Problem with manual drawing is, that our tournament structure is quite different. If you just randomly do pairings, you will most likely get (a lot) more matchdays than 17 (for 18 players).
To always ensure the least possible amount of matchdays I used the algorithm presented here:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www-i1.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/~algorithmus/algo36.php&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www-i1.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/~algorithmus/algo36.php (I hope Google translate isnt too bad on this one, the page is usually in german).
Every player is basically just a number in this algorithm, and the schedule is always exactly the same, e.g. Player 1 is always facing Player 3 on the first matchday. Since we dont wanna have the same scheduling every year, I simply give every player a random number. This year chuvash is Player 1 and Ray is Player 3, last year Devilage was Player 1 and JohnMcClane was Player 3.
This algorithm isn't 100% random (in fact there are only n! different schedules, but 18! = 640237370572800 is a big enough number I guess), but it's good enough for our purposes.
So, the only thing that could be done manually would be drawing of a number for a player. So if you draw 1 for Almog and 3 for Crazy, this would automatically mean its Almog vs. Crazy on this matchday.
I spent some time on getting a good algorithm for a round robin tourney, and its not tirival to get one with the least amount of matchdays. So, if anyone knows one that you can present on air with live drawing, then shoot. But I don't believe there is one. Plus drawing every game seperately would mean for eac 2013 that you have to draw 306 names, because there are 153 matches....
I will talk to SPW about this asap and more opinions are always welcome. Delaying the start of the tournament by one week won't kill anyone I guess