[EricH]

Originally Posted by Nemo

"Shell game" might not be a fun method, but it's definitely realistic to have teams submit a ranked list of picks for each round and let an algorithm sort most of them out. Using geographical distances and team preference rankings, a cleverly designed algorithm could take care of most of the placements in each round, and the regional directors could use human judgment to sort out the rest just like they do now.

I was thinking of something similar, but along the lines of all teams declaring a home regional (or having it assigned by geography or past regional attendance history, if no declaration was made), and their first event would be their home regional unless they specifically opted to NOT register for their home event in the first round--and the assignments for that could be done just prior to registration opening, just so everybody--particularly RDs--could see what would fill up. When one of the biggest regionals in FRC is the third event to fill by a matter of minutes, something needs to happen...

And then for second round, open registration for any regional. But if a team landed on the waitlist for their designated home regional, then that would be a trigger to the RD in question to contact the team/move them up the waitlist/otherwise pull strings.