How it works
Type 2 to 24 team or player names and this round robin generator builds the whole schedule. Every pairing comes up exactly once, round by round, with a bye each round when the number is odd. Add how many courts you have, a start time and a match length to get a timetable with an end time. Print it or copy it.
Read the full guide
How the schedule is made
The tool uses the circle method. Picture the teams sitting around a table. One team keeps its seat, everyone else moves one place each round, and whoever sits opposite is the opponent. With an odd number, an empty chair joins the table, and the team facing it has the bye. That is why 6 teams need 5 rounds while 7 teams need 7. The order of matches inside a round rotates too, so the same team does not always open on court 1.
Courts, start times and the end time
Courts or pitches opens on 3. Set it to the number of courts, pitches or boards you have. A round with more matches than courts is then spread over several time slots, so no court is booked twice. On Not set, every match in a round plays at once. Fill in First match starts and Minutes per match. Every row then gets a time, and the summary line shows when the last match ends. Count the changeover into the slot: 10 minutes means about 8 of play.
Single, double and one team's fixtures
Open More options for Play each team and Random draw. Once (single) means everyone plays everyone once. Twice (double) repeats the rounds with home and away swapped, which suits a league that runs for a whole term. Show only cuts the schedule down to one team's matches and byes. Copy and Print then give you just that list. Make schedule draws the teams again at random. Untick Random draw to seat the teams in the order you typed them, for a seeded event.
- Still have a whole class to split? Make the teams with the random group generator first, then type the team names here.
- Give the team on a bye a job for that round: keeping score, refereeing or setting up the next court.
- More than 24 entries? Split them into pools of four to six, run one round robin per pool, and let the pool winners play off.
- For partner work or a chess club, type first names in place of teams. Each round is a fresh set of pairs, and after the last round everyone has met everyone.
Questions and answers
How many rounds and matches does a round robin need?
An even number of teams needs one round fewer than there are teams. An odd number needs as many rounds as teams, because one team sits out each round. For the matches, multiply the number of teams by one less than that number and halve it. So 4 teams play 6 matches, 6 play 15, 8 play 28, 10 play 45 and 12 play 66. A double round robin doubles both figures.
What happens with an odd number of teams?
One team has a bye in every round, shown on its own line under that round's matches. Over a single round robin each team gets exactly one bye, so everyone still plays the same number of matches. Five teams, for example, play 5 rounds of 2 matches, 10 in all.
How long will my round robin take?
Set the courts, the first match time and the minutes per match, and the summary line gives the finish time. As a guide, 6 teams on 3 courts with 10-minute slots finish in 50 minutes. The same 6 teams on 1 court need 15 slots, which is two and a half hours. If that is too late, shorten the matches, find another court, or split the entry into two pools.
Are the team names saved or sent anywhere?
They stay in this browser. The last schedule you made is kept on this device, so it is still here when you come back, and nothing is sent to us. Start again, beside the add line, removes your names. A printed or copied schedule goes wherever you send it, so use team names, colors or initials, not full student names.
How do I break a tie at the end?
Decide before the first match and tell everyone. A common order is the result of the match between the tied teams, then the score difference across all matches, then the total points scored. Head-to-head cannot separate three teams that have each beaten one of the others, so you need the second rule for that case. For a class event, a shared first place is a perfectly good answer.