<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Steve K wrote...<br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><span style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" class="">The sequence is the same across all groups - the only difference is where a group started in the pattern. So in Ken's concern.. The lowest group started on stranger things, while group 1 started on AC/DC.. and then immediately followed behind Group 1 for the duration.. vs the classic mentality of lower groups going before higher groups.</span></div><div class=""><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></blockquote></div><br class=""><div class="">Correct: "Shuffle Machines" creates a "ring" of machines in random order, and each group joins the ring at a random point. So on any given night, Group A might be directly following Group B, or Group B might be directly following Group A, or they may be offset by 2 or 3 machines, or they might be on completely disjoint sections of the "ring" and have no machines in common. This algorithm is very simple and effective for ensuring that each group plays a unique set of machines (if possible) and that every group plays a different machine per "round" (if possible) while evenly distributing play across all machines in the medium-to-long run. And from each individual group's POV, it's a random selection of games each night. It's a "KISS" solution, since (as Bob noted) the software knows nothing about whether a given machine "usually plays long" or "usually plays quickly", and of course it doesn't know if a machine will break in the middle of league and jam things up, etc.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I might suggest that if folks would like to discuss the nitty-gritty of machine shuffling, we split off a private mail thread for those who wish to discuss, to avoid spamming the list too much... and/or there's some discussion of this taking place on Slack in the #league-rules channel.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">--Joe</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>