For all intents and purposes, how those 80 at 3309 and how those 86 at 3308 are then put into brackets of 8 is "completely" random.
It's coding so it can't be random...............unless they've actually installed a cryptographic Random Number Generator to handle something that really doesn't need to handled...............so extremely unlikely it's random. Most likely, the coding has some hard rules it follows to place the players in a determined order.
Once that happens we're matched with players who are next to us on the ladder.
In short (I like to use adverbial phrases too), I highly doubt there's anything random about it. I'm sure if somebody could be bothered, they'd find the pattern.
From the outside looking in it is random. No one has ever explained it. I've seen some people pose a theory that it is by ally ID.
In a thread well over a year ago I was able to prove it wasn’t Ally ID or Player ID.
Capital Games Team
