Is the qualification match robot randomizer really "random"

[Steve W]

Originally Posted by demps45

I have often wondered if the "random" pairings were actually "random" too. We attended the Greater Toronto Regional this past week, and after the pairings were distributed, some teams complained that the pairings were not fair, so the officials ran the program again and came out with pairings that were satisfactory to those complaining. the officials said they had used the wrong algorithm for the number of teams attending the event. That tells me that mistakes do happen. I am not questioning the integrity of any of the officials, only the method used for pairings. As luck would have it, we had much better pairngs "before" the the pairings were rerun. Also, the "better" teams ended up with better pairings "after" the program rerun. Go figure!!

The issue at GTR was that the match list was printed before being checked. There are defaults in the program that were set quite high. When the matches were looked at, it was discovered that teams were playing with or against all of the same teams. The number of matches between played matches was changed from 9 to 7. This allowed a greater mixing of teams thus not as many with/against matches. This allowed the teams to play with/against a larger number of teams because of a 66 team regional.

As for who gets better pairing, I guess that would depend on everyones definition of what a better pairing is. My definition would be to play with/against as many different teams as possible so that we can have the opportunity to gain knowledge and workability with many teams.