How To Hold A Round Robin Shuffleboard Tournament
If your love for shuffleboard knows no bounds, you’ve probably considered holding a shuffleboard tournament. After all, you just need a shuffleboard table and enough people! Round robin is a fairly popular format for any kind of tournament, and works well for shuffleboard tournament. So gather up your friends and family as we explain how you can hold your own round robin tournament.
The Concept Of The Round Robin Tournament
Round robin essentially means that every team in the shuffleboard tournament plays every other team at least once. In an elimination format, once you’re out, you’re out. However, the round robin format allows for an ample assortment of opponents and the chance for each team to see how they stack up against all the others.
Another benefit to the round robin shuffleboard tournament is that the element of luck is actually diminished. One poor performance doesn’t ruin the chances of becoming a shuffleboard champion since everyone gets multiple tries. Round robin style tournaments are known for both their fairness and potential to be quite lengthy.
How Round Robin Tournaments Work
Let’s illustrate how a round robin tournament would be set up with a simple example containing six teams. The simplest way to calculate the number of matches is to multiply the total number of teams by a number one less than the number of teams (so six teams would be 6 * 5 = 30 / 2 = 15). Therefore, a round robin shuffleboard tournament with six teams would play 15 games.
The standard method for round robin scheduling goes like this. You assign each team a number and pair them off in the first round. One team is fixed and all the others are moved clockwise one position. By the last round, you’ll almost be back at the beginning. That would look a little something like this:
As you can see, this results in five rounds with three matches each for a total of 15 games, just as we said. You may be able to get away with one shuffleboard table if you only have six teams, but add just a few more and you’re likely to benefit from multiple shuffleboard tables.
If you have an odd number of teams for your shuffleboard tournament, don’t worry. Simply include a nonexistent dummy or ghost team. Whoever is scheduled to play against the ghost team gets what is known as a bye, which means they can advance to the next round without competing.
As you can see, a tournament with six teams is pretty easy to plan, but with just a few more teams the shuffleboard tournament can get quite a bit longer and more confusing. When determining match-ups for tournaments with a large amount of participants, your best bet is to go to a tournament generator website.
A round robin shuffleboard tournament is a great way to bring friends, family, and even co-workers together. The round robin format gives everyone a chance to play so it’s a good opportunity for beginners to compete against more skilled players, and hopefully learn a thing or two! After all, what’s the fun in having a shuffleboard table if you don’t engage in a little competition every now and then?
