I’ve been tossing around the idea in my head for a Group Round Robin, which provides the opportunity to rotate between a series of players with the goal of playing once and only once.
As I’ve come to learn, it’s also known as the “Social Golfer” problem that I’ve been doing a little of research into. The potential problem is that you need an exact amount of people/rounds to make it work if the goal is to rotate through everyone once and only once.
9 People, 3-Player Games, 4 Rounds
16 people, 4-Player Games, 5 Rounds
21 People, 3-Player Games, 10 Rounds
There are other combinations that get you close, but would have caveats like playing everyone except a single individual. Math Games: Social Golfer Problem
I’ve only done a bit of research on this, but we’re going to use one of the structures this upcoming Saturday for a Tournament. 40 people play regular Swiss Match Play (8 Rounds). Then, the top 16 will play an additional 5 Rounds of 4-Player and each person will play each opponent once and only once with seeding and game choice advantages going to Top Seeds. Top 4 out of that group are going to move onto a simple Ladder to round out the event.
I’ll report back in the other thread how it goes. You could take this construct to have essentially qualifying “pods” of say 16, 21, 24, or 32 people and advance the top X point-getters depending on how you want to structure it. The other post I linked mentions the Australian Nationals which runs 3 Pods of 16, and takes Top 5 from each plus a Wild Card to make it 16.