BRAZILIAN SOCCER SCHEDULING PROBLEM (BSSP)

The Brazilian Soccer Schedule Problem (BSSP) is a double round robin tournament for twenty-four teams, composed by two halves schedules, each one consisting of twenty-three rounds where every team plays against all others once. The double round robin schedule will be mirrored from the first half to the second. If A plays at B in the first half of the schedule, then B plays at A in the corresponding slot in the second half.

The main objective is to minimize the total distance travelled, plus the difference between that one who travels the most and the one who travels the least (teams begin in their home city and must return there after the championship ending);

PROBLEM ORIGINS AND RELATED PAPERS

• The Travelling Tournament Pro- blem (TTP), was proposed by Easton, Nemhauser and Trick, in 2001, which full description may be found at TTP Challenge

• The BSSP is formulated as a specialization of the Travelling Tournament Problem, with aditional constraints and a multi-objective function. Take a look into the paper that describes the problem, including a solution methodology using a Simulated Annealing Approach, openning the bssp.pdf, Scheduling the 2004 Brazilian Soccer Championship;

• This article has been submitted to presentation at the PATAT-2004, Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling, to be held on 2004, August, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.