Q.What is league tournament ? Draw a fixture of nine
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →A league (round-robin) tournament is one in which every team meets every other team; for 9 teams that is 36 matches over 9 rounds with one bye per round. The cyclic method draws the fixture by fixing one team and rotating the rest, and the British method decides the winner on points (2 for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss).
What a league tournament is
In a league (or round-robin) tournament every team plays against every other team. In a single league they meet once; in a double league they meet twice (home and away). Unlike a knock-out, a single defeat does not put a team out, so the final table reflects consistent performance across the whole competition — which is why it is considered the fairest format.
The number of matches is fixed by the number of teams. For N teams it is N x (N - 1) / 2. For 9 teams this gives 9 x 8 / 2 = 36 matches. Because 9 is an odd number, the tournament runs over 9 rounds, and in every round one team sits out with a bye (each team gets exactly one bye across the tournament).
Fixture of 9 teams by the cyclic method
In the cyclic method one team is kept fixed in its position and all the remaining teams rotate by one place each round (because the number is odd, a bye revolves along with them). Reading off the pairings round by round gives the complete fixture below. Each team plays 8 matches and meets every other team exactly once.
| Round | Matches | Bye |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1–8, 2–7, 3–6, 4–5 | 9 |
| 2 | 2–9, 3–8, 4–7, 5–6 | 1 |
| 3 | 1–3, 4–9, 5–8, 6–7 | 2 |
| 4 | 2–4, 1–5, 6–9, 7–8 | 3 |
| 5 | 3–5, 2–6, 1–7, 8–9 | 4 |
| 6 | 4–6, 3–7, 2–8, 1–9 | 5 |
| 7 | 5–7, 4–8, 3–9, 1–2 | 6 |
| 8 | 6–8, 5–9, 1–4, 2–3 | 7 |
| 9 | 7–9, 1–6, 2–5, 3–4 | 8 |
Across the nine rounds the byes fall to teams 9, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 — one each — and the four matches per round add up to the required 36.
The British method of declaring the winner …
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