Start to jet lag behind. Moving to fairer competitions.
It is safe to say that traveling impacts the peak performance of teams and athletes in general - studies have been done across all kinds of sports that confirm this intuitive idea. Thus, to avoid unfair- and unhappiness, an organizer should aim to minimize the effect of travel time disparities.
A balanced schedule for the Premier League of Darts exists… and is not used…
The Premier League of Darts is an annual competition where the best darts players of the world compete over several months for the title, and the prize of £275.000. However… the schedule chosen by the PDC is unbalanced: some matches between pairs of specific players will occur relatively often, while others will occur very rarely.
How the schedule in the TATA Steel Chess Championship forced Carlsen to help Caruana win
Every January, the best chess players in the world compete in the TATA Steel Chess Championship, organized in Wijk aan Zee (The Netherlands). Among this year’s fourteen participants were Magnus Carlsen, world no. 1, coming into the tournament with an unbeaten streak of 104 matches, and Fabiano Caruana, the world no. 2.