"Fixing" matches

[Shawn60]

I just wanted to see what others think about team using the strategy of "fixing" matches so that they leave one another's stacks alone to get high QP points. I personally don't like. I think it is against the spirit of the competition and gracious professionalism. Yes it does happen in the real world (Enron comes to mind) but I think we are trying to make a better real world. I think it is more interesting and fun to let the two alliances fight it out and have to adapt and think on the fly and that it detracts from the robots on the field.

I am wondering what you think. Please explain why you do or do not like it. I am very interested hearing both sides.

Thanks

Shawn
Team 60

[Jeff Waegelin]

We had an opponent try to do that to us last year. They said they would help us get 50 points if we agreed to let them win. We declined, and smoked them 50-20. Fixing matches is ridiculous. Let it play as it will. If you tie, you tie, but don't agree to it beforehand.

[David Lantz]

Do you mean that the alliances will meet and decide not to touch each-other's stacks or something else? I think its wrong if they decide to score lots of points just so the winning team will have an insane amount of Q-points. However if a team is winning a match and decides to help their opponent score more points by moving or stacking bins then this is perfectly all right. I only think it is wrong if both teams decide ahead of time to "fix" the match.

[Jonathanb]

Fixing Matches? why that's untolerable!

[CHSRobotics03]

This was a big problem in the AZ Regional. We were approached several times to do it-- The #1 seed team, I won't say who but you can look it up, was more than 50 points ahead of my team, who was seeded SECOND! The majority of the teams there were disgusted with the obvious "gentleman's aggreements" made throughout the competition. We even started a petition going to try and come to a regional consensus that this is against the meaning and intentions of FIRST-- Suprisingly enough, the #1 seed refused to sign it. I think FIRST needs to crack down on this although there is no way to regulate it. :-( Any ideas? It's disappointing to see that there are teams and MENTORS who don't feel that fixing matching is immoral-- I thought FIRST was about GRACIOUS PROFESSIONALISM-- am I mistaken?

Alexis

[Gope]

I think this is exactly what FIRST dosen't want to happen. It dosen't make the competition fair, and can make some matches very boring. I saw alot of this happening in St.Louis, and it boiled me. But as far as I know there is no specific rule against such a thing, maybe someone can mention it to Dean?

[Wayne C.]

Originally posted by Jonathanb
Fixing Matches? why that's untolerable!

Our team TOTALLY agrees and proceeded to discretely alert the officials to this at a recent regional. As a high seeded team we were offered a deal by our opponent that they would leave our stacks alone if we later picked them. We declined and the stacks for both teams went down as played. The offending team did not get anywhere by doing this and now sits on our blacklist.

Get with it people- its only a game!! If stacking bins is more important than your self respect I suggest you go elsewhere.

If you want a trophy that bad I'll give you one....

WC

:mad:

[Ryan Albright]

i think fixing matches is wrong and shouldnt happen it does take away from the fun i mean we didnt sitt ther for 6 weeks busting are buts to build a robot and then going to competiton to get out of this the easy way i want to see the robots at its full potentail but you know what first isnt all just buildign if you thinkg aobu tit its alot of poltics some for the good some for the bad

[soezgg]

in our regional (annapolis) there were 2 'fixed matches' in which teams agreed not to knock down stacks

the scores were like 160 something and 140 something

the REAL matches, that were played in accordance to competitive gaming got up to 280

nuff said.

[Wetzel]

I want a trophy!!

That said, this is not 2001's Co-Opertition. It is 2 on 2,not 4 together.

If you want your stack to remain standing, defend yourself.
:)


Wetzel

[Yan Wang]

I considered the idea of cooperating between 4 teams to get higher points because I thought it was plain stupid for teams to keep knocking them down and with by points of 20-10. However, I realized, wait a second, this isn't going to work. No one is going to let someone win huge and keep true to their agreement. It's a good idea and would show one of FIRST's ideas of cooperation, but it's never going to happen and pointless to try.

[Wayne C.]

Originally posted by Wetzel
I want a trophy!!


Wetzel

Gee Wetzel- I have a tiki trophy left over from Brunswick Eruption if you seriously need one that bad. You just need to prove your machine can follow an obstacle course.....


WC:D

[Ken Loyd]

Originally posted by CHSRobotics03
...We even started a petition going to try and come to a regional consensus that this is against the meaning and intentions of FIRST...

Alexis

Alexis,

We had a bad regional as you could tell. We only managed to play in four matches. I saw a lot of the matches from the stands and a few were very confusing to me. It was with pleasure that I signed Team 68's petition. I hope we do not again encounter this problem in Los Angeles and Houston.

Ken Loyd
Team 64

[Danimal]

I don't know any circumstance where having an agreement with the opposing team would be ethical. It might not be against the rules but what about the rules of "life".

I suspect that if FIRST had an inkling that match fixing was going on they would find a way to make it a point of disqualification.

Best,

Danimal
Pit Boss
Hartford, '01, '03

[Mark Pettit]

Our team was also approached at AZ. At first, I was for the idea since other teams were advancing in the standings due to this practice, but some members of my team who were thinking more clearly than me convinced me that it was not in the spirit of GP. We did the equivalent of signing the above mentioned "petition" by displaying a copy of it in our pit area and we never fixed a match..
I approached the FIRST Regional Director and asked him what FIRST's position is. He said that FIRST is enjoying seeing the moral dilemna that the scenario has created. He also reminded me that it is not doing the teams that fix matches any good because fixing will not work in the finals where QPs don't matter. Those teams who are highly ranked through fixing will be the first teams to be eliminated in the finals.
I say that it's not cheating because there's no rule against it, but it's not right either. I hope that there are enough teams out there that understand the true meaning of GP and gamesmanship that the practice does not continue at other regionals or at the championships.

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally posted by Gope
I saw alot of this happening in St.Louis, and it boiled me. But as far as I know there is no specific rule against such a thing...

After a personal experience with this in St. Lou, all I can really advise is to not judge a team based on a member's bad calls. i.e. just because a driver might want to fix the match, that doesn't mean the team decided to go with that strategy, or that the team even knows about it. Just hold your head up high, and do what you consider to be the right thing. Keep the spirit of FIRST in your heart and conscience at all times, and you'll go places without having to 'fix' your way there.

Originally posted by Gope
maybe someone can mention it to Dean?

Believe me, I am first in line! Someone, please, give him my number! :p

[Suneet]

Match fixing, where the two alliances have decided who is going to win to the match beforehand, is clearly unfair and unethical. Asking an alliance to lose a match but get a reasonably high score by cooperating is uncompetitive behavior.
That said, I wish to differentiate match fixing from the possibility of an agreement between matches that goes like this:

"We'll both have the human players make stacks of six (seven?). You don't knock over our stack, and we won't knock yours. You knock ours, and we'll knock yours. May the best alliance win."

This way, the outcome of the match is NOT determined beforehand, and both alliances have the advantage of a possibly very high score. Also, one always runs the risk of the other alliance breaking the pact, in which case one must knock over the opposing stack ASAP.

We have scored 292 with this arrangement (I was coaching). No one in the match was a stacker, so that's not a bad score.(though technically our robot can make a stack of 2 if needed) I hope no one thinks of such matches as "fixed". When no robot can stack, this is an excellent way for both alliances to take a shot at a good score, and the outcome is indeterminate every match.

<edit>

You know, we discussed the above arrangement with Jason Morrella at Sacramento, and though he wouldn't branded it as the most gracious and professional thing to do, he wouldn't brand it as non-gracious and professional, either. He was kinda neutral... But he certainly found it acceptable. (not illegal)

</edit>

[jzampier]

Our team leader tried something like this at Cleveland... although the flavor was somewhat different:

As i understood it... i wasn't actually involved in the conversations...
His suggestion was that each team play the match to the best of their abilities, but at the same time tried to maximize the score for everyone...

Now, some people got very pissed off at him because they see this as 'fixing' a match.

The way i took it, and i believe the way he intended was something long the lines of what first tried to accomplish last season w/ the scoring. That in order to help yourself, you must help your opponent.

For example, in one match, i believe the X-cats successfully defended the top of the ramp from an opponent bot, when both them and their team mate were on top and they clearly had a win. The smart move would have been to let the opponent on top, thereby increasing both scores, the winning team by 50pts.

I believe this is what my team leader was suggesting. That everyone play the game and try to win ( we do our thing, you do yours, and may the best team win ), but that it is advantageous to everyone to have a good scoring match.

In my opinion this is certainly not fixing a match. To me, fixing a match implies an agreement on a definate outcome, as in, someone takes a dive.... the agreement here is merely to allow each other to excel as much as possible.

Call me crazy, but isn't cooperation amongst opponents and allies one of the ideals of first?

[mtrawls]

Hmm... I knew I remembered it being there somewhere. It only took cycling through the first twenty-six pages to find it!

Anyway, this might be of interest to you:

Subject -- "rigging" the game
[Gabriel] If the two alliances decide before the beginning of a match how they will play the game and execute a strategy where the two alliances cooperate with each other to acheive a tie, are the two alliances violating the spirit of FIRST or the maxim of "gracious professionalism"?

[first]Yes

36F

http://jive.ilearning.com/thread.jsp?forum=2&thread=740&tstart=360&trange=15

[David Lantz]

That clears up a lot of arguing.

[George]

Originally posted by amandabean
After a personal experience with this in St. Lou, all I can really advise is to not judge a team based on a member's bad calls. i.e. just because a driver might want to fix the match, that doesn't mean the team decided to go with that strategy, or that the team even knows about it. Just hold your head up high, and do what you consider to be the right thing. Keep the spirit of FIRST in your heart and conscience at all times, and you'll go places without having to 'fix' your way there.



Believe me, I am first in line! Someone, please, give him my number! :p


Pete Rose would LOVE this thinking!!
Please Everyone, bring this subject up at Drivers meetings,
Coaches meetings, In the pits, In all the forums, at the snack bar
everywhere!
in ALL other sports there are RULES against this
In life there are LAWS against this!
Geo.

[Dima]

As a person i know would say:

"In Vegas they whould break your legs for this!"

however as it so happens the number 1 seeded alliance got taken out by the number 8 alliance (whose picking team was seeded number 11 and moved up) at the AZ regional.

The teams that practice this strategy will loose in the long run because they have to play in the ELimination matches and they are not prepared to knock over stacks or do other things in order to win.

[IMDWalrus]

Fixing the matches just shouldn't be done. I haven't gone to my first regional yet (it starts this Thursday) and I hope that my team won't get involved with any score fixing.

One thing that could be done is that we could get a list of teams that were either involved in fixing or wanted to be and then have everyone blacklist them. It's not much, but without any kind of official action, it's one of the only things that we can do.

[Raul]

I cannot believe what I am reading here! :(

For those that think that any kind of agreement between opponents is OK, consider this scenario:

If you are the #1 seed who got there without any agreements with your opponents, would you like it if you lost the chance to choose first (something you had truly earned) because the #2 seed made and agreement with their opponent to keep the score high? Even if the #2 seed did not agree on the outcome (who wins and loses) it still hurts the #1 because the #2 seed artificially increased their opportunity to get higher points and the #1 seed had to earn their points the hard way.
Does the #1 seed deserve this treatment and lack of respect from the #2 seed?? Obviously not; therefore IT IS JUST PLAIN WRONG!

If FIRST came out and said that agreements are allowed (which they didn't), then the game would become a game of who can negotiate the best agreements instead of a robotic competition. Geez, is that what we want?

If you still don't agree, the fact that so many teams were doing a petition about this and blowing the whistle on those that are doing it should indicate to you that something MUST be wrong with it.

[Lauren Bendes]

As a proud member of Truck Town, I am extremely offended to think that some teams within the FIRST organization have come to the point of blatently fixing matches.

Yes, I do believe that to better your own score you must ensure that your opponet has close to the same point amount as you. (It is not appropriate in this game to beat a team 75 to 1.) But, I do not believe in making an agreement to do this from the beginning of each match.
I feel that a large part of what makes a team good is not only their robot, but is their teams ethics and drive to compete fairly. As the team that seeded second in the AZ due do a few teams in the surrounding standings participating in the fixing I was extremely disappointed that my team didnt have the chance to show our true potential. Many teams at the recent regional were oblivious to the fact that this was happening and many agreed, once a petition was raised, that they were in opposition to this fixing. These teams didnt have the opportunity to showcase their robots ability nor what their drivers could handle. Coming from a team where we have exceptionally experienced drivers I feel that part of what makes our team who they are is the drivers ability to make that split second decision in a match whether to score more boxes for the opponent or to let the opponent on the ramp to better their score.

I think that everyone has the right to their own decision about the manner, and I know that some teams do not view this as fixing a match, but I truly hope that these teams realize that this isnt what true competition and gracious professionalism are about.

~Lauren~
GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE!!!
GO TRUCK!

[Travis Covington]

While I was at the AZ regional I noticed this idea going around and some teams using it quite effectively.

I agree with not ‘fixing’ the match, but I also feel like a purely defensive strategy is boring and predictable.

Most of the matches I witnessed consisted of teams knocking HP stacks over and fighting for the ramp. This quickly became boring and never allowed teams that had stackers to do anything they designed their robots for. But I also don’t think that a match where a stack of 6 survived was fun to watch either (edit, unless they built it from scratch or added to a stack etc.. good job to those teams;)

Although, agreements to NOT knock stacks over seem unfair, it still doesn’t necessarily mean teams "fixed" the match.

These matches still had everything to do with who could get to the top and who could funnel more boxes into their scoring zone. So for the most part I don’t think that "fixing" the match would be fair, where teams would agree on every movement of the entire match and set the winner/loser.

Our team was tempted a few times to try and see if all 4 teams would agree to concentrate on the offensive side of the game, but realized this strategy wasn’t fair to the robots designed for defense, and never ended up doing it.

In the end we were not in a single match where the HP stacks survived (or someone tried to knock them over) we also must have witnessed at least 10 matches where 2 or more stacks of 6 survived.

I don’t think that 'fixing' the matches is fair, but I do think that teams should try and play a game that is a little more offensive, realizing that by knocking over the HP stacks you are hurting your own score. I think this should be done within the team and should not be suggested to opponents. If they feel the same way, then they will show you by not knocking them over.

Good luck to all teams in the upcoming events.

Travis

PS. Thanks to teams 606, and 460 for a great alliance!!!

