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An Application of the Traveling Tournament Problem: The Argentine Volleyball League

Author

Listed:
  • Flavia Bonomo

    (Departamento de Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Técnicas, 1033 Buenos Aires, Argentina)

  • Andrés Cardemil

    (Departamento de Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina)

  • Guillermo Durán

    (Instituto de Cálculo and Departamento de Matemática, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Técnicas, 1033 Buenos Aires, Argentina; Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, Facultad de Ciencias Fisicas y Matemáticas, Universidad de Chile, 8370439 Santiago, Chile)

  • Javier Marenco

    (Instituto de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, 1613 Buenos Aires, Argentina)

  • Daniela Sabán

    (Departamento de Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Abstract

This article describes an optimization process used to schedule the First Division of Argentina's professional volleyball league. The teams in the league are grouped into couples, and matches are held on Thursdays and Saturdays. In each pair of consecutive Thursday–Saturday matches, the two teams in each couple play against two teams from another couple. Minimization of travel distances is critical because the teams' home locations are scattered throughout the country and teams do not return to their home sites between consecutive away matches, making this problem a variation of the well-known traveling tournament problem. The coupled format gives rise to two key decisions: (1) how to couple the teams, and (2) how to schedule the matches. We apply integer programming techniques and a tabu search heuristic to solve these questions. The league successfully used the resulting schedules in its 2007–2008, 2008–2009, 2009–2010, and 2010–2011 seasons, reducing the total travel distance while meeting all of the teams' requirements. This is the first application of the traveling tournament problem to a real-world sports league reported in the optimization literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Flavia Bonomo & Andrés Cardemil & Guillermo Durán & Javier Marenco & Daniela Sabán, 2012. "An Application of the Traveling Tournament Problem: The Argentine Volleyball League," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 245-259, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:42:y:2012:i:3:p:245-259
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.1110.0587
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Jaime Miranda & Denis Sauré & Sebastián Souyris & Andres Weintraub & Rodrigo Wolf, 2007. "Scheduling the Chilean Soccer League by Integer Programming," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 37(6), pages 539-552, December.
    2. Dries Goossens & Frits Spieksma, 2009. "Scheduling the Belgian Soccer League," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 39(2), pages 109-118, April.
    3. Briskorn, Dirk & Drexl, Andreas, 2009. "A branching scheme for finding cost-minimal round robin tournaments," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 197(1), pages 68-76, August.
    4. Irnich, Stefan, 2010. "A new branch-and-price algorithm for the traveling tournament problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 204(2), pages 218-228, July.
    5. Ribeiro, Celso C. & Urrutia, Sebastian, 2007. "Heuristics for the mirrored traveling tournament problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 179(3), pages 775-787, June.
    6. Rasmussen, Rasmus V. & Trick, Michael A., 2008. "Round robin scheduling - a survey," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 188(3), pages 617-636, August.
    7. Charles Fleurent & Jacques A. Ferland, 1993. "Allocating Games for the NHL Using Integer Programming," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 41(4), pages 649-654, August.
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    Cited by:

    1. Guido Cocchi & Alessandro Galligari & Federica Picca Nicolino & Veronica Piccialli & Fabio Schoen & Marco Sciandrone, 2018. "Scheduling the Italian National Volleyball Tournament," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 48(3), pages 271-284, June.
    2. Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Facundo Gutiérrez, 2022. "Efficient referee assignment in Argentinean professional basketball leagues using operations research methods," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 316(2), pages 1121-1139, September.
    3. Guillermo Durán, 2021. "Sports scheduling and other topics in sports analytics: a survey with special reference to Latin America," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 29(1), pages 125-155, April.
    4. Fernando Alarcón & Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Jaime Miranda & Hugo Muñoz & Luis Ramírez & Mario Ramírez & Denis Sauré & Matías Siebert & Sebastián Souyris & Andrés Weintraub & Rodrigo Wolf-Yad, 2017. "Operations Research Transforms the Scheduling of Chilean Soccer Leagues and South American World Cup Qualifiers," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 47(1), pages 52-69, February.
    5. Michael J. Fry & Jeffrey W. Ohlmann, 2012. "Introduction to the Special Issue on Analytics in Sports, Part II: Sports Scheduling Applications," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 229-231, June.
    6. Dries Goossens & Jeroen Beliën, 2023. "Teaching Integer Programming by Scheduling the Belgian Soccer League," INFORMS Transactions on Education, INFORMS, vol. 23(3), pages 164-172, May.
    7. Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Rodrigo Wolf-Yadlin, 2012. "Operations Research Techniques for Scheduling Chile's Second Division Soccer League," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 273-285, June.
    8. Durán, Guillermo & Durán, Santiago & Marenco, Javier & Mascialino, Federico & Rey, Pablo A., 2019. "Scheduling Argentina’s professional basketball leagues: A variation on the Travelling Tournament Problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 275(3), pages 1126-1138.

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