**FIRST EMAIL**/Updated Alliance Pairing Algorithm

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by 1885.Blake

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I think doing this would be "best for FIRST" because teams could come to events already knowing the pattern in each pre-computed schedule and could fill in the actual team assignments quickly once the event staff announces them. That would mean that teams could create elegant tools for scouting and related matters, and could use them at events without having to waste time punching a jilliion numbers (the match pairings) into them at the events.

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There's one very practical issue when looking to implement scouting tools like this. It's not uncommon to go to an FRC event and have the actual team list differ slightly from the most recently published team list on FIRSTs and regional websites. This is even more true when you attend offseasons. Since 2001 in helping to develop scouting systems for teams (very low tech ones most of the time) we always built in the flexibility to add, delete, or switch teams. I've always found that doing lots of reasearch on teams ahead of time was good, but showing up at the event with a little flexibility built into your system was even better. It would be frustrating to develop an elegant tool, only to have to make changes at the event anyway. My .02