[Koci]

I first would like to thank everyone at the AZ regional that signed team 68's petition, and posted ours in their pit.

We were approached twice during the regional to do this collusion, and both times flat out declined. I believe this practice is completely against the spirit of FIRST. One of the mentors from team 980 even went so far as to say it could be the death of FIRST, which I agree with. This activity causes the matches to be uninteresting to watch, and no longer allows for the teams that build the best robot to rise to the top during qualification rounds. Finals would have been much more interesting if the top 8 teams truly came from at least the best 15 robots there. I think the fact that the final match was between the 7th and 8th placed alliances says a lot, even though I would have rather the 5th placed alliance to win (thanks to teams 57 and 1212 for their great attempts: we were so close; I can't believe we lost that first match by ONE point).

The petition that was passed around by us, team 68, and team 980 caused this practice to cease. On Saturday, none of these fixed matches occurred again. I think we got the message around that we really don't want to tolerate it, and helped some of the other teams to realize what really was occurring.

I certainly hope that this anti-collusion sentiment continues to the next few regionals. I think its a good idea if someone starts a petition on the Thursday of each regional, just to make sure that it no longer happens. I know we will for the Lone Star Regional.

Edit: Oh, and to Travis from Team 968, you didn't like the 6-stack we built in the final match?

[Travis Covington]

Okay okay, I DID like the stack of 6 you built from scratch.

My reference was to the HP stacks of 6 that survived... it just hurt to see them get so many points by agreeing to not knock the stacks over...

Dont forget we were a stacker once too :(

TC

[AlbertW]

Our team is guilty of match-"fixing,"

We were approached by a few teams to agree not to knock down eachother's stacks. I didn't like the idea, but our driver agreed, and they got our alliance partner to. We were never actually betrayed during one of these agreements, though once our AI did accidentally kill their stack. They proceeded to knock ours down.

There was one agreement during one of the matches we weren't in in which one team, in the last few seconds, knocked down the opponent stack. The opponent got off the ramp, went and pushed over the other team's stack, and didn't get back up in time. (Though they DID take really long to knock it over... dunno why. They kept turning, and brushing the side of the stack - rotating it, but not tipping it)

[Alex1072]

Part of the problem is the game design this year promotes this kind of behavior. Since stacking is almost completly useless (with some rare exceptions), the game becomes extreamly boring and low scoring. I agree that rigging a match is not in the ideals of gracius professionalism, but I was under the impression that cooperating with the oposing team to achieve a higher score for everyone was the point of the way QPs are calculated the way they are.

[Arrowsmith]

Match fixing will only lead me to one thing: Justifyable sabotage. If any member of my team even thinks about match fixing, I'll hit them in the head with some pipe. Arrowsmith angry! Arrowsmith SMASH!

[Alexander McGee]

Ok, I want everyone to realize something here. Statistically, the highest averages for regional events were around 130, give or take 25 points. Now, if you look at the regional event which I recently attended (AZ) you can see a HUGE difference in qualification point averages.

Rank 1 173 Average
Rank 2 135 Average
Rank 3 133 Average
Rank 4 121 Average

That's a difference of nearly 40 points, over a span of 11 matches per team. Come on people, its obvious that certain teams used (at this regional and others) so called "gentleman agreements" to raise their scores. This is definitely not in the spirit of what F.I.R.S.T. is all about.

As stated in a previous post on this forum, F.I.R.S.T. has declared this blatant act of cheating to be exactly what it is; cheating.

Here is a scenario for everyone.

Let’s say that I am a rookie team. I have, in my opinion, a wonderful robot. I worked very hard over 6 weeks with a group of students, parents, and teachers from my school, to make it all come together. When we get to our regional event, we lose our first match. We are upset, but we try again. Sadly, our team seeds dead last. In our 5th match of the first day of real competition, as our alliance and I are discussing how we can win, our opponents show up in our meeting. They say that they know how we can get at least 200 points. They claim that this is "working together", so we agree. The match ends, and we score 250 points. A somewhat mediocre alliance gets a significant amount of points, and a cheating team continues to manipulate the qualification points of every team.

Does this concept show how strong, well built, and well run a team is? NO. It shows how far a team is willing to go to make themselves look like something that they are not.

I strongly oppose “gentlemen’s agreements”, and think that it’s time for F.I.R.S.T. to know about it. I’m sure I will receive posts, emails, and IMs telling me that I am wrong.

Sorry guys, it’s cheating, not “working together”, so just stop it.

[Eismann]

When I found out what had been done by our team I was upset. One of our junior made a bad call in one of our matches. Grant it, it didn't affect our game but still it was a mistake. I am glad we apologized for the game we did that in and I hope no one will make that call on any team in any matches.

I would also like to thank 624 and 980 for showing there support and walking around with us to get signatures. Also thanks to all the teams that signed other letter.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally posted by magnasmific

Sorry guys, it’s cheating, not “working together”, so just stop it.

Absolutely. This is totally unacceptable.

[Amanda Morrison]

I forgot - when did FIRST become a relentless competition, with winning being the only goal in mind? Honestly, what is so bad about losing? What happened to saying 'good game' and respecting someone because they played fair and ending up winning against you? Where is the challenge, the excitement, the feeling of working incredibly hard? If you win based on the way you set things up with your alliance partners and your opponents, did you really, honestly win?

That's the only reason I can see for 'fixing' matches. You're fixing them to seed higher... to get into the top eight... to get to play in the finals... to win.

There is a very big difference between talking with opponents, letting them know your game plan with your alliance partner, and playing a good match... and talking with your opponents and alliance partners and working out how to make yourselves score higher.

And that honestly saddens me. FIRST isn't about winning, it's about teaching. It took the students on my team- who only wanted to learn about the aspects of engineering through this great program- to make me realize that. I hope that every mentor has a student to teach them that a great life lesson learned means more to a kid than any hunk of metal on a ribbon that FIRST could award.

[srjjs]

The game is as much a competition of strategies as it is of robots. There is never any one "best strategy."
If teams choose to use this as their strategy, find one that will beat them.

[Alexander McGee]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by srjjs
The game is as much a competition of strategies as it is of robots. [/QUOTE

You missed the point completelly. This is not a "strategy", this is a very unfair way to run the game. Beating the people who do this is not the concern. Having the people who do this choosing alliances is. It's totally unfair.

[stace68]

My Team 68 was approached once at the Arizona Regional. A Junior Advisor accepted, and yes it was wrong. We promise to all teams that this will not happen again from our team. I want to thank Team 624 and Team 980 for walking around with us for the petition,and would also like to thank those teams who signed our petition. Fixing of matches is cheating,and is taking away the meaning of F.I.R.S.T.

[GregT]

1) It IS working together.
2) It is not against the rules (or any that I have read)
3) The game is designed in such a way you have to work with your opponent (to some extent) as your QP's depend on their score.

I'm suprised at that Jive post, and would be very suprised to hear a Ref call it illegal as It is not against the spirit of FIRST to work together towards a common goal.

Anyone remember the 2001 game?

Greg

[David Brinza]

Opposing alliances making agreements to not attack tall (7+) human player stacks is clearly not consistent with the spirit of competition I've witnessed in other FIRST events. Within 30 seconds of the start of human play in the first match where this occurred, I felt something was very wrong. Upon seeing two immense undefended stacks on either end of the field with no attempts made to attack them throughout the game, I thought: "No way this isn't rigged!!" An outsider to FIRST would wonder whether this really was an exhibition, not a competition. Those 300+ point scores are highly tainted and the impact extends beyond the field in Phoenix.

The response by many FIRST participants to this occurrence was immediate and quite consistent: "We expected that it would take effective robots, good driving, good strategy and some luck to be winners; not some backroom, 'gentlemen's agreements' to pile up points." There were letters distributed by a couple of teams (68 and 624) expressing the inappropriate nature of these agreements between alliances. Most teams concurred with the letters and indicated that if approached, they would refuse to make such agreements.

In the interest of FIRST, teams should work with their alliance partners to developed winning strategies - it is never appropriate to hold such discussions with opponents before a match.

[GregT]

Does everyone here understand why you might not want to knock down a tall opponent's stack?

TO GET A HIGHER QP

Thats how you seed high, by getting a HIGHER QP. Thats why you don't knock down your opponents stack: TO GET A HIGHER QP.

Just because they got more points then you doesn't mean it was neccissarily fixed. It is possible the teams involved decided they wanted to get more points from a loss then they normally do from a win. This game is setup such that leaving a stack alone is good for both sides. You get 2X your opponents score for a reason - FIRST doesn't want you to crush your opponent. Common sense says stacks should remain standing EVEN IF YOUR TEAM IS LOSING. The only time I would allow my team to think about knocking down an opponents stack is after they knock down ours.

Why on earth would you purposly lower your score by knocking down an opponents stack?

Tainted points? I would call them intelligence points :rolleyes:

Greg

edit: whats more, if FIRST did make a rule against "fixing" the match, how could you ever hope to enforce such a rule? Would not knocking stacks over be considered illegal?

[Stu Bloom]

Originally posted by Mark Pettit
... I approached the FIRST Regional Director and asked him what FIRST's position is. He said that FIRST is enjoying seeing the moral dilemna that the scenario has created. He also reminded me that it is not doing the teams that fix matches any good because fixing will not work in the finals where QPs don't matter. Those teams who are highly ranked through fixing will be the first teams to be eliminated in the finals...

I am VERY disturbed to hear that a FIRST official would condone this type of behavior, and to say that "it is not doing the teams that fix matches any good because fixing will not work in the finals ..." is ridiculous. Just getting into the finals is extremely significant. I believe it should be made very clear by FIRST that this type of match "fixing" (OR WHATEVER ELSE YOU WOULD LIKE TO CALL IT) is absolutely unacceptable.

AND any team whose members/representatives are soliciting any pre-match arrangements with their opponent alliance members should be EXCUSED from the remainder of the competition. There is NO room for this type of behavior in FIRST. :mad:

Additionally, I am very pleased to see that most of the posts in this thread are in favor of a competition the way it is meant to be - one team against another with each trying to win using their abilities and strategies. GP is all about what takes place outside the 2:10 of the match.

Just my $.02.

[Gadget470]

Consider this, you sorry pro-fixed match people..

Boxing matches.. Man R vs Man B.. Winner gets a nice some of money, people betting on it get a nice sum also.

So Mr. Cashlove goes up to the Boxer in red trunks and says, hey, if you "accidently" "stay down" for "10 seconds" you will "get" "$375,000" (Quotes being winks).

Red trunked boxer thinks hmmm.. the purse for this is about 400,000.. if I win, I get $400k and a W.. If I lose I get 375,000 and an L...

So... low and behold.. the boxer in Red falls over third round and somehow can't get up until the bell rings. So for less effort put in by the man in Red, he still gets a large sum of money. While the Blue trunked boxer walks away with an easy win and a few extra bucks.
---

Make sense in the FIRST format? Instead of a team being pummeled trying to win, they 'let' the other team win without putting up a fight. They still get better than what they would had they fought legitimately.. but the opponent doesn't have to work hard, gets an easy win, and all the glory..

Kamen said at kickoff.. this game won't be fair. It won't be fair because it involves humans. Teams will always try and weasel through loopholes and make "gentlemen's agreements."

I lost respect for a very good team because of their "unsportsmanlike agreements," as they should be called. I don't intend on this being a flame, so I won't say a number, speak with me in private if you must know.

Two veteran teams vs Two rookie teams. The veterans are in a close race with the other high rank teams for a qualifying spot. The leader of the pair is ranked in about 6th. They send a team leader over to the rookies and say "Push a goal to our side, then sit in your home zone, we'll do the rest and you will have about 50-60 points." The rookies.. having a few bad matches already and knowing they can't defeat the vet's agree and do the task.
The veterans work together nicely in a 2 v 0 battle. They toss almost all of the field's balls into the goals and poke and prod the score til they feel it's just right. The final score was something along the lines of 65 - 60 vet's winning. Being that it was last year, the rookies got 60 pts, and the vets got 180. This skyrocketed them to 1st place where they remained. Their partner sat in 3rd or 4th at the end of the day.


Tell me this now, how was that a fair match? This is not CoOpertition FIRST anymore, it's 2 v 2. not 2 v 0 or 4 v 0. By the veteran team making an offer to the rookies, they bettered themselves into an undefeatable position. (That comment is to whomever said "if they do that find a way to beat them).

[Alex1072]

Originally posted by magnasmific
[QUOTE]Originally posted by srjjs
The game is as much a competition of strategies as it is of robots. [/QUOTE

You missed the point completelly. This is not a "strategy", this is a very unfair way to run the game. Beating the people who do this is not the concern. Having the people who do this choosing alliances is. It's totally unfair.


My argument is this:
I think this is COMPLETLY fair because
1. There is no rule against it
2. All teams are free to do it.

This means that no one team really gets any advantage. It raises EVERYONE's scores. The best robots still have the highest scores.

The debate in my mind is whether this strategy is in the spirit of FIRST. Just because something is fair, does not mean it is what we should be doing.

I think it adds a diplomatic aspect to the whole game. Also, I would encourage teams who do this to consider wheither it is actuly in their advantage (no matter how you spin it, it is a zero-sum game).

[Gadget470]

On another note (different angle, different post.. deal with it)...

My team will be attending one regional this year. One shot, one chance to do our best. We need to win or get an award to continue this season. What if we are supposed to be ranked 8th and the 10th place team says "Hey, let's fix this match so we can get into 7th seed!" and then does. We get bumped to 9th and then quite possibly not get picked for eliminations. (I've seen the 9th seed not be in elim's before).

We, a team deserving to pick alliance partners because of our performance gets rejected because another team can make an agreement with their opponents

[Shawn60]

We need to ask these questions of this competition but more importantly of LIFE... What is possible? Can we do it? How do we do it? And then most importantly SHOULD WE DO IT?

The students of my team are going to write and sign a letter stating that they will not participate in these "agreements" so please don't ask us. We will then give them out to every team in LA and to all the teams in our division in Houston.


