How to Make a Round Robin Schedule: Pairings and Timing

How many games and rounds you need

Start with two numbers. With n teams, every team plays n − 1 games, and the whole event has n × (n − 1) ÷ 2 games. You divide by 2 because the game between A and B is the same game as the one between B and A.

Games are played in rounds, and in a round every team plays at most once. With an even number of teams everybody plays in every round, so you need n − 1 rounds of n ÷ 2 games. With an odd number one team is always left over. That team has a bye, a round off, and you need n rounds. Each team sits out exactly once.

The games column grows fast. Going from 5 to 10 teams more than quadruples the games, from 10 to 45. That is the main limit of a round robin, and the section on big groups below shows the usual way around it.

The "games per round" column also tells you how many courts, tables or boards you need to run a round at once. With 10 teams you need 5 courts to finish in 9 rounds. With fewer, each round takes several time slots, which the time section covers.

The circle method: build the pairings by hand

You could try to pair teams round by round in your head, but by round four you will find that two teams who still need to meet are both already busy. The circle method avoids that. It is the classic way to build a round robin, and it needs nothing but a list.

1. Number the teams. Give every team a letter or number. With an odd number of teams, add an empty seat called "Bye".
2. Write them in two rows. Put the first half left to right on top and the second half right to left underneath. Each column is one game.
3. Fix one team. Team A never moves.
4. Rotate everyone else one seat. All the other teams move one place around the two rows, like seats around a table. The new columns are the next round.
5. Repeat until the next turn would bring back round 1. That happens after n − 1 turns with an even count, which is exactly the number of rounds you need.

Here are the first three rounds for 6 teams. Watch A stay put while B, C, D, E and F move one seat clockwise each round:

Round 1  A  B  C
         F  E  D
Games: A-F, B-E, C-D

Round 2  A  F  B
         E  D  C
Games: A-E, F-D, B-C

Round 3  A  E  F
         D  C  B
Games: A-D, E-C, F-B

Because each team moves through every seat opposite A and meets every other team exactly once along the way, no pair repeats and none is missed. We checked this for every schedule on this page by listing all pairs. With an odd count, whoever sits opposite the empty seat has the bye that round. Chess organizers know the same idea in a slightly different layout as Berger tables, named after Johann Berger, who published them.

To decide which real team becomes A, B, C and so on, draw the order instead of choosing it. The guide on how to pick a random winner fairly explains how to run a draw people trust; for a schedule you simply draw the whole list in one go. If you still need to form the teams first, the team generator splits a list of players into even teams.

Ready-made schedules for 4, 6 and 7 teams

These schedules come from the circle method above, with two extra steps to keep things fair: home and away are balanced, and the court order of each round was chosen so every team spreads its games across the courts as evenly as possible. The team listed first is the home team or, in a board game, the one who starts. If you play on one table, read the courts as the first, second and third game of the round.

4 teams: 3 rounds, 2 courts

With 4 teams, every team has 1 or 2 home games, which is as even as 3 games allow. Courts cannot be fully even here: with round 1 as shown, we checked all 4 possible court orders, and in every one some team plays all three games on the same court. In this one it is team A. If one court is clearly better, give team A the better one, or swap courts between rounds yourself.

6 teams: 5 rounds, 3 courts

Each team plays 5 games, with 2 or 3 at home, and plays on every court once or twice. We picked this court order from all 1,296 possible ones.

7 teams: 7 rounds, 3 courts, one bye per round

Odd numbers balance perfectly: each team plays 6 games, 3 at home and 3 away, and exactly 2 on each court. The trick for home games with an odd count is to imagine the teams around a circle: each team is at home against the three teams that follow it and away against the three before it. The team with the bye can keep score, referee or run the timer.

Keeping it fair: who starts, which court, home and away

In a round robin every team meets the same opponents, so the schedule is fair by design. Unfairness sneaks in through the details around the games.

• Home and away, or who starts. In the plain circle method team A sits in the first column every round. If the first column also means "home" or "goes first", A gets every advantage. The fix is to alternate: A is first in rounds 1, 3 and 5 and second in rounds 2 and 4, and the other columns alternate too. With an even number of teams, the best you can reach is that every team is first in half its games, rounded up or down. With an odd number it comes out exactly even.
• Courts and tables. Courts are rarely equal. One has the better net, one is near the door, one table has the scoresheets. Rotate the court order between rounds as in the tables above, so nobody is stuck on the worst court all evening.
• Rest between games. On one court, a team that plays the last game of round 2 and the first game of round 3 gets no break. Look over the order before you print it and swap games within a round where needed. Swapping games inside one round never breaks the pairings.
• Byes in the middle. A bye in round 1 or the last round means a late start or an early finish. If some players need to leave early, give them the last-round bye. The circle method does not care which real team holds which letter.

