Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed Law
Gary, are you involved in generating the schedule at an event? Maybe somebody can shed some light as to how it is actually done so people don't speculate.
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I've seen them do it. The computer crunches through multiple possible schedules (5000, 20000, 6000000, I don't know how many) and it picks out the "best" one considering the established parameters: time between matches, multiple matches with and against other teams, red/blue, etc. There are some parameters the scorekeeper puts into the program - starting times, lunch, number of rounds desired, match cycle time minimum match separation, etc. Some of these inputs could make an unworkable schedule - for example, with a 36-team event, you can't select a minimum of 5 match separation; each match would have the same teams in it.
While the scorekeeper could possibly look at the generated schedule, reject it, and start over, I would doubt that would happen. They are usually pressed for time.