Shawn
Team 60

[Pete Smith]

In my opinion, "fixing" matches is a difficult strategy to deal with. I would expect the issue to be addressed at nationals to provide some clarity for everyone. However, this strategy can only work in qualifying rounds, so every robot that advances to the elimination rounds will have to fend for itself. Although I would be disappointed if an honest team were to miss out on the elimination rounds or a chance to head it's own alliance due to this strategy.
There is a clear line between "fixing" matches and encouraging smart play. For example, if teams were to encourage their opponents to allow 4 robots on the ramp when there is a clear winner of the "bin war" it is fair play in my opinion. This prevents a score below 50 for the loser and an extra 100 points is awarded to the winner. Although, I would disagree completely with this technique if one of the 4 robots was designed to play King of the Hill because their strength is then removed from play.
Therefore if ALL 4 teams had NO stacking capabilities (rare occurance) I would regretfully catagorize this as smart play as well. Although chances are if you have no stacking capabilities you are good at knocking them over, so again it may still be taking a particular team's strength out of play.

Good Luck to Everyone!

-Thanks 157 and 782 for being excellent alliance partners, I had a ton of fun with you guys.

-Thanks BUZZ, Aces High and team 177 for being great opponents, you guys all have awesome robots and most importantly, great attitudes.

[joshk]

Originally posted by magnasmific
You missed the point completelly. This is not a "strategy", this is a very unfair way to run the game. Beating the people who do this is not the concern. Having the people who do this choosing alliances is. It's totally unfair.
Let's say FIRST decides to disqualify any team which does such things during the competition for the duration thereof.

How are you going to tell who's cheating and who's not?

Assuming no opposing alliances are working together, it can STILL happen that each alliance has both of their extremely tall stacks standing. You can't assume they have been working together just based on that. A lot of honest teams could get in trouble if FIRST tried to enforce such a rule.

Basically, my point is that you (or at least the FIRST judges) can't ever reliably figure out who's really cheating at all.

[Joel Glidden]

St. Louis taught me that leaving each other's stacks alone shouldn't take any agreements. It's just plain good strategy for Qualifying Rounds. If your opponents need to be convinced to maximize their potential score, then they haven't studied the mechanics of the game and don't deserve to get a 'stacks up'-score.

These pre-match agreements need to end. Aside from the ethics of the situation, there are so many ways for them to go wrong (intentionally or otherwise). In the best case, a team or teams get points they didn't earn. In the worst case, relationships between teams are damaged, and we all begin to lose faith in one another.

-Joel

[abeD]

Well if FIRST really wanted to have people be honest, maybe they would make some type of honor code, which would be signed, that said "I will not fix a match and abide by GP during competition" or something like that. I know that at least at my school has an honor code that we sign on every test that says that we will not give or take help from others, and it works pretty well, but every once in a while someone will cheat anyways.

[Stu Bloom]

Originally posted by Joel Glidden
St. Louis taught me that leaving each other's stacks alone shouldn't take any agreements. It's just plain good strategy for Qualifying Rounds. If your opponents need to be convinced to maximize their potential score, then they haven't studied the mechanics of the game and don't deserve to get a 'stacks up'-score.

These pre-match agreements need to end. Aside from the ethics of the situation, there are so many ways for them to go wrong (intentionally or otherwise). In the best case, a team or teams get points they didn't earn. In the worst case, relationships between teams are damaged, and we all begin to lose faith in one another.

-Joel

BRAVO JOEL ... GREAT POST - This sums up the situation perfectly.

[David Brinza]

My guess is that >95% of the teams would not choose to enter diplomacy over playing a square match.

If the stacks are negotiation pawns now, then what comes next? the ramp!!!

[Pete Smith]

Joel - I agree completely, excellent point.

[David Brinza]

OUR alliance made the decision whether an opposing alliance stack should be allowed to stand or we should attack it based on our overall game strategy and scouting info on our opponents (i.e. could they defend the stack when their robot got into their scoring zone). We understood the basics of the game and scored well (after 6 matches, our QP average was 171 pt's).

All points were earned fair and square.

[BaysianLogik]

Here are my two cents...

First off, I think there are two different arguements going on here, one on predetermining the winner of a match, and the other about stack agreements. I feel these are two completely different things.

Blatently predetermining the winner of a match eliminates all effort on behalf of one side or the other, and thus violates the spirit of FIRST.

Making an agreement about stacks is a completely different subject. In this game, stacks are extremely vulnerable. In the entire Annapolis regional, I saw a stack successfully defended about 5 times (out of over 100 matches i watched). Thus, if one side takes out the stack, almost every time the other side will be able to take out the stacks as well. Thus, the winner without the stacks would have been the winner with the stacks, because the winner in virtually every match is determined by the number of bins on the floor, or the robots on the ramp.

Take this example, which was a typical scene at the regional:
Human Players on each side put stacks of 4 (most common strategy). After autonomous mode, Blue has 12 bins in their scoring position, while red has 15. 12*4=48, 15*4=60. In order to win, blue takes out reds stacks. In response, red takes out blues. Their scores are reduced to 16 and 19. Attacking the stacks was completely pointless, because blue still lost. All they did was lower both of their scores.

As you can see, the stacks have no weight on who wins a match most of the time, and as such, is a lose-lose strategy.

Lose-Lose situations are avoided in the real world. Companies do not sabatoge each others business (99% of the time), but make their products better so the consumer will buy their services instead of the competetors. In this case, the world as a whole wins, because one company makes better products, and forces its competitors to follow suit, and having the consumer have the best products possible. Furthermore, if the real world did not have a desire to avoid severe lose-lose situations, no one would be reading this right now, because we would have had a nuclear war between the US and USSR years ago, the ultimate lose-lose situation. Mutually Assured Distruction policy was based on this principle, and obviously it worked.

As a project that attempts to have as much of a real world flavor as possible, FIRST is all about not having lose-lose situations. Thus, "Stack Attack," is truely a strange game. The only winning move is not to play by how its name implies. (I hope everyone saw the quote from "War Games")

[Rook]

A simple fix for this would be to go back to the old way of not knowing who your opponents are until 5 minutes before the match.

[Clanat]

I agree that it is a smart thing to do to let opponent's stacks stand, but making an agreement to not knock down an opponent's stack is wrong. There are specific reasons people design their robots the way they do. Many stackers came from a desire to get more qualification points than they would get as a non-stacking robot. To make an agreement to not knock down stacks is in effect giving your robot another ability: the ability to stack and thus increase the qualifying score. Teams that do have the capability to stack are short-changed, since they don't have the benefits of being a pusher-type robot, but they lose the advantage of having a stacker.

Leaving the other team's stacks is often a smart thing to do, but if you are going to win by knocking over an opponents stack, do it! Your team will score a lot more points by winning with a few points than by losing with a lot.

In a match I was driving in, I would have Gracious Professionalism first, winning second, and maximizing score third. Keep your priorities straight!

[Amanda M]

This is what I am getting from this. People who are in favor of this particular tactic (which I am not) are saying that it is a strategy.

This is not true. Strategy and pre-match agrements are two completely different things.

An example : You make an agreement with a team to keep their boxes up, as long as they are going to lost to you, in order to raise your QPs. You get seeded frist without any REAL trouble (unless there's an awesome team that can score high without this using STRATEGY). This is not an example of strategy because it is already pre-ordained. You are simply weasling your way into the top spot

Strategy is created right on the spot. When I was in AZ watching matches (I was scouting) I took notice in the fact that some teams would give other teams boxes for points. They did it the STRATEGIC way, right on the spot WITHOUT any pre-match talks.

One other thing that i would like to comment on.

NOWHERE in the manual does it mention fixing of matches. If the game was created for this purpose, then it would have been in the manual. This was OBVIOUSLY not the intention of FIRST, otherwise, such behavior would have ben addressed sooner.

That's just my bit.

Amanda

[Alex1072]

Originally posted by Clanat
In a match I was driving in, I would have Gracious Professionalism first, winning second, and maximizing score third. Keep your priorities straight!

I agree with these priorities, but I think they should read as follows:

Professionalism first, winning Overall second , and maximizing score third.


Assuming stacking agreements are not against the spirit of FIRST (at the moment appears to be a big assumption): If you feel not knocking down a stack and taking a lose will increase your chances of doing better in the following rounds, I think it is a good strategy. If teams trust that you won't knock down their stacks, even at a lost to your self, they will have incentive not to knock down ur stacks when they are losing. If you have a competitive robot that wins more then it loses, it helps you in the long run to maintain trust.


This whole situation is similiar to a Prisoner's Dillema. It is a classic problem from game theory that goes as follows:

Two prisonner's are being held and are told:
If you don't confess, and your friend does, you get 10 years, your friend gets 2.
If you both confess you both get 5 years.
If you both don't confess you both get 3 years.

Each prisonner has an inncentive to cheat his friend and only get 2 years. This generally leads to both players confessing even though they are both better off denying the charges.

This situation I see happening with FIRST is that teams are trusting each other enough to achieve the best effect for both teams involved, even though each individual team can do better by backing out on the agreement. I think this is the definition of Gracius proffesionalism, and cooperative competition. Both of which are values of FIRST.


my ".02"

[Gary Stearns]

At the nationals 3 years ago one of our team members was being talked to another teams scout. they had a well made scouting form on the bottom was a check box with nothing next to it, when asked what the box was for they said.
"Oh thats the jerk box"

Since then one of our team goals is "Stay out of the jerk box"

Team !! 236 !! TECHNO TICKS !!!!
(doing pretty good this year)

[DougHogg]

The point system which gives the winner their own score plus twice the loosers makes it desirable for your opponent to have a score close to yours but less so that you still win. If team A allows another team's stack to remain standing because team A is pretty sure of winning, that is part of what was intended by the game designers. However after talking to FIRST officials in Phoenix, I know that it was not intended that teams get together with their opponents ahead of time to agree not to touch each others stacks. They told me that the game designers were very surprised that this was occurring.

Unfortunately the current rules do reward that behaviour with high point scores. At the Arizona Regional, that behaviour caused bad feelings to be generated. One team told me that they were voting on whether to withdraw from the competition and go home. They didn't leave, but the fact that they even considered this, should be a wake-up call for all of us.

Our team spent a lot of time as the fourth seed trying to decide who not to pick because they had benefitted from these agreements. We also made it clear that we would not accept if chosen by such a team.

Team 68 showed great courage by publicly acknowledging in writing the error made by some of their team, and then doing something about it by writing a letter with an agreement for teams to sign and going around (with team members from 624 and 980) to talk to the other teams. As we told Team 68 at the regional, your team showed guts in what you did, and we would be proud to team with you any time.

Other teams who participated in match fixing started to realize that they had caused a bad effect on the competition, and I observed them trying to make up for the upset they caused. As far as I know, no more match fixing occurred on Sat.

Is it against the rules to talk to your opponent and make agreements? I haven't seen any such rule. However, the practice is harmful to the competition and to FIRST as a whole for many reasons, and therefore it is wrong.

1) Teams expect that they are coming to a competition and that their team will rise and fall on its merits and not be pushed down the ranks because others have rigged their matches to have vastly inflated scores.

2) Also look where such behavior would lead. If teams get huge scores by meeting and agreeing ahead of time with their opponents to leave stacks up, other teams would sooner or later be forced to do the same thing. At that point, the teams who started the process would be back where they started with no advantage. They could then agree to allow all the robots up onto the ramp to get an advantage. Once again all teams would be forced to do the same. Okay, they could agree to split the bins except for the last one and then fight over that one. Well at that point, you don't have a competition--it would be a theatrical performance with robot actors, and I for one would not bother to attend.

3) One of the things Dean said at the kickoff this year is that we do want to make our competitions more audience friendly so we can spread the benefits of FIRST to others. Well imagine an audience of millions of people watching a FIRST match and seeing all the robots avoiding each others stacks, with no robots guarding them. What would they think? Imagine if they then saw all the robots making space for the opposition on the top of the ramp. Would you want to watch a competition like that? It would be like the Giants agreeing with the Dodgers to throw soft pitches so the batters could all make more home runs and make it to the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately no one would come to watch such games, and the teams would eventually wind up in the hall of shame.

As to comparing this year's competition to the one in 2001, yes that was a cooperative match, but we left that behind in 2002. This year, we have a 2-on-2 competition. Here is the definition of "compete":

"To strive against another or others to attain a goal, such as an advantage or a victory."

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

As far is FIRST is concerned, I talked to Jason Morella personally on several occasions in Phoenix and he agreed with me that this behavior is bad for the competition. He also communicated the power that teams have to influence other teams. Among other things, he suggested that teams post on this forum about the practice. He said that FIRST does pay attention to what is said here.

Lastly I would like to praise Team 624 for their clear vision in seeing that this behavior is wrong (not against the rules as they stand but wrong because it is harmful to FIRST and therefore to all FIRST teams) and for doing something about it. You guys are heros and get my personal award for bravery, integrity and responsibility. Thank you for helping to save our regional and FIRST from becoming something fake.

[punarhero]

You know what fixing means? Fixing means you make sure certain partner of yours loses in qualifying matches to help my ranking, and I'll pick u as my alliance partner. That's what fixing is, and I COMPLETELY agree that it is against the FIRST spirit.

But just making an agreement of leaving each other's stacks alone and competing for the rest of the boxes is not. Maybe I'm not from a 6 or 7 year old team, but I've been in this competition for long enough to realize what FIRST spirit is, I think.

Making an agreement is just a strategy that maintains the sense of uncertainty and competetiveness in the competition. And again, why would FIRST make your score your score + 2 X loser's score if they didn't want the cooperation? Making agreements is just taking that cooperation to another level.

[ChrisH]

Here are some suggested strategies for dealing with this issue:

1) Probably the easiest to implement, if somebody "makes you an offer" then target ALL of their stacks, even though it makes you lose QP's. A few rounds of this and they'll get the point.

2) Send around a petition similar to the one from the AZ regional and post the teams that agree or not. One note of caution, make sure it is someone who can speak for the team that signs the petition. Been there, done that. It isn't that difficult.

3) More difficult but still doable. Agree that teams who have signed the above petition will not select teams that have not as alliance partners in the finals.

4) The most difficult would be to agree to refuse to be the alliance partner of a team that refused to sign and live by the agreement. I wonder what FIRST would do if all the other teams declined an alliance with the #1 seed? Declare them the winner? Talk about an empty victory, winning because nobody was willing to play WITH you. But it would certainly send a message.

One final note; there is a wide difference of opinion on this issue. There are reasonable arguments on both sides of it. Just because somebody disagrees with your position does not make them a "bad person or a bad team". They just see things a little differently. The reason you would not want to be on an alliance with them is that obviously your values are incompatible. That doesn't mean they should be shunned or belittled.