For one-off choices nobody planned for, such as who serves first in a particular game, a coin flip settles it in a second.

Double round robin: everyone plays twice

In a double round robin every pair meets twice, usually once at each team's home or once with each player starting. The easy way to build it: play the whole single schedule, then play it again with home and away swapped in every game. The games and rounds simply double, as the overview table shows. With 10 teams that is 18 rounds; for a weekly club league with one round a week, it fills 18 weeks instead of 9.

Some groups prefer to shuffle the order of the rounds in the second half, so the same matchups do not come back in the same sequence. That is fine: any order of complete rounds keeps the schedule valid, as long as you swap home and away inside each game.

How long it takes

One formula covers every case:

time  = rounds × slots
        × (game + changeover)

slots = games per round
        ÷ courts, rounded up

The changeover is the time between games: walking to the next table, shuffling cards, resetting the board, writing down the score. It is easy to forget, and in short games it adds a large share: in the class competition below it is 2 minutes on top of every 8-minute game. Here are some worked examples:

The totals include a changeover after the last game too, which works as a small buffer. Without it the board game night would end after 2 h instead of 2 h 5 min. Two lessons stand out. First, courts matter more than anything else: the table tennis event drops from 5 h 36 min to 2 h 48 min with a second table. Second, a game that runs over delays every game after it on that court, so fixed game lengths keep the day on track.

For fixed-length games, run the online timer on a screen everyone can see and start all courts together. If you are not sure how long a game takes, time a few practice games with the stopwatch first, and use the typical length plus a small margin in the formula.

Points and tiebreakers: agree on them first

A round robin ends with a table, and the table needs rules: how many points a win and a draw are worth, and what happens when teams finish level. There is no single right answer for a casual event, and if your sport or game has official rules, use those. What matters is that everyone agrees before the first game, while nobody knows whom a rule will help. Common options to choose from:

• Points per result. For example 2 for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss, or 3, 1 and 0 if you want wins to count for more than two draws. In games without draws, simply count wins.
• Head-to-head. If two teams are level, the one that won their game together ranks higher.
• Score difference. Points scored minus points conceded, over all games or only over games between the tied teams.
• Most points scored. Rewards attacking play and rarely ties again.
• A deciding game. The tied teams play once more. Fair, but it needs time on the schedule.
• A coin flip as the very last step, when everything else is equal.

The order of these rules matters, and three-way ties show why. Here is a small example with 4 teams where A beat B 3–1, B beat C 2–1, C beat A 2–0, and all three beat D:

A, B and C all have 2 wins, and head-to-head goes in a circle, so it decides nothing. Score difference over all games ranks them A, C, B. Score difference over only the games between the tied teams ranks them C, A, B. Both rules are reasonable, and they produce a different winner. That is exactly why the order should be written down before the event starts. The printable score sheet has room for scores per round and notes for your rules; its page also covers tiebreaks within a single game.

Big groups: split into pools first

Past about 8 to 10 teams, a full round robin gets long. The usual fix is a group stage: split the teams into smaller groups, play a round robin inside each group, then send the best of each group to a final round or a short knockout.

The group stage numbers are before any final round. You give up the guarantee that everyone meets everyone, but each team still plays several games, and the event fits into one evening. Draw the groups at random so nobody can say they were stacked; the team generator splits the team list into equal groups as easily as it splits players into teams.

Checklist before the first game

1. Count teams and courts, and work out games, rounds and total time with the formulas above.
2. If the time does not fit, cut game length, add courts, or switch to groups.
3. Draw which team gets which letter, then build the schedule with the circle method or copy one of the tables above.
4. Balance home and away and the court order, and check rest gaps on a single court.
5. Write down the points system, the tiebreak order and the rule for teams that leave early.
6. Print or share the schedule and a score sheet, and name one person who keeps the table.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Round-robin tournament: number of games n(n − 1)/2, rounds for even and odd numbers of competitors, the circle method with one fixed competitor, a dummy competitor for byes, Berger tables and alternating home and away, Wikipedia

Written by Tobias. Updated October 21, 2026.