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In sports, the term round-robin refers to the scheduling of a competition so that each participant plays every other participant an equal number of times. In a pure round-robin schedule, each participant plays every other participant once. If each participant plays all others twice, this is frequently called a double round-robin. The term is rarely used when all participants play one another more than twice, and is never used when one participant plays others an unequal number of times (as is the case in all of the major United States professional sports).
Frequently, pool stages within a tournament are conducted on a pure round-robin basis. Many college conferences in the United States also conduct pure round-robin schedules in American football. Examples of pure round-robin scheduling include:
In sports with a large number of competitive matches per season, double round-robins are common. Almost all football (soccer) leagues in the world are organized on a double round-robin basis, in which every team plays all others in its league once at home and once away. The group phase of the Champions League is also contested as a double round-robin. Most basketball leagues outside the United States are also organized in this manner, as are the regular-season and Top 16 phases of Europe's continental club competition in that sport, the Euroleague.
There are also round-robin chess tournaments.
Ranking
In sports where ties are rare or impossible, competitors typically are ranked by number of wins, with ties counting half. Where ties are more common, this may be 2 points for a win and 1 for a tie, which is mathematically equivalent but avoids having too many half-points in the listings.
Other sports may have more complex ranking criteria. In soccer, where boring 0-0 draws are common, many leagues give 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw to encourage attacking play. In rugby union, bonus points may be awarded for scoring a certain number of tries, which are a more crowd-pleasing form of score than goals.
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