The methods of optimal automated formation of standings
The article examines the questions of prompt sport competitions drawing and creation of standings by using computer tech-nologies. This process is rather time-consuming if done by hand and with a large number of contestants. The aim of the draw is to disperse the players in different groups so that all groups would have about the same overall rating and at the same time each group would consist of players from different regions. Drawing of the tournaments with only one competitor from each region is not much of a problem. The situa-tion becomes much more complicated when several competitors apply from the same region. In this case the task acquires two criteria. Re-gional factor is necessary to be considered, because it happens often that there are players in the list of participants who potentially have common interests and that can lead to various kinds of unsporting collusions. The article discusses some of traditional and non-traditional methods of drawing and analyzes their capabilities. Snake heuristics was used for automated generation of optimal tournament tables. The algorithm and software is developed on its basis supported by research on sufficiently big number of test cases. According to preliminary es-timates of the competent members of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) jury, the software product meets quality requirements of automatically generated tournament tables and allows reducing their formation time repeatedly.