Match Pairings not random (not even close!)

[ahecht]

The problem that FIRST has is that their top priority is that teams have enough time between matches (approx. 1 hour) to repair and refine their robots. The problem is that since your next match is in about an hour, and all the teams you played with have their next match in about an hour, odds are pretty high that you will see at least one of them again in your next match. If FIRST actually went through and made sure that pairings were never repeated, the schedule would actually be less random.

Think of it this way: If you flipped a coin ten times, but wanted to make sure that you never had two heads or two tails in a row, there are only two possible combinations (hththththt and ththththth). However, if you had no checks on the results, there are 1024 possible combinations. Obviously, the first scenerio is much less random.