The on-going discussion is forcing people to think about their ethical structure and whether this fits within it or not. Teams are having to make a hard ethical choice, and I belive this is a good thing. So does FIRST, that's why they are "enjoying the discussion". Some times you learn the most from unexpected situations like this one.

[Dima]

Personally i think that team 68 got screwed out of being #1 seed


and that was not cool at all

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by ChrisH
One final note; there is a wide difference of opinion on this issue. There are reasonable arguments on both sides of it. Just because somebody disagrees with your position does not make them a "bad person or a bad team". They just see things a little differently. The reason you would not want to be on an alliance with them is that obviously your values are incompatible. That doesn't mean they should be shunned or belittled.

The on-going discussion is forcing people to think about their ethical structure and whether this fits within it or not. Teams are having to make a hard ethical choice, and I belive this is a good thing. So does FIRST, that's why they are "enjoying the discussion". Some times you learn the most from unexpected situations like this one.

Love that!

[punarhero]

i don't think we can start discussing ways of stooping this untill we all decide that it defies FIRST spirit and is wrong

[AlbertW]

i think the only way of stopping it IS to convince everyone that it violates the spirit of FIRST and is wrong.

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally posted by GregT
edit: whats more, if FIRST did make a rule against "fixing" the match, how could you ever hope to enforce such a rule? Would not knocking stacks over be considered illegal?

Nobody ever considered this: maybe FIRST did not ever think that people would stoop to that level on the basis of winning? This rule wouldn't be enforced by the referees, because as you said, it would be impossible. It would also be unnecessary if gracious professionalism came before winning. Nobody should come to a FIRST competition to win, they should come to learn. I think we're all learning a valuable lesson right now, just expressing our opinions on this forum, and that's what FIRST is trying to express to us.

Originally posted by Stu Bloom
AND any team whose members/representatives are soliciting any pre-match arrangements with their opponent alliance members should be EXCUSED from the remainder of the competition. There is NO room for this type of behavior in FIRST.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18979

To be honest, when we were approached in St. Lou, I was upset. I had never been in that situation before, and I did not know how to react. I was upset and angered that someone approached us with only the intent to win, especially when our team wasn't even MOVING at that point. I was incredulous as to how someone could have the audacity to approach our driver (a rookie) while we were all elbow deep in robot parts.

But I was wrong to judge, and I will admit that. That team that approached us ended up being good opponents and rightfully going on to the eliminations. After competition was over, one of their mentors emailed me several times and apologized for that mentor's behavior. I realized that the team had nothing to do with one person's willingness to cheat the system. So please-

DON'T judge or hold it against a team because of one member's actions!

Originally posted by punarhero
i don't think we can start discussing ways of stooping this untill we all decide that it defies FIRST spirit and is wrong

Dean was right, and he did predict the 'gentleman's agreements'. There is no use arguing what is wrong when there is no right or wrong. There's only ways to tell each other what can be improved and how we, as the FIRST community, can improve it.

[Bill Moore]

Who are we mentoring here, students who want to make a difference as scientists and engineers, or students who want to be laywers splitting ethical hairs over what is "legal" and "illegal"? Maybe "Fixing" isn't the proper term, but "Collusion" is.

DEFINITION: Collusion--to act together secretly to achieve a fraudulent, illegal, or deceitful purpose; conspire.

If you agree with your partner to allow the opponents stacks to stand to increase your potential QP's that is not collusion. As soon as you begin to talk with your opponent about mutually allowing each others stacks to stand you cross the line and are guilty of collusion. You have conspired to inflate the scores of both teams regardless of who is the winner. If "Gracious Professionalism" is defined as that behavior which would make your grandmother proud, how can you tell her your robot achieved its' high ranking using secret deceitful agreements?

Inherent to any legitimate competition is a requirement to make every possible attempt to defeat your opponent. Agreements to limit the competition to a smaller subset of options reduces the legitimacy of their results. Perhaps the teams who are so proud of developing this strategy should include it in their Chairman's Award submissions in the future. We'll let FIRST decide which team behavior is considered as a role model.

[Alex1072]

I don't really care if we win our lose because of these agreements. I just think the game becomes really boring without them. The bins (the non-stacked ones), at Sacramento, were playing a very small role in the game. The stacks were all but pointless. All that teams got from stacking (that I saw) was some wows from the croud, and very rarely an extra 20 QP points. Considering getting to the ramp is 25 points this is not much. Also, I still maintain that it would not change rankings, just increase overall QPs, and make the games more interesting.

[Gary Stearns]

Stacking bots do have a place in the seeding matches but almost never in the finals @the UTC scrimmage we saw this.

But our Bot can stack pretty quickley and in the semi finals our bot and our alliance partner tipped over (thefirst time we ever tipped) in the second round we still won because our drivers made a three high stack in the final 20 seconds, the other alliance HAD to knock it over but couldn't get to the top in time. WIN!!

Team 236 Techno Ticks !!!!
(doing ok this year)

[Dima]

Consider yourselves WARNED!

the fair playing teams who are posting here on chief delphi their dislike (that would be to kind of a word to use for some of the opinions expressed here) about this kind of strategy are not doing anything really drastic (is that the word?) YET!

However for teams that have used this collusion method and are going to a second regional consider this:

Say you robot breaks and you need a spare drill motor and the only team with a replacement motor is VERY much against your strategy. How are you going to feel asking them for help after practically backstabbing them in the back? Are they going to give you this help?

I can see very clear of what will happen at the next regional events:

Team that play fair (lets just call it that for now) make a list of all the teams that don't and when ever in a match with teams that don't play fair do every possible thing to have those teams get a score of 0 sure it will hurt the fair playing teams but the drive of REVENGE on the non fair playing team might be so great that they are willing to go to the extremes.

BTW there is always next year! Some teams hold a grudge against other teams for a very long time. So even if you play fair next year teams might not pick you for elimination rounds at all because of your actions this year

[Alex1072]

I am making it very clear in this post, that I do not support teams making agreements before matches, unless the community can be convinced that this is fair to everyone. Even though this is not likly, I still intend to voice my opinion because I think it is a shame that an interseting aspect of the game is so under-valued.

Team #1072 has never suggested these agreements, and in the future WILL NOT agree to them. When we agreed to them in the past we did not encounter any critism from anyone; we were under the impression that it was in the "cooperative competitive" spirit of FIRST, and no one told us otherwise or even implied that it was unfair.

[Twisted]

This happened at the Arizona regionals.The team that requested such a proposal also happened to make it to finals :mad:

That team also included the son of Microchip's President...

-Justin
Team 1223
Driver, Programmer, source of humor

[Alex1072]

Originally posted by Bill Moore


DEFINITION: Collusion--to act together secretly to achieve a fraudulent, illegal, or deceitful purpose; conspire.


I would agree if it was secret, but from what I understand we are debating open agreements that free for everyone to see.

[Jason Morrella]

having been very involved in discussing this situation with MANY coaches on many teams, and ALSO having been quoted a few times in this thread, let me clarify a couple of things....

1. I found one earlier post to be quite important, at least in terms of helping to define the discussion. What everyone is discussing on this thread falls under the definition of "collusion" - not "fixing" or "cheating". I completely understand the views of all the people who are really against agreements - but it seems the emotion involved is causing people to use words which may imply that those who disagree with them are bad people, which is just ridiculous. These agreements are helping teams seed higher, there is no doubt about that, and I very much understand the debate. But "fixing" a match would be fixing who wins or loses and "cheating" would be breaking a rule. Just my opinion - but I think the discussion should be about what teams feel about "collusion" or "agreements", not "fixing or cheating".

2. One of the absolute best parts of being involved with FIRST is getting to meet and know so many impressive people on so many teams. I try to go out of my way at events I help organize to listen to and discuss any issue, suggestion, compliment, or complaint. In this debate, I think all those who wanted to discuss their point with me will readily admit that I went out of my way to present both points of view and try to remain objective. I feel it's important that I clarify a few things attributed to me or FIRST which may have been taken out of context:
(sorry Mike Soukup - I've tried to keep long posts to a minimum this year, but don't think I can do so here) :)


clarifications:

- I went out of my way to say to each mentor I spoke to that I could not and would not make an "official" judgement on behalf of FIRST about "agreements", that I was giving my opinion since they were asking for it

- I DID tell a number of mentors that this was a decision for teams to make, not FIRST. Some disagreed, most agreed - regardless, that was my opinion.

- I NEVER said I found these agreements "acceptable", I said there was no actual rule against it.

- I DID say that teams should calmly and respectfully share the same concerns and views they were telling me with the teams they were complaining about. I did say that speaking as a "teacher", not FIRST - I thought it was a great opportunity for students and teams to solve an issue without FIRST - that they could solve it with discussion, diplomacy, and consensus instead of anger and resentment. This has been an issue at some events while not even coming up at some others. The teams in Arizona decided to address it a certain way, and on Saturday it didn't seem to be an issue.

- I NEVER said I or FIRST "condoned" the practice of agreements. I said we would not make a judgement either way. I did point out that FIRST could not police this even if we wanted to, so it really was a decision totally up to the teams.

- I DID say that the practice of making these agreements is mainly a qualifying round issue, and would not ever come into play in the playoffs.
One other observation I made, is that the teams at Sacramento and Phoenix who seeded high partly by making these agreements, and thus were the focus of most of the debate, won most of their matches and also won the majority of the matches in which no agreements were made/stacks were all knocked down. Granted, that has nothing to do with the debate over "is it right or wrong", but those teams would have made the playoffs either way (IMHO).

- I DID say that if I was still coaching a team, I personally wouldn't make one of these agreements. I also said that it's up to each team and I thought some people were getting a little too angry and emotional about these agreements. I DID say that while I would not do it, I wouldn't consider those who did to be "bad" teams or people - I thought those statements were clearly based on emotion and going a bit far. I also said that this is not, in my opinion, as black and white as most are making it out to be on both sides.

- I DID say that while I myself see valid arguments on boths sides of the "agreement" issue, that I would be MUCH more troubled by petty and ungracious behavior such as: teams purposely trying to damage another teams robot, teams agreeing who would win or lose a match, teams "tricking or deceiving" other teams, teams saying they'll get revenge on teams who make decisions they don't agree with or hold a grudge/not help teams for years to come because they seeded ahead of them, teams cheating and breaking rules, and so on.

- I DID say that I totally understood why many teams have a problem with "agreements", but that I wouldn't go so far as to brand it as "fixing" or "cheating" unless those teams were agreeing on who would win or were directly breaking a rule.

- I DID say that if any of the teams who were making these agreements to seed high actually won an event (which I don't think they have yet), that they would have still had to demonstrate that their robot and alliance outplayed the other playoff robots without any agreements being made. My "point" was that while this practice may help some teams seed higher, it would not help them IN the playoffs. (yes, I know one could argue it may/may not have helped them get "into" the playoffs - I'm saying they still have to outplay the playoff teams to advance further)

- I NEVER said I was "enjoying" what was going on, those in Sacramento and Phoenix know I was not (kind of felt like the character in the Airplane movies who had all the people with hammers, bats, boxing gloves, and other weapons lined up in the aisle waiting to "speak" to them. :) ).
I said that it is an issue which is up to teams to analyze and decide how they want to play the game. I said that the debate at hand is a real life decision making process which is a great excercise for students to experience and work through now - since they will face many such decisions after high school. I said that I knew some in FIRST felt this was a unique opportunity for teams and that this discussion in and of itself (albeit hard and/or awkward) was great for students & teams to work out for themselves. One coach told me "while he disagreed with teams who were making the agreements, the only way he'd actually lose respect for a team is if they made an agreement/promise and broke it - that those teams should question their values" (it had happened to his team in Phoenix, which probably helped sour them on the concept). His point was that making the agreement was "one heck of a life lesson for his team, and that making the agreement had actually hurt them" the interesting point was that on Saturday he told me he "was glad FIRST left this decision about agreements up to the teams", that "watching his students discuss both sides of the debate amongst themselves and other teams, and then decide how they wanted to play" would be one of his proudest memories of the last couple years he had been in FIRST.

- I did say that "if EVERY team and EVERY match had these agreements, it would be bad for the competition in my opinion". This was slightly taken out of context in an earlier post.

- None of this was a total shock to FIRST. Those who wrote the rules went over any and every aspect to the game they could think of - and they did discuss this exact scenario. FIRST was and is aware of this debate. As always, FIRST provides a game and rules, and the teams ultimately determine how they will end up playing the game. As many have pointed out, FIRST is about WAY more than just robots and winning.

- I know some of the mentors were frustrated because they really wanted me (in Arizona or Sacramento) or FIRST to take a side. Instead, I tried to present each side the other point of view and encourage the teams to work together to at least discuss the issue. I hope each of those mentors know that I really appreciated their coming forward with their concerns and thank them for their dedication to not only their students but the overall quality of the FIRST community.

Sorry about the length - but since this issue is clearly very important to a number of people, I felt obligated to clarify my position/thoughts expressed at two of the events which experienced this debate.

Good luck to everyone in week 3.

Jason

[Jason Morrella]

This happened at the Arizona regionals.The team that requested such a proposal also happened to make it to finals
ummm - facts are wrong. They lost in the first round of the playoffs. Also, more than 10 teams made such agreements, not just one. If your intent is to put down/insult another team (which your comment below seems to imply) - at least have your facts correct.
That team also included the son of Microchip's President...
I can't quite figure out what your point is - but the person you speak of did more for every team at that event, including yours, than for his own son's team. Please discuss such comments with your team mentors before posting them - as they may be able to provide you with accurate information to form your thoughts and also may prevent you from making irresponsible posts.


Disregarding the above post and back to the topic of this thread, I should point out that 95% of the mentors who discussed this issue with me had very well thought out arguments, and while most of them were quite worked up/fervent, they remained respectful and rational during the discussion
(I can use percentages here, because I have now had over 20 mentors approach me about this - I will be setting up a "discuss stack agreements" booth at all future events, much like Lucy's "therapy" booth in Peanuts/Charlie Brown comic strips)

Since some of the debate seems to focus on particular teams doing something wrong - there seems to be one VERY important fact I think has been conveniently overlooked: It takes FOUR teams to make an agreement. And if it happened in 5 or 10 matches at an event, then anywhere from 20-30 teams (assuming there are a number of repeat teams) made such agreements. As many teams have acknowledged, they are very much against agreements, but they themselves actually made such an agreement at least once. I watched at least 10 teams in Arizona make these agreements, and many have posted VERY adament messages in this thread about how "clearly" wrong and unfair this is. This is a decision for ALL teams to make, not just a couple. And since so many teams struggled with it, I think it's clear that there are at least some valid points on both sides.

