Generating games for greater scheduling flexibility

December 6, 2025 By Tim@Universal

Are you generating tournament games the right way? If your tournament has a large number of teams in a single group / bracket (7 or more), then you usually have more than one way to generate games (matchups). Let's use a 7 team bracket as an example.

Bracket A
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
Team 4
Team 5
Team 6
Team 7

You want each team to play 2 games on Saturday. Most platforms we've worked with generate the default matchups like this.

Bracket A
#1 vs. #2
#2 vs. #3
#3 vs. #4
#4 vs. #5
#5 vs. #6
#6 vs. #7
#7 vs. #1

Pause here. Do you see any problem with this approach? (Don't worry if you don't. It took me a long time and I do this every day). The problem arises when you try to schedule these games. You'll need to do something like this.

	9am	11am	1pm
Field 1	1 vs 2	2 vs 3
Field 2	3 vs 4	4 vs 5
Field 3	5 vs 6	6 vs 7	7 vs 1

Now let's say that coach for Team #2 has another game at 9am, and you want to move her game to a different time. There's not a lot of options available. The underlying issue is that all 7 games are "related" to each other. It's like you are trying to pack a box with rocks, but this option gives you a big unwieldy rock. What's a better option? You would generate games like this.

Bracket A
#1 vs. #3
#2 vs. #4
#1 vs. #4
#2 vs. #3
#5 vs. #6
#6 vs. #7
#7 vs. #5

This option allows you to schedule teams #1, #2, #3 and #4 independently from #5, #6 and #7. You've broken a large rock into two smaller pieces which makes it a lot easier to fit them into the box. Now you can still do this:

	9am	11am	1pm
Field 1	1 vs 3	1 vs 4
Field 2	2 vs 4	2 vs 3
Field 3	5 vs 6	6 vs 7	7 vs 5

But you can also do this

	9am	10am	11am	12pm	1pm
Field 1
Field 2		1 vs 3		1 vs 4
Field 3	5 vs 6	2 vs 4	6 vs 7	2 vs 3	7 vs 5

Or this.

	9am	10am	11am	1pm	2pm
Field 1
Field 2		1 vs 3			1 vs 4
Field 3	5 vs 6	2 vs 4	6 vs 7	7 vs 5	2 vs 3

You may never have 7 or more teams in a bracket at your tournament, but know that if you do, there's a better way to generate games than the default option probably available to you.