New Format: Roundless Robin
I would like a format mixing PPP! and Round Robin - whenever a game ends, two players that have not yet played one another are placed on that game. Thie intent is to eliminate down time between rounds and maximize diversity of opponents - In traditional Round Robin, if two people would play one another in the next round, why not start the game now?
This could also be implemented as a Flip Frenzy configuration option where where opponents that have already been faced are skipped in the queue.
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john.garnett commented
I came here to post this same idea. However, I'd like to add a couple of features.
1. The tournament director can choose up front the number of games to be played by each player. This allows for a partial round robin to be played. For example, the TD should choose for each player to play only 9 games even though more than 9 people may be in the tournament.
2. The tournament software should offer an option to construct balanced sets of opponents so that each player plays a set of opponents having roughly the same aggregate matchplay Glicko rating as the other players face.
For example, suppose the TD chooses to have each player play 3 other players. The players should be divided into 3 groups according to Glicko score. Each player would play one player from each group (low score, medium score, high score).
3. The software should offer an option to avoid showing all future matchups at the start. New matchups should only be shown once they are ready to be played.
4. When creating a new matchup, first start the one involving players who have played the fewest matches so far so that no player stays on the sidelines too long.
The goal of this format is to avoid between-round delays that come from waiting on slower players and to ensure that nobody has a schedule that is vastly different in difficulty than any other player's schedule.