In a tournament of beach volleyball with players and games any two players play in one and the same game at least one. Find the maximal value of .
Solution
The four players in a game form 6 pairs. Since any pair plays in at least one game, the number of all pairs do not exceed 6 times the number of the games, i.e., . Hence which is equivalent to .
For let be the numbers of the players. A possible distribution with 13 games is the following: players (modulo 13) play in game number , . It is easy to see that any two players play in one and the same game exactly once.
Hence the maximal value of equals 13.
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