Pool play format for 8 teams on 3 courts?

Question

Pool play format for 8 teams on 3 courts?

Answer 1

First Match..

COURT 1- 3 VS. 7  REF-1

COURT 2 - 4 VS 8 REF split some from team 6 & some from team 1

COURT 3- 2 VS 5 REF-6

Answer 2

you mean like in a tournament?

you would need 9 teams

6 to play, and 3 to ref. but then one one ever gets any breaks

if you have 8 teams, stick to two courts.

4 to play, 2 to ref, and 2 that have a break

Answer 3

Tournament Structure

Since you have 8 teams, first we will break-up the teams into two four-team pools. Then, we will have each of the two pools run a round-robin tournament, which will take three rounds to complete.

At the end of the round-robin, the top two teams from each pool move on to the play-offs, which will start at the semi-final round because you'll have four teams.

Scheduling The Courts

You can not schedule two four-team pools across three courts. There aren't enough teams. Thus, assign each pool to one court, and ignore the third court, which you could use as a warm-up court, etc.

Seeding The Pools

You could randomly assign teams to the two pools, but it makes for a better tournament if you could seed the teams from best to worst.

Take the 8 teams, and rank them from 1 to 8. Then, instead of "dealing" teams like cards, which always makes one pool "stronger" than the other, use this ordering...

Pool A: Team #1, #4, #5, #8

Pool B: Team #2, #3, #6, #7

Then for each pool, run a round robin tournament.

Sample 4-team Round Robin Schedule

Round #1

1 vs 4  

2 vs 3

Round #2

1 vs 3

4 vs 2

Round #3

1 vs 2

3 vs 4

In your case, the first round (1 vs 4)...

...for Pool A it would be Seed #1 vs. Seed #8,

...for Pool B it would be Seed #2 vs. Seed #7.

Get it?

The second round (2 vs 3)

...for Pool A it would be Seed #4 vs Seed #5

...for Pool B it would be Seed #3 vs Seed #6

Play-off Structure

Semi-finals

Pool A 1st place finisher VS Pool B 2nd place finisher

Pool B 1st place finisher VS Pool A 2nd place finisher

3rd Place

Semi-final losers play each other

Championship/Finals

Semi-final winners play each other

Hope it helps. If you have any detailed questions, feel free to follow-up.