How does an 18 Team Round Robin Tournament work?

In an 18 team round robin tournament, each team plays against every other team exactly once. The format ensures that each team has a fair opportunity to compete against all other teams.

Number of Matches:

The 18 team round robin schedule is made up of 17 rounds. Each team will play a total of 17 games and there will be a total of 153 games played in the entire tournament. If you would prefer to lessen the number of games, you have the option of breaking the tournament up into different pools. For an 18 team round robin you could run 2 separate round robin tournaments with 9 teams in each pool or you could have 3 pools with 6 teams in each pool, or even 6 pools with 3 teams in each pool. The winner of each pool could move on to play in a single elimination tournament.

Byes:

Since there is an even number of teams, there will be no byes in an 18 team round robin tournament.

Tiebreakers (if necessary):

When playing a bracket style tournament, there must always be a winner declared so they can move forward in the bracket. This is not the case with round robin tournaments. It is not uncommon for a round robin match to be allowed to end in a tie. This is completely up to the tournament director, but all tie-breaker rules should be made known before the tournament begins.

Using our Printable Schedule:

Start by randomly drawing the team names and placing them beside the numbers in the column labeled "Team". Start the tournament with Round 1 and keep a tally of wins and losses. The team with the best record after all rounds are complete will be the champion.