Last....What was most important to me, while some may or may not agree, I DID say the following to each mentor I spoke with about this the past 2 weeks:

1. Their teams should make whatever decision they feel is right for them.
2. While they might be disappointed in decisions other teams make, and while both sides might have very valid points, I thought emotions were creating a little more of a "the sky is falling" panic than may be warranted.
3. I felt the teams might be surprised that they could handle this issue in person at events and on forums such as Chief Delphi.
4. Having spoke to teams on both extremes of this debate, I can say with absolute certainty that EVERY team involved is a quality team and all the people on those teams are good, dedicated, quality people.
5. If all the teams at any given event agree not to agree, fabulous. If not, so be it - there are bigger things in the world to be really upset about. Sometimes you have to agree to disagree, and each team should consider their participation a success as long as they leave each competition proud of their effort, their decisions, and how they represented their team.

[JHodge]

In both the New Hampshire and Hartford Regionals, you could count on one hand the number of stacks that remained at the end of a match over the full three days. It was never even considered an option, and now I know why some of the Regional matches posted such high points. Teams may be trying to inflate their teams potential for Nationals, and it will probably backfire. What you do on and off the field will be apparent to all the good teams that scout your performance. Let us not lose sight of why we participate in FIRST. The larger we get, the easier it is for some not to get the true message.
.:o

Hodge, Teacher - Mentor
Team 175 - BUZZ

[Danimal]

We have already had someone reference the page in the rules that outlines that alliances of this nature, while not clearly a violation of the rulse, are in violation of the "spirit" of FIRST.

I have read time and again how hard it is to have a stack survive a match and I have observed this to be true.

It is kind of sad because at the Hartford Regional there was one 6-stack all weekend long that survived a match and now I am wondering if it was legit.

I did not see the match and none of my friends complained. Did anyone see that match? Does anyone know if it looked like an alliance was in the works?

Best,

Danimal
Pit Boss
Hartford, '01, '03

[Rook]

Originally posted by Jason Morrella


1. I found one earlier post to be quite important, at least in terms of helping to define the discussion. What everyone is discussing on this thread falls under the definition of "collusion" - not "fixing" or "cheating". I completely understand the views of all the people who are really against agreements - but it seems the emotion involved is causing people to use words which may imply that those who disagree with them are bad people, which is just ridiculous. These agreements are helping teams seed higher, there is no doubt about that, and I very much understand the debate. But "fixing" a match would be fixing who wins or loses and "cheating" would be breaking a rule. Just my opinion - but I think the discussion should be about what teams feel about "collusion" or "agreements", not "fixing or cheating".

True, "Fixing a match" would be deciding a winner before the match is played. A better way to describe it is artificial bloating of Qualifying Points. The problem isn't the individual matches themselves. The problem is in seeding. Some teams will not go into finals if they don't seed in the top 8. If a team bloats it's QP's enough, it can possibly make it to the finals, when it shouldn't have.

In a normal match, a team is lucky to get a multiplier above 4. With these agreements, the mulipliers can be huge because human players can stack high stacks and not worry about them falling. People are upset because we are all not playing the same game. If half of a 40 team regional bloats and the other half doesn't, then theres a good chance that the top 20 teams will be the bloated teams.

You say this doesn't affect the finals, but it does. Say Team X is the best team at the regional and chooses Team Y based on Team Y's High QP. Team X may now lose, because of their choice in partners. You can say it's Team X's responsibility to make the best choice, but the agreements now confuse the matter even more.

So then should we all just agree to follow suit? That wouldn't be fair to the bots who's main function is stacking. If all teams just left the other team's stacks alone. The human players can just simply make a big stack in the beginning, then let it stand. There's no need to make any more stacks.

These agreements remove the stacking element from the game. All teams will be doing is hitting the wall, pushing bins back and forth, and playing King of the Hill.

Thank you for your comments, but you seem to be playing this off as a non-issue or just a minor annoyance. No the sky ISNT falling, but this is a bigger problem than you or FIRST seems to think it is.

[Joe Matt]

Our strategy has always been to not nock down stacks unless we are loosing, so this isn't a new idea, but the fixing of matches has been seen by us. We were approached by a team at VCU to tie a match 114-114. We didn't accept. At Annapolis we were approached by a team to do this again. This team was a top 8 seed team and wanted to do this strategy with us. So this is a big problem that needs to be fixed by FIRST.

[Soukup]

let me say this....agreements wouldn't be unfair to me....but they'll be unfair to anyone that makes one with us. ANY team that approaches me or my team and asks for an agreement...will pay. We will screw your score up so bad....the match will likely turn out to be close to 0-0. Agreements suck!

Look at any porfessional sport...teams don't agree to let other teams win...they go for the kill. Sooooooo....here's an idea....if someone approaches you on an agreement....agree to it. Then show them what gracious professionalism is all about, and do the oposite of what they agreed to .....after all, what can they complain about, the fact that they're trying to cheat?

[volleygrrl234]

Originally posted by Dima




however as it so happens the number 1 seeded alliance got taken out by the number 8 alliance (whose picking team was seeded number 11 and moved up) at the AZ regional.

The teams that practice this strategy will loose in the long run because they have to play in the ELimination matches and they are not prepared to knock over stacks or do other things in order to win. [/B]



yea, we happen to be the team that was picked by the number one alliance and ended up losing in the first round due to a human error... we were also approached during a match, but we were confident enough in our capabilities that we did fairly well without our partner's help... it just makes one wonder about the whole elimination points versus actually winning and losing... like we won one and lost one in the finals, yet still got "beat." i do not agree with this practice, becuase it's not truly winning. You just had a good match.

[jzampier]

Many folks posting here seem to use the phase:
'Violation of the Spirit of First.'

I ask? Do you really know what you are saying? or is it just for effect?

Before one can say something is a violation, its usually required to have reached an agreement on what the baseline is.

Therefore, since the 'spirit of FIRST' is open to interpetation, does it not also follow that anything which may or may not be a violation thereof is also open to interpetation?

I will stipulate that part of FIRSTs goal is to create discussion, as we see here... to offer consideration of ethical dilemas and other gray-area situations which will be seen later in life.

Therefore, I would feel it is vital to discuss this issue, without drawing the conclusions which people seem to be drawing here.

Oh, and in response to the 'revenge' post... if FIRST ever gets to the point where people are maliciously hold vendettas we certainly need to reassess what FIRST is trying to accomplish. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd be seaching for another team/engineering project if things ended up in that direction.

[Danimal]

JZ,

On the USFIRST.ORG forum the question was asked...

[Gabriel] If the two alliances decide before the beginning of a match how they will play the game and execute a strategy where the two alliances cooperate with each other to acheive a tie, are the two alliances violating the spirit of FIRST or the maxim of "gracious professionalism"?

The answer that first gave was simply...
[first]Yes.

I guess what I don't understand is how what you say and what FIRST says can be reconciled.

It seems to me that whatever a "Violation of the Spirit of First" actually means, FIRST considers "rigging" or "fixing" or "collusion" as discussed here to be in opposition to its "spirit.

We certainly could open another thread to discuss what the spirit of FIRST means but FIRST seems to have made it pretty clear that it does NOT mean two alliances cooperating with each other to produce an anticipated outcome.

Best,

Danimal

[Chubtoad]

My team was approached during the Annapolis regional to "cooperate" during a match. The deal was that we would leave each others stacks, and play strictly defensive strategy. We woudl get as many bins in scoring posistion as possible and everyone would try for the ramp. We all agreed with no-one objecting. My team was forced to pull-out before the match due to a mentor angrily disagreeing with us. The opposing alliance won the match and if we had kept the agreement it might not have been so. The risks for winning vs. losing are the same. The drive team on my team had looked at it at that time as working with other teams, and spreading the word of FIRST through cooperation.

We made sure that they other alliance knew that we weren't going to do it. I fully disagree with any team holding instances of agreement against other teams. I find it appaling that members of the FIRST community would think to "blacklist" other teams. I feel it is wrong for teams to hold this against other teams because they might be doing it for reasons that aren't as anti-first as some of you might think.

I am still torn on the subject of whether or not this should be done. At the time we did not think it had any malicious side-effects but as I have read this thread I realize that there are some. I think that determing who shall win a match is ENTIRELY wrong.

I think it is better to maximize points than to realize that your going to lose and knock over your own stack to bring down the opposition's points. It has been done before and I have not seen such huge discussion over it.

I think since reading this thread I would not participate in such agreements anymore since obviously a large portion of the teams competing do not think that this is acceptable strategy. But I would NOT sign a petition which woudl end up punishing teams that did not sign it. Such petitions and blacklisting has occured in history and is one of the BAD POINTS of our nations history.

To each his own.

[Raul]

Wow, I have seen a lot of opinions that have made me think - which is a good thing.

I think I can speak for my team when I say that we will not accept any agreements.

Of course, we will leave the opponents stack standing if we feel it is the proper action to take while the match is in progress. Being the coach I want to have the option to decide whether it should remain standing or not. If we make an agreement, we remove that option or face the wrath of not holding to our agreement. Sorry, I do not want our team to be put in that predicament.

Those who say that it does not benefit us to knock down the opponents stack is not considering that in some cases one team is capable of defending a stack and does not need an agreement to keep it standing. And in the case where the opponent gets more bins on their side, maybe the only way to win is to have a stack that is higher than theirs.

So, in summary, we just want to keep our options open throughout a match and be allowed to decide. Otherwise, it will NOT feel like a competition.

Lastly, I have faith in the FIRST community to eventually do what is best for everyone. We will not hold grudges against anyone just because they do not agree with us. I hope you all feel the same way.

[Joe Matt]

It's not the rigging that damages me, or the gained points or the pushing down of those who are really good and the rise of those who are rigging it, it's the slaughter of the FIRST spirit of Gracious Professionalism.

[Alexander McGee]

Will all teams who disagree with this practice, please sign our petition?

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19301

My team believes that this is the only way to stop this practice. It will be impossible for F.I.R.S.T. to determine who is doing this, and who isnt, so a petition is the best answer.

[Joe Ross]

First of all, I was not at any regional this weekend, so I won't comment on what happened, only one observation based on what other people have posted. I have many other thoughts on this issue that I would be happy to discuss in person or via PM or AIM, however, I don't want to add more fuel to the fire.

A lot of people have been referring directly and indirectly to team 698, the #1 seed at Arizona. Every single one of those posts has been negative. However, looking through the thread recapping the Arizona regional (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=147649#post147649) I find that the same team that is being derided in this thread won team 294's gracious professionalism award, as voted by other teams.

[Madison]

It seems to me that this practice of entering into agreements about how the game should be played is not indicative of the disruption of gracious professionalism. I don't like that it's something teams have considered, and if I held any weight with my team, it's something I would encourage them to avoid doing, however.

I think it's something much worse than disrespect for the tenets of gracious professionalism that is making this such a hot issue. It's outright laziness that leads to these agreements.

Teams that purport to be supporting the spirit of FIRST by 'cooperating' before a match are desperately clawing for a life raft of dignity. It's been my experience that people with true conviction and belief that they're doing the good, right, just thing don't need to clamor for explanation, yet many, many teams seem are bastardizing the message of FIRST so that it can serve their own interests.

These agreements are nothing more than thinly veiled attempts at overcoming a team's inadequacies. They did not effectively use their build time to develop a consistant, reliable strategy for controlling and maintaining the score throughout a match, and by their failure to do so, they've jeopardized their ability to successfully play the game. By trumpeting the spirit of 'cooperation,' they hope to salvage any chance they may have of winning and they undermine the real effort put forth by other teams to build elegant, well-rounded, effective machines. It's insulting and degrading, and it emasculates the innovative spirit that used to be so pervasive throughout FIRST.

FIRST is about incentive. There's incentive to build a good stacking machine. There's incentive to help other teams have working machines, and there's incentive to develop a strategy that doesn't utterly decimate the opposing alliance. These types of agreements destroy that incentive by making the benefits and disadvantages of the system irrelevant. No longer is there any real reason to develop a clever mechanism or strategy because the lack thereof can be easily overcome by 'cooperating' before a match. It circumvents all efforts to make sure FIRST isn't about winning by bastardizing and perverting the notion of cooperation and using it to make winning paramount. That, above all else, upsets me most.

To see teams trying to augment their inadequacy and supplement their ability by entering into certain truces or agreements rather than effectively use their time to develop innovative, exciting ways of doing so on their own is disheartening. To see teams attempt to manipulate the ideals and spirit of FIRST as justification of their lazy, weak, tired methods is completely disgusting. I think they should all be ashamed of themselves.

[Joe Matt]

Here's a question, what about 'Coopertition FIRST' game? Could Stack Attack at heart be this game? Instead of having an alliance on 4, there are 2 and the teams must work to get points, but only one will win. Could this be what Stack Attack really is? No Zone Zeal, but a true meaning of a coopertition?

[Gabriel]

I doubt I was the first person to suggest this idea of "collusion" but I'm beginning to feel responsible (http://http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=15969&highlight=nash) for the debate and anxiety that suggestion has caused (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=16090&highlight=nash+equillibrium). I would like to justify my position on this issue as well as the position of my team.

The original idea was for teams to agree to tie, but that was clearly almost impossible to do, so the concept became something like this: Each alliance builds a stack of four, each alliance takes half of the stacks on the ramp, each alliance gets 2 robots on the ramp. At the very least the loser would get 200 points, a VERY high score even for a winner, and the winner would get 600+ points, which is downright insane. All four teams would benefit.

The best analogy here is not to a boxer "taking a dive" but to the practice of "drafting" in NASCAR See this link (http://http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_2/ronfeldt/).

Clearly it would be bad for the competition and for the teams to use this in every match. Competition inspires innovation, and competition is a hell of a lot more fun to watch than "cooperation"

I was surprised at the overwhelmingly negative reaction to this idea. I had even (brielfy) entertained the fantasy that FIRST intended to teach us a lesson about cooperation by making cooperation an essential point of this years game. I hadn't really thought that cooperating would be such a bad thing, so I asked FIRST, their answer was quick and brutal, yes, "collusion" violates the principle of Gracious Professionalism and the "spirit of FIRST"

That decision having been made I abandoned the idea of "collusion" in FIRST as anything more than an interesting thought experiment. In FIRST, if not always in life, the result is not as important as how you played the game. Nobody on my team (782) was willing to sacrifice our reputation, much less our pride in the way we played, for points.

