Scheduling rules
Rules are how you tell the solver about the parts of your tournament that are not in the data. Each one is added to a tournament, applies to whatever you scope it to, and is respected by every schedule produced afterwards.
The rules
Minimum rest between a team's matches
Minimum idle minutes between one team's consecutive matches.
The tournament itself carries a minimum rest under Settings → Schedule & format (the setup wizard fills it in as one match length when you pick the match timing). Both the standard and the advanced scheduler keep it. The rule here is an override: it can only raise that minimum, for every team or a named set, and the scheduler applies the larger value.
A pre-drawn Swiss pool rests in rounds instead, under Rest between matches in Swiss pools (rounds) on the same tab: whole rounds from 0 to 3, one by default. The scheduler keeps a team's matches at least that many of its pool's rounds apart, a round being the time the pool takes to play its longest round, with either Pitch use choice. One round on a short field is a different number of minutes in every category, which is why minutes do not fit here: the minimum rest in minutes does not apply to a Swiss pool's teams, so a minute value stricter than one round no longer pushes matches past the end of the day. This rule can still raise their rest. An adaptive pool, drawn round by round from the results, keeps the minutes. The advanced scheduler does not count rest in rounds and keeps its own rest setting instead.
The most useful rule and the most expensive one. Sixty minutes is a common floor for youth football; ninety is generous; above two hours will noticeably lengthen your day. Set it to what the sport actually needs, not what would be pleasant.
Maximum matches per team per day
Caps how many matches a team may play within one tournament day. Scoped to every team or a named set.
Use it when a format would otherwise hand one group more matches than an age band should play — young age groups in particular.
No-play window
No match may overlap a wall-clock window, optionally limited to particular pitches, and optionally repeated every day.
This is the rule for a lunch break, a shared hall booked by someone else between 12:00 and 13:00, or a ceremony that stops play across the site.
Team not before / team not after
Named teams play no match before a given time, or have all their matches finished by one. Can be limited to a specific date or day.
The travelling-team rule: a club arriving on the morning ferry cannot play at 09:00, and one catching the last bus needs to be done by 16:00. Both carry a weight, so you can express a strong preference rather than an absolute requirement.
Category not before
Matches of the selected categories start no earlier than a given time — every day, or on one tournament date.
The late-start rule for an age group: the youngest teams' families do not want an 08:00 kick-off, so U8 starts no earlier than 10:00 every day; or a category whose teams travel in on Saturday morning starts no earlier than 12:00 on Saturday only — one rule per date when the days differ. It is absolute, with no weight; both schedulers keep it, knockout rounds included, and locked matches are exempt, as with every placement rule.
A time later than the day's pitch hours simply leaves that category's matches unplaced, and the auto-schedule result says why. The standard scheduler fills a fixed grid of kick-offs from the start of the day, so the first match lands at or after the time rather than exactly on it.
Same club not simultaneous
Teams from the same club are not scheduled at the same time.
A club sending four teams usually sends one set of coaches and one minibus. This rule only works if teams are linked to their clubs — see teams and clubs.
Simultaneous final rounds
Every match in a group's final round kicks off at the same time. Applies to all groups or a named set.
The integrity rule: when the last group matches are staggered, the team playing later knows exactly what result it needs, and the team that already played is at its mercy. Simultaneous kick-offs remove the question.
Group pitch restrictions
Every team in the selected groups plays only on the selected pitches.
Use it to keep an age group at the venue their parents were told to drive to, or to keep the youngest teams on the small pitches.
Required versus preferred
Some rules are absolute: a schedule that breaks them is not produced. Others carry a weight, which makes them strong preferences the solver satisfies where it can and trades away where it must.
Prefer weights for anything that is inconvenient rather than impossible. A tournament where every rule is absolute is a tournament with no valid schedule.
Rules cost pitch hours
Every rule narrows the set of valid schedules, and the narrowing compounds. Rest requirements plus daily caps plus blackout windows plus per-group pitch restrictions can jointly exceed your capacity long before any single one looks unreasonable.
If a day stops solving after you add a rule, that rule is not necessarily wrong — but it is the one to relax first while you find out whether the tournament fits at all.
Rules change the schedule. Adding one after you have published means re-solving and re-announcing. Get the constraints in during setup, solve once, and publish a schedule that stays put.