Generalized whist tournament designs

In this study a new class of tournament designs is introduced. In particular, each game of the tournament involves several (two or more) teams competing against one another. The tournament is also required to satisfy certain balance conditions that are imposed on each pair of players. These balance conditions are related to both the total number of players on each team and the number of teams in each game. In one sense, these balance conditions represent a generalization of the balance requirements for whist tournaments although the games in a whist tournament involve, exclusively, two two-player teams. Several techniques for constructing these new tournament designs are developed and theorems guaranteeing in4nite classes of such designs are proven. c © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.