We didn't use this strategy once in the New England regional and we came our the #1 seed, with two absolutely amazing alliance partners (236 & 157) we ended up winning the regional and it was a hell of a lot of fun. If we had decided to use the "collusion" strategy we may well have had to sacrifice everything sweet about that outcome.

I'm sorry to hear what happened in AZ, if either myself, or my team is responsible I am deeply sorry.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by Joe Ross
A lot of people have been referring directly and indirectly to team 698, the #1 seed at Arizona. Every single one of those posts has been negative. However, looking through the thread recapping the Arizona regional (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=147649#post147649) I find that the same team that is being derided in this thread won team 294's gracious professionalism award, as voted by other teams.

They also won a special judge's award for what I remember as everything they did for the regional helping people out, like helping set up the field.

Love Jason Morrella and Chris from Beach Bots take on all this.

As always, FIRST reflects life. I've certainly been in a position like 698, being slammed for something while having accomplished a lot of good things that are ignored - whether at work or other accomplishments in years past.

Often what happened when I was being slammed unfairly for many many months, I weathered the storm, and my behavior during the storm helped the people who were nearly swayed by the "sky is falling people", and the sky is falling people went away or lost their credibility, and my accomplishments didn't.

Hang in there 698. When we knew on Friday that your team won cuz it was the only team nominated 3 times for a variety of gracious professionalism incidents, I was casually getting to know members of your team. I was always very impressed. Our team is so looking forward to spending more time with you in LA. Rock on!

[Solace]

Originally posted by Danimal
We have already had someone reference the page in the rules that outlines that alliances of this nature, while not clearly a violation of the rulse, are in violation of the "spirit" of FIRST.

I have read time and again how hard it is to have a stack survive a match and I have observed this to be true.

It is kind of sad because at the Hartford Regional there was one 6-stack all weekend long that survived a match and now I am wondering if it was legit.

I did not see the match and none of my friends complained. Did anyone see that match? Does anyone know if it looked like an alliance was in the works?

Best,

Danimal
Pit Boss
Hartford, '01, '03

I was the driver for team 571 in that round, and I will say that the stack was completely legitamate.

We usually didn't stack during the matches because it was extremely easy for them to be knocked down. However, during that match one of our opponents broke down, and the other was being held up by our partner. The decision was made during the middle of the match that the opposition would most likely be unable to outrun our alliance partner (who were quite adept at blocking), so we booted up our stacker.

It might be important to point out that we made that stack of six by putting two premade human player stacks on top of each other, so that it took a great deal less time then if we had attempted to do it the old fashion way. Also, our robot was a able of protecting the stack internally (well, actually the stack is external but it is still protected by small latching mechanisms), so even if they were able to try to knock it down making a stack might still have been a viable strategy.

If anyone asks a member of teams 905 or 178 (our opponents), they will verify that no agreement was made.

[Scott Ritchie]

I think we need to step back and relax. Yea someone got the better of us especially us veteran teams. I have to say we got snookered in to one of these deals and paid the price. I was furious with my drive crew and totally lit my pit up when I came out of the stands and that was when one of my students told me that they had been asked to strike a deal in the match. Even our engineer that was in the driving station was unaware of the what was going on and was telling our driver to get the stack out of there. I am sure the students thought if this worked that it would be for the best but they came out on the short side and it was't pretty.

After calming down I am not near as sore and I think we have to play the game to expect this stuff. I even went as far to think what a real life lesson this has been. I mean come on this is something that happens everyday in the real world and don';t we always tell our grant people and sponsors how we are participating in this real world event and preparing engineers for the future. What happened, we got backed doored or we got a trick play used on us by a 2nd year team, lets get past it. I can say that our team knows that we will not be participating in these deals and a few students learned the hard way in the end I am glad it happened and we are making plans to deal with it in the future.

I would also say it is time to quit dragging 698 through the mud. Nice team and nice people. I have to say when we were told they were going to draft us with the first pick we were going to turn it down due to all of this but we decided as a team that we would accept the honor and play with them, forget the differences and play the game the way it should be.

[George]

1930"s
Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy agree to "NEW" world boundaries
Look what that "agreement" got us!

In the "big picture" Is this the type of agreements we are teaching?

Is the Enron model the type of FIRST Scoring we want?

Ask The hard Questions.... and Answer them!

Always REMEMBER this is the next generation we are Teaching!!

I for one do not want to define "is" for the rest of my life,

Wrong is Wrong........ No defining needed.

Geo.

[Joel J]

Originally posted by Gary Stearns
But our Bot can stack pretty quickley and in the semi finals our bot and our alliance partner tipped over (thefirst time we ever tipped) in the second round we still won because our drivers made a three high stack in the final 20 seconds, the other alliance HAD to knock it over but couldn't get to the top in time. WIN!!Couldn't get to the top in time? That's funny...

Anyway. No matter what choice of words you choose for the actions being talked about in this thread, if you come to any sort of agreement with opponents before a match has begun, you are rigging the match.. even if it is something as simple as agreeing to allow 4 robots on the ramp.



Lets just all go away from this with the mindset of playing each match as its dealt, and taking the result as something determined by fate. Try to run away from fate, and you'll find yourself on a treadmill: alot of wasted enery for an unchanged result.

There are way too many words in this thread.. and I am not speaking of the length of posts, but the "nothing" some of them contain. But oh well, [b]life. :)

Oh, reaching a simple agreement for one match renders you just as guilty as someone who does it for every match. So ensure, before you post in this thread, that your words are not hypocritical.

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally posted by Dima
Consider yourselves WARNED!

However for teams that have used this collusion method and are going to a second regional consider this:

Say you robot breaks and you need a spare drill motor and the only team with a replacement motor is VERY much against your strategy. How are you going to feel asking them for help after practically backstabbing them in the back? Are they going to give you this help?

By all means, they should.

Stabbed in the back or not, Gracious Professionalism is what would make that team give their extra drill motor - willingly, not begrudgingly - to even the most vicious and bitter teams.

Holding grudges and getting revenge are going to get you nowhere. Some of these teams change from year to year anyway, thereby defeating the purpose entirely.

Please rethink your 'revenge' tactics, and instead maybe pull a mentor or driver over and explain your opinions.

You can always say yes to someone, even when you know it's wrong. It's saying no and sticking with it that gets a bit tricky.

[Karthik]

I have yet to see a regional in person this season, still I have a few thoughts on the topic fixing matches and collusion.

- Many people are making it seem as though agreements such as this have never occurred in FIRST before. Just thinking back to last year I remember at least three matches which were fixed. I'm not talking about collusion, the winners of these matches was clearly predetermined. Gadget referred an occurrence of this earlier in the thread. I was surprised that there wasn't more of an outcry when this happened.

- For those who say that collusion is not that big of a deal, consider this. A team who colludes their way into the first seed may not have the best robot, but now they have the opportunity to select the best robot with their first draft pick. As we have all seen in the past there are certain robots which can carry an alliance all the way to the top. So even if the number one seed is weak, they now have an excellent chance at winning.

- It is clear that the only way that colluding can be stopped is by the teams themselves. There is no practical setup by which FIRST can stop this behavior.

- That being said, I don't think it will stop completely. Just from monitoring the opinions given on this board, it seems that there are still many teams that are willing to engage in this type of behavior. At nationals, it would only take 10 of 80 teams in one division to partake in collusion for it to have a large effect.

- Please don't rush to judgment in the upcoming weeks. Just because you see large stacks survive, it doesn't mean that collusion occurred. There are many situations when not attacking the stacks is in an alliance's best interests. (Aside: I think way to many teams attack the stacks to early. Wait about a minute and see how the match plays out, it may turn out that you don't need to take them down. By waiting, you can drastically increase your score)

- Lastly, it's very important to remember that teams how do choose to collude are not bad teams or bad people. They have made a strategic call. Many may not agree with it (myself included), but they have not violated any written rules. By plotting revenge or blacklisting them you to are not acting very GP. IMHO, part of gracious professionalism is teaching rather punishing. By setting a good example, you may encourage these teams to follow you.

[Danimal]

Amanda,

Your post highlights the need for people to avoid conduct that FIRST itself has stated is not Gracious Professionalism.

When a team takes an action that other teams consider outside of what is appropriate a degenerative cycle is created that leads to even more negative actions.

This, in turn, leads us farther and farther away from the ideals that FIRST is fostering.

Therefore the need for all combatants to hold a higher mark becomes even more important.

Right now I am hearing the voice of Yoda in my head, "Avoide the dark side of the force, you should. Hmm?" :)

Best,

Danimal

[DKolberg]

Any agreements about not knocking down stacks changes the game and makes it unfair for all the stacking bots. This makes all the time spent building a stacking bot a wasted effort. You can not change the basic strategie in the middle of the game and say it is fair for anyone. If you wanted to keep stacks, you should have built your robot to protect the stack. This agreement would be easier to take if no one had built stacking bots. But to build a non stacking bot and then achieve the equivalent by an agreement for the match is not fair and changes the challenge presented by FIRST. So, I strongly disagree that this should be between the teams and not have FIRST take a stand on this. Stacks are important for higher scores and I am sorry that those teams that are agreeing to this did not understand that and build a bot to stack or block. Now that the game is underway is not the time to change the rules because you did not understand them to begin with. You have made your choice on the type of robot to build. If you do not like your choice change it, but do not change the game to suit your robot. It is too late for that, the game is afoot.

[Joe Matt]

From what I've seen, many people complaining about this strategy are mostly vet teams who lost to rookie teams with this strategy.

Just an observation.

[matrixman271]

I am a sponsor and mentor for team 271. some members of my team started to be involved in a match fix in Annapolis for whatever reasons they considered justifiable and i stopped it. I do not know how the "mentors" on the other teams qualify their decisions, however i consider this nothing more than cheating. i have never seen anything from usfirst which suggested or implied that coming up with strategies to increase scores by taking a dump on the motives for scoring was something that usfirst would consider intelligent, resourceful engineering and planning.

My team is in the regional on Long Island this week. I have posted a letter to usfirst asking for a posted statement as to whether they accept or reject rigged game agreements. I have also asked that it be a specific stated ruling at the coming regional game when the team players gather for the game regulations. I am sure it will be addressed, but if it is not, i will ask the question in a very loud voice.

I understand to some degree that the students go through an understanding/learning process as they grow up. I do not understand the decisions of the mentors and/or teachers involved. The decisions are nothing more than the philosophy of ENRON. The results are the destruction of the dream for intellectual and analytical growth that USFIRST has created.

[Gabriel]

1930"s
Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy agree to "NEW" world boundaries
Look what that "agreement" got us!



Now thats not fair.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is but I hope that it isn't "cooperation and agreements are always bad." That means its okay for the United States to go to war with Iraq rather than use diplomatic channels and its okay for Iraq to evade the UN weapons inspectors. A world without cooperation and compromise is a world where everyone pursues their own self-interest no matter what the moral or human cost and I think thats EXACTLY what FIRST is trying to avoid.

Our team avoid is avoiding these "agreements" because we want to keep a much bigger and more important "agreement" the spirit of FIRST.

Besides, FIRST teams practicing "collusion" are hardly Nazi's.

[Koci]

Oh geez, please don't make this debate become philosophical now too.

The argument is that teams practicing this collusion intend to look out for their own self-interest at the expense of all the other teams. This is unfair to the teams who have worked hard designing and building their robot, their designing ability, and their strategizing ability.

Certainly all "cooperation and compromise" is not bad. But collusive activities that work at the expense of other, perhaps more qualified, individuals, IS bad.

[Rook]

Originally posted by JosephM
From what I've seen, many people complaining about this strategy are mostly vet teams who lost to rookie teams with this strategy.

Just an observation.

My team hasn't even played and we are against it.


Gracious Professionalism - It doesn't matter if you agree with it or not or even if you understand it. The practice of aggreements has devided FIRST and has put a black mark on the entire competition. All teams should be gracious and professional and agree not to make these pre-match agreements, just because there's such a bad stink about it.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by Rook
All teams should be gracious and professional and agree not to make these pre-match agreements, just because there's such a bad stink about it.

Our team is gracious and professional, and I personally don't feel the need to sign a petition. I don't know about the rest of my team.

I wouldn't do something just because there's a big stink about it.

[DougHogg]

Originally posted by Rook
My team hasn't even played and we are against it.

Gracious Professionalism - It doesn't matter if you agree with it or not or even if you understand it. The practice of agreements has devided FIRST and has put a black mark on the entire competition. All teams should be gracious and professional and agree not to make these pre-match agreements, just because there's such a bad stink about it.

I agree. What is the old saying: "United we stand, divided we fall".

If we all agree not to use pre-match agreements, we can get on with our goals of expanding FIRST, helping new teams, and having great competitions.

The problem we are having is that the points reward teams for "colluding" but colluding spoils the game. Therefore we need to agree not to do it. (We also need to get FIRST to change the point system, so it doesn't reward colluding.)

By doing so, we are establishing agreements on the fundamental nature of how the game is played. Without those agreements, we have chaos. To repeat from an earlier post, what would happen if tennis players were allowed to agree to split their first 2 sets evenly with each player winning a set by 6 games to 0 to save their energy, and then playing hard the last set. That would be unfair to the other competitors who were playing their hearts out for all their sets. Any players making such agreements would be kicked out of the tournament. Making agreements with your opponents is not acceptable in a competition which is what Stack Attack is, a 2-on-2 competition.

Please sign the petition at

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19301

[Adam Y.]

I have a story about the first match I ever witnessed involving a robot. Last year our robot fell over backwards on its first match. Oddly enough the other team thinking that they have won this thing tried inflating their score so they deployed a mouse to the other side. It didn't work very well and we won by a fluke. I think that first has a weird scoring system that allows this stuff to go on. If the reverted back to a regular scoring system where a team would would get their own points and not the losers this wouldn't happen.

[George]

Originally posted by Gabriel
Now thats not fair.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is but I hope that it isn't "cooperation and agreements are always bad." That means its okay for the United States to go to war with Iraq rather than use diplomatic channels and its okay for Iraq to evade the UN weapons inspectors. A world without cooperation and compromise is a world where everyone pursues their own self-interest no matter what the moral or human cost and I think thats EXACTLY what FIRST is trying to avoid.

