[piotrm]

I'm not sure of the constraints of the base algorithm other than the obvious attempt to put some time between a team's matches.

Anyway, it doesnt matter much since that algorithm's output is not specific to any team. It generates matches with teams numbered 1 though N, the number of teams. These are pregenerated for various numbers of teams. During the actual events the teams that are present at an event are randomly assigned to those N numbers and thats that.

I do remember people said that at one event they played some practice matches and then the next day the qualification matches paired them with and against the same exact teams. This would happen if the seed wasn't changed between generation of practice matches and qualification matches. Since the pregenerated list of matches was the same (same number of teams present), the same seed made the teams be assigned to the same numbers as they were in the practice matches.

Hope this explains some things and if anyone has a really good and fast algorithm that you think would be good, suggest it to FIRST (and I would also like to hear about it).