|
It really depends. I was at the VCU regional, and some teams had problems with the psuedo-randomness of the match pairings, while others did not. Our team happened to be against team 401 twice, but that is all, and we didn't find anything wrong with that.
Also, this does come up every year. One of our mentors knows the guy who does the match pairings for a few of the regionals, and he explained it this way: they do the pairings the night before competition for security reasons (they don't want anything leaked), and that doesn't give them enough time to change anything drastically. Also, due to their system setup, it is impossible to individually switch teams by hand (and even if they did, the issue of just how many repeats are allowed, and who to switch with comes up).
Overall, it's an imperfect system. Any system will be. The people behind it are a bunch of die-hard FIRST volunteers, who are doing their best to create a fun playing enviornment. If you do have problems with match pairings, I only ask you to bring it up in a polite way, and don't expect them to change things this year.
Good luck at all your regionals everybody!
Stephen
|