Our team avoid is avoiding these "agreements" because we want to keep a much bigger and more important "agreement" the spirit of FIRST.

Besides, FIRST teams practicing "collusion" are hardly Nazi's.

I did not mean to imply that all "cooperation and agreements"
are "BAD" .........

But that was a shining example of 4 conspirators out to screw
Everyone else......"in their own self-interest"

And NO! I am NOT Calling or Em plying ANYONE is a "Nazi"

Remember, I was talking "THE BIG PICTURE" not just FIRST,
But the VALUES we Teach the Leaders of Tomorrow!

AS for USA/Iraq...... this has parallels to this thread too,

Geo.

P.S. My son is deployed (Medic, ARMY) and I do feel that we have
been using diplomatic channels

[Solace]

Originally posted by Gary Stearns
Stacking bots do have a place in the seeding matches but almost never in the finals @the UTC scrimmage we saw this.

But our Bot can stack pretty quickley and in the semi finals our bot and our alliance partner tipped over (thefirst time we ever tipped) in the second round we still won because our drivers made a three high stack in the final 20 seconds, the other alliance HAD to knock it over but couldn't get to the top in time. WIN!!

Team 236 Techno Ticks !!!!
(doing ok this year)

Yeah, and you forgot to mention one of your opponents was completely dead, and the other had a malfunctioning arm. That stack was hardly the reason you won that match.

[Bill Moore]

Originally posted by Gary Stearns
Stacking bots do have a place in the seeding matches but almost never in the finals @the UTC scrimmage we saw this.

You need to go back and watch the NASA archive of Annapolis.

Alliance 7 came from behind to win their second Quarterfinal match by having a stack of 3 bins and 23 additional bins in their scoring zone. Final score 69 - 68. STACKS COUNT!!!
Alliance 7 came from behind again to win their second Semi-Final match by having a stack of 4 bins and 14 additional bins in their scoring zone. Final score 81 - 45. STACKS COUNT!!!
In the second match of the finals, Alliance 7 failed to get a stack made and lost the championship. If just one stack of 2 bins was made they would have come from behind in all three elimination matches to win the championship. (Do the math.) STACKS COUNT!!!

We have video of Dean jumping out of his chair after the Quarter and Semi final matches to check the thrilling ending of each of those come from behind victories. Bottom line is STACKS COUNT AT ALL TIMES!!!

[Don Knight]

I don't know what the fuss is all about, some teams have found that there is a strategy within the game that others have failed to recognize. The problem or flaw isn't with the team who has been wise enough to discover it, it's a flaw within the game and/or the rules. Don't blame teams that found it.

Four teams working "Together" to gain high qualifying points, I believe is fair more "gracious" than four teams smashing and beating containers and each others robots to bits.

Don't be upset with the teams who have exposed this opportunity to score, you should be singing there praises for sharing the strategy with you.

Doesn't anyone remember the "Coopertition" Game a few years ago?

I don't think anyone of these teams prearranged who would win only that they would "leave your stacks alone" if "you leave our stacks alone" nothing wrong with that.....

[Wayne C.]

Originally posted by Don Knight
I don't know what the fuss is all about, some teams have found that there is a strategy within the game that others have failed to recognize. The problem or flaw isn't with the team who has been wise enough to discover it, it's a flaw within the game and/or the rules. Don't blame teams that found it.

Four teams working "Together" to gain high qualifying points, I believe is fair more "gracious" than four teams smashing and beating containers and each others robots to bits.

Don't be upset with the teams who have exposed this opportunity to score, you should be singing there praises for sharing the strategy with you.

Doesn't anyone remember the "Coopertition" Game a few years ago?

I don't think anyone of these teams prearranged who would win only that they would "leave your stacks alone" if "you leave our stacks alone" nothing wrong with that.....


Sorry Don- You can rationalize on this all you want but it is just wrong. The game this year is NOT coopertition or otherwise we would all have the same color domes on our robots.

Strategic maybe- ethical-no. And FIRST has said as much.

WC

[Wayne C.]

Originally posted by JosephM
From what I've seen, many people complaining about this strategy are mostly vet teams who lost to rookie teams with this strategy.

Just an observation.


We ARE complaining and didn't lose to a rookie team.

In fact losing to a good team fairly is no big deal. Hey- we lost to you, fairly I hope. We aren't complaining about that and your alliance deserved to move on. No problem there.

I think the people who are complaining are the ones who respect the rules and SPIRIT of the game. It is distasteful to be associated with this sort of behavior.

There are some sore losers out there, but I don't see them in this forum complaining. I DO see people concerned that the FIRST game, like many other things in our society, is being corrupted by a few individuals who think they are cleverly avoiding the rules. They don't want to see FIRST go the way of corporate america these days.

Quite frankly, if winning the trophy by this sort of deceit is that important to them I think we should make a special award for it and present it at the awards ceremony so all can see who the real "clever" teams are.

I bet they wouldn't get much respect from many in the FIRST community

Fixing the game is simply wrong. It offends. It degrades the spirit of FIRST. It shouldn't be tolerated.

WC
(PS- congrats on a great competition. Isn't is great to know your hard work paid off?)

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by Don Knight
I don't know what the fuss is all about, some teams have found that there is a strategy within the game that others have failed to recognize. The problem or flaw isn't with the team who has been wise enough to discover it, it's a flaw within the game and/or the rules. Don't blame teams that found it.
Don't be upset with the teams who have exposed this opportunity to score, you should be singing there praises for sharing the strategy with you.
Doesn't anyone remember the "Coopertition" Game a few years ago?


That was where I was leaning.

My daughter, captain of the team, just arrived home. She and I hadn't talked about this issue, and now I've learned that our team decided not to sign the petition, which is exactly what I said about myself today on this forum.

Angela did remember similar agreements last year.

Our team doesn't feel the need to blacklist the teams who choose to participate in gentleman agreements, and we'll be making our own decision about whether or not to participate in gentleman's agreements.

And our decision will also NOT be based on a mentor outside of our team threatening that if we follow that strategy we'll lose their company's funding.

[Mr. Van]

After reading page after page of this stuff I must say I have been quite shocked at the uproar this has caused. As a coach on a FIRST team, I feel I must point out some things:

Gracious Professionalism & "the spirit of FIRST"-
Regardless of where you stand on the issue of "agreements", I believe that we could all agree that the following do not express a sense of GP or the spirit of FIRST:

Threats of physical violence,
Suggestions that some teams may deserve help while others do not ,
Forming "blacklists" (or speaking of revenge),
Suggesting that teams who have not broken any rules be removed from the competition,
Comparing students at a robotics competition to current or former international military/political events,
Suggestions that teams who have not broken any rules are not worthy of playing with in the elimination rounds.

PLEASE. If FIRST is not entirely about winning (or maxing QPs, or trophies, etc.) then lets act like it.

-Mr. Van
Coach, Team 599
RoboDox

[Ben Mitchell]

This is turning into a very heated debate.

Let's put it down a notch, please...

My thoughts: "fixing matches" is not something I would personally do.

However, the strategy of this years game is as follows:Both alliance's stacks standing up = higher points for everyone. My team quickly learned that you only knock down enemy stacks if they knock down yours.

However, my team never even considered (I was the student coach) rigging a match with any pacts or agreements with other teams.

With all seriousness, people need to stop flipping out in this thread: it is getting out of control.

[Wayne C.]

Originally posted by Ben Mitchell
This is turning into a very heated debate.

Let's put it down a notch, please...

With all seriousness, people need to stop flipping out in this thread: it is getting out of control.

You are right Ben- I've said my piece. I'll back off and get ready for Rutgers ; )

WC

[DougHogg]

Originally posted by Don Knight
I don't know what the fuss is all about, some teams have found that there is a strategy within the game that others have failed to recognize. The problem or flaw isn't with the team who has been wise enough to discover it, it's a flaw within the game and/or the rules. Don't blame teams that found it.

Four teams working "Together" to gain high qualifying points, I believe is fair more "gracious" than four teams smashing and beating containers and each others robots to bits.

Don't be upset with the teams who have exposed this opportunity to score, you should be singing there praises for sharing the strategy with you.

Doesn't anyone remember the "Coopertition" Game a few years ago?

I don't think anyone of these teams prearranged who would win only that they would "leave your stacks alone" if "you leave our stacks alone" nothing wrong with that.....

Hi Don,

Thank you for a great event. Your committee did a wonderful job.

On this subject, I would like to request, if you haven't done so, that you read the other posts on this subject.

I have talked to other people who, at first look, thought that this "cooperation" of teams was a good thing. However, the game this year is not a 4 team cooperative game. The expectation is that teams are competing 2-on-2. When they start to make agreements with their opponents, they are violating the basic agreements per the Kickoff on how the game is to be run. Taken to it's extreme, we would have all 4 teams choregraphing exactly what each robot will do to achieve the highest possible points. Picture the human players making 8 high stacks and the robots taking exactly their share of the bins, and then heading up to the top with everyone making room for each other. Well the 45th bin would have to be pushed out. Now we have a maximum score for each team. Well everyone else will get the same score if they do that. Why did we go through days of lack of sleep if we are all going to get the same score? That is not a 2-on-2 competition.

In other situations of FIRST, we applaud teams cooperating and helping each other, and rightly so. However when we are supposed to be competing, it is not okay to then start working with your opponents and thus change the game to a version of 2001. We need to be operating on the same page.

Example:
In a doubles match of tennis, the partners cooperate against their opponents. They do not cooperate with their opponents, but they could. They could say, guys, we are tired so let's make this an easy match. We will let you win the first set by 6 games to 0 and you let us win the second one. That way we will only have to play 12 games. Then we will really play hard in the third set. No harm to anyone, right? Wrong. It harms the other teams because they are competing as expected and will be more tired. They expect a level playing field. That is all we are asking for here.

If we are going to make the game like 2001, well let's design it that way. But FIRST abandoned that format last year, for good reason. Watch the 2002 kickoff where Dean discusses this.

Cooperation is wonderful, except when the basic concept of a game is competition. Then cooperation between opponents is wrong because it is not what was agreed upon. It is a fundamental violation of the agreements of the game, whether it is stated in the rules or not. Are there rules forbidding tennis opponents from making agreements? I don't know, but I do know that anyone doing that would not be competing long, and there would soon be rules against it if it were done, because it just isn't fair. See the FIRST forum for their response to the question as to whether it is okay or not for teams to make agreements with their opponents.

We were called together for a 2-on-2 competition and put unbelievable effort into creating our robots so we could get points in the match. To have teams then decide to leave up huge stacks on both sides with no effort to knock them down and no one protecting them, is to create a phony competition. They are really working together to beat all the other teams. Well then everyone would have to do that and that is the real problem. That would look really stupid on NASA channel, and as Dean said this year, we want to make the game more audience friendly. Are we going to have baseball games where the teams have agreed to pitch softly? No because no one would come, and no one will come to fake FIRST games either. I have parents who flew in from Los Angeles to watch the match who were upset by the pretense of the teams, who had obviously made agreements between them. That is dishonest if you are supposed to be opponents.

It is absolutely necessary for us to separate the wonderful cooperation in the pits and on this forum as examples, from when teams are opponents in a game. If there are no opponents, there isn't a game and that is what we have to avoid.

I am sorry but I couldn't ask my volunteer engineers to come day after day, sometimes sleeping on floor when they got tired, to then put on a theatrical performance of choregraphed robots, unless that was the agreed upon format as in 2001.

What the fuss is about is that I care very much about FIRST and feel that this behavior threatens it. When I heard a mentor on Friday at the Arizona Regional say that their team was voting on whether to withdraw from the competition, I think that is serious. Let's just agree on what game we are playing, 2-on-2, or a cooperative 4 team game, and then stick to it.

As for the petition that we are asking people to sign, it is really just an effort to come to an agreement on the format: 2-on-2 or cooperative 4. See

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19301

I think the sooner that it is made clear what the format is, the sooner we can all get on with other matters. I was told by Jason Morella of FIRST that FIRST does watch this forum. I am requesting that all teams who are in favor of keeping the 2-on-2 format post a message on the above thread that pre-match agreements between opponents should not occur. If people really want to change to a 4 team cooperative format, they can start a thread for that. We just have to settle it one way or the other.

Best regards,

[Gabriel]

The "collusion" strategy will not necessarilly result in weak robots winning top seeds if most teams use the strategy.

Lets say I'm the United States, and you are the Soviet Union and we each have thousands of ICBM's pointed at each other. I won't launch my nukes because I know that you will retaliate by utterly destroying me with mine and that is an unacceptable outcome. But, if I know that all of your ICBM's are defective than it becomes a little easier for me to push the button. (This is of course a thought experiment)

Lets say I'm a strong alliance in FIRST and I decide to use the "collusion" strategy with another strong alliance. Since neither alliance is sure they can win if they decide to betray their opponent, the "gentlemens agreement" will go off as planned. Now lets say your a weak alliance and I'm a strong alliance, I will feel a little bit better about betraying you at the last minute because my chances of winning will be higher. In this way weaker alliances will be weeded out.

If we were only playing to win, then this strategy would be fine. Here's the problem though: all of a sudden I don't know whether my opponent will betray me or not. Any trust between teams is shattered, and because betrayals will inevitably occur, rivalry and strife will spread from the arena to the pits. We have enough trouble not being bitter towards teams that beat us fairly, I doubt many FIRST people would take outright betrayal in stride. The best part of FIRST is the friendliness and cooperation between teams. Unless it is universally accepted "collusion" will shatter any trust teams have in each other. Thats why my team (782) will not use this strategy.

[George]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Mr. Van
After reading page after page of this stuff I must say I have been quite shocked at the uproar this has caused. As a coach on a FIRST team, I feel I must point out some things:

Gracious Professionalism & "the spirit of FIRST"-
Regardless of where you stand on the issue of "agreements", I believe that we could all agree that the following do not express a sense of GP or the spirit of FIRST:

Threats of physical violence,
Suggestions that some teams may deserve help while others do not ,
Forming "blacklists" (or speaking of revenge),
Suggesting that teams who have not broken any rules be removed from the competition,
Comparing students at a robotics competition to current or former international military/political events,
Suggestions that teams who have not broken any rules are not worthy of playing with in the elimination rounds.

