I was thinking that I could add an optional setting next to the "Auto Seat" checkbox that allows you to enter an expected number of players. That could allow the Auto Seat feature to better isolate players to a select set of tables. Leaving the input blank would mean the same behavior as today, which is randomly seating the player at any available seat.
So the argument to this idea is that, if you know how many people you are expecting, why not just set up your tables accordingly? Then seating a player randomly at any seat would be appropriate.
Thoughts?
I have an idea that I think is along what Jody's looking for (and which would help me, too). Say there's 5 tables able to hold 9 players (45 total). How hard would it be to implement into the algorithm for it to say something like "have i placed a player at each player? If yes, reset the count, and place at random table, random seat. If no, look at a table that's empty, and place at an empty seat there." Kind of like how I used to do seating with numbered chips - we'd have numbers 1 to 40, representing seats 1-10 at 4 tables. I would then spread them out, and then select a chip from the first table, then 2nd, 3rd, 4th, then start over with 1st table, and once I had them all "sorted" into a random seating, I would then hand them out to the players as they would register.
EDIT - So in essence with my 5x9 situation, it could seat T1 S7 (Table 1, Seat 7), then T4 S2, T2 S8, T5 S4, T3 S1, then reset in its mind to think no tables have been used in the 'round of seating', to be able to go to T3 S6, T2 S2, etc... Instead of (sometimes) filling one table up completely before seating a player at one of the other available tables.