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| The Problem |
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In round robin sport competitions, each team plays
each other one or several times, according to a rigid scheme.
The coordinators of such tournaments often have to deal
with a host of requirements from the participating teams,
the fans and the media. The result is a combinatorial
search problem of considerable complexity.
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| Friar Tuck |
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Friar Tuck is a generic round robin tournament planner that allows to
conveniently enter a variety
of constraints. Friar Tuck allows the coordinator of
sport tournaments to compute optimal solutions
to complex tournament planning problems. Friar Tuck
is based on constraint programming and
implemented in the concurrent constraint
language Oz, using the programming system
Mozart.
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| Highlights |
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- Powerful search engine: Friar Tuck is able
to compute plans for single and double round robin tournaments
with up to 30 teams (on a PC with usual configuration).
The underlying technology of constraint programming allows
to make use of constraints specified by the user during
the search process.
- Many useful constraints: Friar Tuck allows to
specify a host of constraints, ranging from simple fixing
of opponents to complex sequence constraints that avoid
successive matches against strong teams.
- Rich graphical editors: Friar Tuck provides
a number of graphical editors for defining constraints
quickly and conveniently.
- Tutorial introduction: Friar Tuck now comes
with a
tutorial introduction
that explains its features step by step.
- ACC 98: A difficult benchmark problem, the
ACC 98 problem described by
G. NEMHAUSER AND M. TRICK: Scheduling a major college basketball
conference, Operations Research 46(1), 1998, can now be entered
in Friar Tuck. Friar Tuck finds all 179 solutions of the problem
within one minute on a PC with usual configuration. The ACC 98
problem is used throughout the tutorial introduction as example.
- Generates web pages: Friar Tuck is now able to
save computed tournament timetables as web pages in HTML format
for easy display and communication.
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| Download |
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Friar Tuck is distributed free of charge.
No warranties are implied or expressly given.
A license agreement is contained in the distribution.
Latest release is 1.1, available for Unix and Windows 95/98.
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| Changes |
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Roughly, Friar Tuck 1.1 is Friar Tuck 1.0 ported to Mozart.
That means the Windows 95/98 version runs more stable.
Otherwise, there were several minor improvements.
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| Papers |
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| Tutorial Introduction |
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A
tutorial introduction
to Friar Tuck leads you step
by step through its features using many examples.
In addition, Friar Tuck comes with a number of on-line
demos, ranging from simple to complex and large
problems.
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| Snap Shots |
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Friar Tuck's user interface allows to navigate conveniently
through the control panel for different solution phases.
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Team-specific constraints can be entered using a graphical
editor. Constraint propagation can be activated interactively
and the resulting constraints are visualized.
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The computed timetables are displayed in a window as follows.
Friar Tuck allows to save
timetables in HTML format.
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| Feedback |
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Friar Tuck 1.1 is distributed free of charge, including the sources.
Please let me know if you are making or wanting improvements, found
interesting applications, encountered problems and limitations in
using and extending the software, or can provide or would like to
have support for a platform other than the ones currently supported.
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| Users |
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Friar Tuck has been used to schedule sport tournaments in England and US.
Here some user feedback:
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West of England Club Cricket Championship:
"I have used Friar Truck to generate fixture lists for the West of England
Club Cricket Championship. This has 71 Cricket Clubs each with 1st and 2nd
XI's, 142 teams in total.
The WECCC is arranged in 7 leagues, 1 of 11 teams and the remainder of 10
each. The 1st XI'2 play each other home and away and the 2nd XI's play the
reverse fixtures on the same dates.
Friar Tuck has proved invaluable to me in this work and I have recommended
it to all other people doing similar work to me."
Bill Harvey, Honorary Administrator, West of England Club Cricket Championship.
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Bill George Youth Football League:
"Our league
name is the Bill George Youth Football League (BGYFL). The league consists of
130 teams from 12 towns. Our 1999 schedule consists of 496 games in 11
different divisions. Our largest division has 16 teams and our smallest
division has 7 teams....I used Friar Tuck to schedule our football
leagues season, a total of
498 football games. I read through your tutorial and within about 30
minutes I had the initial schedule generated for all of our divisions.
There were some basic constraints that I had to deal with, such as teams
not able to play at home on certain weekends and requiring to play at
home on some specified weekends. The generation of the balanced schedule
of home/away/bye was exactly what I needed for our league.
Friar Tuck did a perfect job based on my requirements and I would like
to express my sincere thanks that you have created such a useful tool
where others are so lacking." Duane Terrazas, Chicago.
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Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference:
"We have done a fair amount of work with your program...
The overall response with the basketball coaches and athletic
directors is that it is terrific and a huge step forward from our hand
scheduling. When I made the presentation I didn't have a single crash so
that helped the presentation a great deal." Marilyn Skrivseth,
EauClaire, Wisconsin.
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Colonial Athletic Conference:
"Problem solved! ...
It is a good program.
We run a large team camp (50+ teams) in which we play round robin within
several leagues. All teams get 11 games and we play it on 7 different
courts..."
Bernie Flax, Wilmington, North Carolina.
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Euchre Tournament: An unexpected use of Friar Tuck is reported
by Karen Breen-Bondie, Ferndale, MI, who developed with it a schedule for
a tournament in the card game Euchre. The goal was to assign
teams of two players each to tables so that teams are not repeated
throughout the tournament. Instead of opponent teams, the pairings
represent players playing in a two-player team against another two-player
team.
Furthermore, Friar Tuck has been used in a case study on
a hard college basketball problem, see
Scheduling a Major College Basketball Conference - Revisited, Operations Research, to appear.
An extension of Friar Tuck has been used in a case study on
a Dutch professional soccer league.
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| Related Links |
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| The Road Ahead |
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In 1999, I will resume work on Friar Tuck, adding soft
constraints, and maybe things like travel distance between teams.
Any suggestions for other improvements are welcome. Most welcome
of course are contributions to Friar Tuck itself...any volunteers?
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| Funding |
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This work is currently funded through the project
ReAlloc.
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| Acknowledgements |
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Several users contributed bug reports and suggestions.
Please read here.
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