Wow.
I did a quick model in a spreadsheet producing random boards and looking for at least 1 match. Over 100 simulations it came out at a staggering 87% of them had a match! Boy… my gut was right, but my estimate was WAY off.
This sheds new light on the Tornado skill… a reshuffle of the board would yield a 87% chance of triggering a match… with further (quite profound) chances of multiple matches and combos. (Certainly seemed the case while observing my Excel board as I generated new layouts).
So I guess @Pops got it right… and I’d assume that any opening match on initial layout observed by @Talisax and @Revelate would be more in the nature of a bug/flaw in SG’s opening layout algorithm than innate chance.
All terribly interesting.