization problems which involve the creation of schedules that determine when and where teams compete against each other. One specific type of sports scheduling, the double round-robin (2RR) tournament, mandates that each team faces every other team twice, once at their home venue and once at the opponent’s. Despite the relatively small number of teams involved, the sheer volume of potential scheduling combinations has spurred researchers to employ various techniques to find efficient solutions for sports scheduling problems. In this thesis, we present a comparative analysis of single and adaptive heuristics designed to efficiently solve sports scheduling problems. Specifically, our focus is on constructing time-constrained double round-robin tournaments involving 16 to 20 teams, while adhering to hard constraints and minimizing penalties for soft constraints violations. The computational results demonstrate that our adaptive heuristic approach not only successfully finds feasible solutions for the majority of instances but also outperforms the single heuristics examined in this study.Master's Thesis in InformaticsINF399MAMN-INFMAMN-PRO

Towards prevention of sportsmen burnout : Formal analysis of sub-optimal tournament scheduling

Funding Statement: The authors are grateful to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia for funding this work through the Vice Deanship of Scientific Research Chairs: Chair of Pervasive and Mobile Computing.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

ON EQUITABLE ROUND-ROBIN TOURNAMENTS WITH MAXIMAL BREAK INTERVAL GREATER THAN OR EQUAL TO 5

In our earlier paper, we studied the mathematical structure of equitable round-robin tournaments with home-away assignments, and gave some necessary conditions for their feasibility in terms of friend-enemy tables and break interval sequences. We also enumerated all the feasible home-away tables of such tournaments satisfying both the opening and the closing conditions, up to 26 teams.In this paper, we study the maximal break interval of such tournaments. From this point of view, the tournaments satisfying both the opening and the closing conditions correspond to the case where the maximal break interval is greater than or equal to 4. The aim of this paper is to examine the case where the maximal break interval is greater than or equal to 5. We enumerate all the feasible cyclic break interval sequences of such tournaments, up to 42 teams

Mathematical Modeling and Optimization Approaches for Scheduling the Regular-Season Games of the National Hockey League

RÉSUMÉ : La Ligue nationale de hockey (LNH) est une association sportive professionnelle de hockey sur glace regroupant des équipes du Canada et des États-Unis. Chaque année, la LNH dois compter sur un calendrier de haute qualité concernant des questions économiques et d'équité pour les 1230 matchs de sa saison régulière. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons le premier modèle de programmation linéaire en nombres entiers (PLNE) pour le problème de la planification de ces matchs. Basé sur la littérature scientifique en planification des horaires sportifs, et aussi sur un raisonnement pratique, nous identifions et soulignons des exigences essentielles et des préférences qui doivent être satisfaites par des calendriers de haute qualité pour la LNH. La construction de tels calendriers, tout comme la planification des horaires sportifs en général, s'avère une tâche très difficile qui doit prendre en compte des intérêts concurrents et, dans plusieurs cas, subjectifs. En particulier, les expérimentations numériques que nous décrivons dans cette étude fournissent des évidences solides suggérant qu'une approche basée sur la PLNE est actuellement incapable de résoudre des instances de taille réaliste pour le problème. Pour surmonter cet inconvénient, nous proposons ensuite un algorithme de recherche adaptative à voisinage large (ALNS) qui intègre à la fois des nouvelles stratégies et des heuristiques spécialisées provenant de la littérature scientifique. Afin de tester cette approche, nous générons plusieurs instances du problème. Toutes les instances sont basées sur les calendriers officiels de la LNH et, en particulier, utilisent les dates de matchs à domicile de chaque équipe comme des dates de disponibilité de son aréna. Dans les situations les plus difficiles, la disponibilité des arénas est rare ou est à son minimum. Dans tous les cas, en ce qui concerne les indicateurs de qualité soulevés, l'algorithme ALNS a été capable de générer des calendriers clairement meilleur que leur correspondants adoptés par la LNH. Les résultats obtenus suggèrent que notre approche pourrait certainement permettre aux gestionnaires de la LNH de trouver des calendriers de meilleur qualité par rapport à une variété de nouvelles préférences.----------ABSTRACT : The National Hockey League (NHL) is a major professional ice hockey league composed of 30 teams located throughout the United States and Canada. Every year, the NHL must rely on a high-quality schedule regarding both economic and fairness issues for the 1230 games of its regular season. In this thesis, we propose the first integer linear programming (IP) model for the problem of scheduling those games. Based both on the pertinent sports scheduling literature and on practical reasoning, we identify and point out essential requirements and preferences that should be satisfied by good NHL schedules. Finding such schedules, as many other sports scheduling problems, is a very difficult task that involves several stakeholders with many conflicting, and often subjective, interests. In fact, computational experiments that we describe in this study, provide compelling evidence that an IP approach is currently unable to solve instances of realistic size for the problem. To overcome such drawback, we propose then an Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search (ALNS) algorithm that integrates both novel strategies and specialized heuristics from the scientific literature. To test the approach, we generate instances based on past NHL schedules and on a given number of arena-available dates that are suitable for the home games of each team. In the most challenging instances, availability of arenas is scarce or at its minimum. In all cases, regarding the identified concerns, the ALNS algorithm was able to generate much better schedules than those implemented by the NHL. Results obtained suggest that our approach could certainly identify unnecessary weakness in NHL schedules, makes the NHL managers aware of better schedules with respect to different requirements, and even lead them to consider other desired features they might not have previously taken into account

Proceedings of Mathsport international 2017 conference

Proceedings of MathSport International 2017 Conference, held in the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua, June 26-28, 2017. MathSport International organizes biennial conferences dedicated to all topics where mathematics and sport meet. Topics include: performance measures, optimization of sports performance, statistics and probability models, mathematical and physical models in sports, competitive strategies, statistics and probability match outcome models, optimal tournament design and scheduling, decision support systems, analysis of rules and adjudication, econometrics in sport, analysis of sporting technologies, financial valuation in sport, e-sports (gaming), betting and sports

Gladys Heldman and the Original Nine: The Visionaries Who Pioneered the Women\u27s Professional Tennis Circuit

The purpose of this study was to examine the events that led up to the formation of the women’s professional tennis circuit in the United States in 1970, and the political battles of the subsequent three years. Under the guidance of Gladys M. Heldman, the founder, editor and publisher of World Tennis magazine – the sport’s most influential publication at the time – nine women tennis players decided to leave the jurisdiction of the United States Lawn Tennis Association and form their own circuit. The women broke away from the USLTA in a dispute over the prize money distribution at tournaments, which was heavily weighted towards men players. In order to understand the climate in which these women decided to break away from the USLTA in 1970 form their own tour, this study gives a detailed history of the politics of tennis in the twentieth century, including an examination of how the USLTA controlled amateur tennis players, the practice of “shamateurism,” the growth of professional tennis tours since the late 1920s, and the forty-year battle for open tennis, which allowed amateurs and professionals to play in the same events

The Advocate, October 26, 1972

https://red.mnstate.edu/advocate/1396/thumbnail.jp