linker,
I or my floor staff will wander round the card-room, with a notebook which will look like this:
1-8-58
2-9-1
3-F
4-F
5-F
6-9-7
etc etc
TABLE-PLAYERS-SEATSVACANT
When you scramble your cards and the players moving from a broken table pick their cards I will assign the low tables 7/8 from top to bottom of the list them fill the rest of the seats, when they pick their card for example the player that picks Ace will goto 1-5 and so on.
On balances it more straight forward as i would just be taking BB from 3 to 1-WorstPosition as it's the closest to 1 etc.
This method ensures random re-seating throughout the tourney, without disturbing positions at tables, which actually keeps the tournament running smoother.
This method also gives me an accurate head count so I can bust out some names if we didn't see eliminations occuring, there is also on occasion situations where tables will become short handed i.e. 7 v 8,9,10 but only 1 player needs to go until a collapse occurs so I let it run on (despite the TDA rule of 3 or more short halt play) as more often than not you pick a player to move and then another players busts so the collapse needs to be done.
I also treat multiple areas as blocks where large tournaments are running - for example 3 seperate consolidation areas where they are run by different floor staff and consolidated as groups rather than a whole card-room, with regular reviews to see when we can move tables from another group into the main card-room group.
Regards
Stuart