PLEASE. If FIRST is not entirely about winning (or maxing QPs, or trophies, etc.) then lets act like it.

-Mr. Van
Coach, Team 599
RoboDox [/QUOTE

Mr. Van,
I was not comparing "students at a robotics" competition to
military/political events.

I was using well-known examples of Agreements (Bad agreements) or inaction which affected other groups of people adversely.

"if you do not learn from history you are doomed to repeat it"

if you can not see the parallels, I am Sorry.

is this any different from using tennis, boxing, nascar or ENRON as example?

I do not see how citing precedents is not in the "spirit of FIRST"
or is not "GP" (maybe not PC, but what is?)

I agree Blacklists, Blackballing and Physical violence has NO place in FIRST!

With all seriousness I am not "flipping out" And I disagree that this thread is "out of control"

This is an ethics issue that can only be solved by Group Debate.

To not debate this would be a crime.

All along I have ask what are we TEACHING??

Geo.

[Joe Matt]

I'm extremely curious of what Dave Lavery is thinking about this whole situation right now...

[Gabriel]

The team at FIRST that develops the game is very smart. I think I read that they had discussed this "collusion" issue and I bet there were several differing opinions. I think it would be fascinating and helpful to hear about the discussions they had.

[Gabriel]

I was not comparing "students at a robotics" competition to
military/political events.

I was using well-known examples of Agreements (Bad agreements) or inaction which affected other groups of people adversely.


George,

I misinterpreted your post, sorry.

~Gabriel

[Adam Y.]

Obviously, all companies compete, however many work together not to undercut each other unfairly
See above quote example.
Someone compared the rigging the matches to corporations that agree not to undercut each other unfairly. This is known as pools. Corporations would agree not to raise prices so they would not have to compete. Unfournatly they would drive the little companies out of bussiness because they couldn't compete with those prices. Which means that this is an unfair practice. To have people agree to have high scores means that other teams can not compete with the ones that actually compete.

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally posted by Danimal
Amanda,

Your post highlights the need for people to avoid conduct that FIRST itself has stated is not Gracious Professionalism.

When a team takes an action that other teams consider outside of what is appropriate a degenerative cycle is created that leads to even more negative actions.

This, in turn, leads us farther and farther away from the ideals that FIRST is fostering.


Thanks.

Indeed, I would like to hear what Dave Lavery would have to say about all of this, but moreover, if I could just have 10 teensy-weensy minutes with Dean Kamen to talk to him about this, I wonder what he would say? I'd live for the chance to just sit in the stands at a regional with Dean, and just ask him about his opinions.

All of the teams that are all for collusions... would you tell Dean about your arrangement? What about Woodie? Would you put it on your Chairman's Award submission? Or for the Woodie Flowers Award?

If you can go through this with a clear conscience and a grasp on gracious professionalism, that that is your decision, and no team is going to change your mind. This is what it comes down to.

You can argue yourself in circles about who is right and who is wrong. It's not who is right and who is wrong that matters. It's come down to, are you doing the right thing for these students and teaching them gracious professionalism, or showing them an easy way out?

Said it before and I'll say it again - There's nothing wrong with losing, especially if you lost fair and square. If you know you did a good job, have pride in yourself.

'Winning' and 'Losing' are just two words FIRST threw in this competition to make it interesting. The world doesn't end if you lose, you just go back to your pits, fix what needs fixing, and try it again.

That's the difference between other clubs and communities and FIRST - you still leave the regional shaking hands, admiring everyone else's work, and respecting them for both what they have built and how they have carried themselves during competition. Whereas a football team might badmouth their opponents at a game (no matter what strategy they use), FIRST kids think, "Wow, [insert team here] was really good last year. I really liked their [robot, handouts, attitude, friendliness]. I can't wait to play against them again."

[RogerR]

There is a very simple solution to this problem. We don't need blacklists, bullying, sabotage, etc.

All that you need to do is not go along with the "cheating" teams.

This stategy requires the co-operation of all 4 teams competing in the match to work (duh). If even one team doesn't agree, then the match will proceed as a normal match would, with everyone getting as many points for their alliance as possible (the traditional way, mind you).

And lets assume that a team does get its opponents to go along, and ends up in seeded first. They will enter the finals and slam headfirst into the brickwall that is reality. If they must depend on their opponents to score highly, then they will be S.O.L., as I don't know of any teams that will be happy to settle for anything but first.

I know that there is a pretty high likely hood that this has already been posted, and that I missed it (123 posts is alotta posts to read at one time), but I figured I'd say it just in case.

good night, and good ridance
Roger Riquelme

[Adam Y.]

There is a very simple solution to this problem. We don't need blacklists, bullying, sabotage, etc.
Nah an easier solution would be to change the rules. It just subtracts from the confusion that is First. It would also make it easier to explain who got what points.:p

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by amandabean
You can argue yourself in circles about who is right and who is wrong. It's not who is right and who is wrong that matters, it's come down to, are you doing the right thing, or not?


I think it's also about arguing what is right, and that can be a personal opinion.

You may choose to do something others think is wrong, you think is clever and not against the rules, and leave the regional feeling fine about your integrity despite what others think.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by RogerR
There is a very simple solution to this problem. We don't need blacklists, bullying, sabotage, etc.

All that you need to do is not go along with the "cheating" teams.

Amen and hallelujah. Make your own PERSONAL decision. Leave others to make theirs. See how it all plays out.

[pbarrett03]

Originally posted by Twisted
This happened at the Arizona regionals.The team that requested such a proposal also happened to make it to finals :mad:

That team also included the son of Microchip's President...

-Justin
Team 1223
Driver, Programmer, source of humor

*******************************

Sure, I do not agree with any point collusion strategies.

However, I do not think your comments directed at teams were necessarily fair, or in the mindset of a gracious professional.

I would first like to commend this unnamed team you attacked on their long overdue success that finally played out in the final rounds of competition at the Arizona Regional event.

Singling out a team that did not frequently participate in such an act is wrong. To the best of my knowledge, it is true that this team did play in a match that had a point collusion strategy worked out ahead of time. However, the team’s alliance knocked over the other alliances stack. In return, their stack was knocked over. Coincidentally, the team that knocked the stack in revenge later went on to become a seemingly self-proclaimed martyr in the whole matter of point collusion.

Furthermore, as a previous member of this unmentioned team, I feel it my duty to defend this team that represents what I believe Dean Kamen designed FIRST to represent. The members and mentors have an extraordinary work ethic. This team reaching success is not any surprise to me. The combination of the extraordinary amount of talent that the team possesses, unbelievably dedicated faculty and mentor support has been due for success since its founding almost 5 years ago.

But more importantly, I find any attacks on their integrity to be downright wrong and offensive. From my experiences with mentors and members alike, I have found nothing but the embodiment of what FIRST really means. Truly gracious people working to help me not only learn about the principles of science and how fun it can be, but also about teamwork and gracious professionalism. Their efforts to expand the ideals of FIRST to as many people as possible, over the past years, has impressed me. I can only say that I am happy and proud for finally being able to reap the benefits of their efforts at the Arizona Regional.

As far as the participation of the student in question… this is a true act of gracious professionalism. The team offered for a student to participate in a program that was not offered at his school. The offer to allow participation to this student spread the ideals of FIRST to another person who would not have been able to otherwise participate. You should not criticize the team you attack for allowing the student to participate in a program that helps us grow as people in an environment that keeps sacred such high goals as teamwork and gracious professionalism.

All of this “insight” comes from the perspective of a veteran of three years. I stood behind you and watched the alliance in you speak poorly of edge my team, as well as yours Justin, out of the tournament. While this is upsetting, there is no question in my mind that the other alliance won by playing fairly.

Please do not try to bring down this team during a moment of celebration. Their success has been well earned and overdue.

I would like to finish by saying congratulations to the winners of the 2003 Arizona Regional - I hope to see you in Houston!!!

[DougHogg]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by pbarrett03
*******************************

Singling out a team that did not frequently participate in such an act is wrong.

Hello Justin and Pat,

You guys are talking about different teams. By "finals", Justin meant the elimination rounds.

In any case, it is time to get on with life. We need to focus on getting some agreement on the rules for upcoming competitions, and avoid any personal remarks about other teams.

Hopefully we will not have to continue discussing this issue of agreements with opponents for the next month.

I am hoping the FIRST will give us a hint of its original intentions for the game, without making any big rule change, since that has been unpopular in the past.

[SWBaum]

I'm a first-year mentor for Team 460. My views may not be the views of the team. But when I first heard about the "deal-making" at the Arizona regional last Friday, my reaction was, "Why does anyone need to talk about it? Isn't it obvious?" If our objective is to graciously and professionally have one of the 8 highest cumulative scores when qualifying is completed come Saturday afternoon, wouldn't we be advised to maximize our points in each and every match? And since stacks increase points, wouldn't it be appropriate to have one at the end? A tall one? On both sides of the ramp? Who needs to collude, cheat, fix, taint, violate the spirit of FIRST, _____________ [fill in the blank with your favorite derogatory characterization] to figure that out!?

What I suggested to our team before the start of the competition, and what I will continue to suggest, is that our strategy (as a general rule unless there are strong contrary indications) be cooperative (that is, let our opponents' stack stay up) until the other alliance shows us it doesn't understand the way the game we're playing is scored (and, I submit, played) by knocking ours down, in which event, we retaliate with all deliberate speed.

The qualifying rounds are not a boxing match, they're not a car race, they're not badminton, they're not a conflict between foreign countries. The game is what it is (which as has been pointed out above, bears a striking resemblance to the Prisoner's Dilemma in the qualifying rounds). (Check out http://www.brembs.net/ipd/ipd.html for more than you want to know.) The fact that an effective strategy to do well in this game (it's known as "tit for tat") is counterintuitive, that we find it necessary to scurry about making prearrangements with one another to have any chance to play it properly, and that some of us find such prearrangements "unsportsmanlike," only confirms that we're competitive human beings and not cooperative ants or bumblebees.

I assume we can all agree that winning the game is a legitimate objective. Let's further assume that in order to attain that objective, a team adopts a strategy that science has shown is appropriate, given the rules of the game (FIRST IS about science, isn't it?). We can't be too concerned if it's boring, and we can't get caught up in how it plays for TV, that's not our department. (And it should be noted, there still remains a lot of game to be played around the stacks and up the ramp; the game is still 2 on 2, with each alliance striving to beat the other by at least a point.) When all is said and done, the thing that some of us are finding compellingly offensive when prearranged is the very thing that should be done regardless, prearranged or not. If that be the case, prearrangement is entirely superfluous and innocuous. To reiterate the wise observation of a famous frequent contributor, "I don't know what the fuss is all about."

(Of course, a lot of good any of this did our team (which will come as no surprise to the Prisoner); at the end of qualifying, Team 460 was seeded 24th. Luckily, our esteemed alliance partner from West Covina, California, RAWC, had the extraordinary vision (where all others had missed their chance, our invitation and acceptance coming in the 24th slot) to appreciate our finer qualities, despite the standings. Proving once again, there's more to this game than meets the eye. The gloves come off in the elimination rounds, don't they?)

See you at Nationals. Be sure to stop by and say hi.

[matrixman271]

GAME FIXING ---------

IS THIS HOW DEAN KAMEN GOT HIS PATENTS???????

[Andy Grady]

After browsing this forum, and actually having been approached by a team at our regional wanting to maximize a score, I have concluded that people in FIRST are starting to care a little too much about winning, and not enough about inspiration, fun, and fair play. The idea of FIRST is to teach young people about the ways of science of technology, not how to find loopholes in a system to get ahead. Good, fair competition is fun. Win or lose, if you go out knowing that you tried your hardest in a fair setting, there is no way you should walk away from the competition without some sort of valuable lesson learned. Fixing matches only promotes the idea of taking the easy way out instead of fighting through the good and bad, and learning from it. Lets not make this game anything more than it is, good, healthy, fun competition.

Good Luck,
Andy Grady

[George]

Well said Andy!

Geo.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by SWBaum
The fact that an effective strategy to do well in this game (it's known as "tit for tat") is counterintuitive, that we find it necessary to scurry about making prearrangements with one another to have any chance to play it properly, and that some of us find such prearrangements "unsportsmanlike," only confirms that we're competitive human beings and not cooperative ants or bumblebees.


*chuckle* I like that!

[Gabriel]

SWBaum,

I noticed the parallels to iterative prisoners dilemna too, and I agree, "collusion" is a VERY sound strategy. If this was nuclear war, or baseball, or NASCAR, where the objective is simply to win then I would use the "collusion" strategy without remorse. FIRST isn't like that. The biggest trophy doesn't go to the winners, it goes to the teams that best embody the ideals of FIRST and gracious professionalism. The objective of FIRST is to promote scientists and engineers and to inspire kids to want to be engineers. Its a little corny, but its very effective. If this was little-league baseball or high-school basketball teams would be tripping all over each other trying to sabotage each other. In FIRST teams go out of their way to help each other. I remember last year a team announced that they needed a PBasic expert and no less than 30 people showed up! Once you experience how FIRST teams interact, its intoxicating, you won't want to trade it for anything in the world. FIRST is like a cult...

The "collusion" strategy creates all sorts of trust problems. Teams are afraid of being betrayed. (If I was the #1 seed by 50 points, wouldn't it be a great strategy to sabotage a climbing alliance by betraying them at the last second?). It's not fun to watch. (Who wants to watch a game where we know the outcome ahead of time?) Regardless of whether its true or not, everyone will question whether a winning team that uses "collusion" "deserves" to be where it is, and that team will be hated.

I will gladly trade my teams success for the success of the mission of FIRST.

~Gabriel

[sevisehda]

I have yet to see any matches where it appears teams have fixed a match. FIRST has been about coopertition for the past 4 years. 3 yeras ago you had to cooperate. I don't see it fixing a match for everyone to agree not to knock over stacks, or to let everyone on top of the ramp. Its a strategic move in order to increase your score. It may be a little "cheap" but there have been other teams with strategys that some would deam cheap and others think are beautiful.


Personnaly I'd love to see 4 teams go out there with human player human player 4 stacks knock down the wall, only fight over the fallen boxes, then all 4 take the ramp. A score in the high 400 would be great. It doesn't hurt anyone it doesn't break any rules. Dean and the Judges would love it and teh crowd would go nuts over the score. It may not be as exciting as bots tipping but it would great when they posted the scores. Then maybe the stackers would have something to do.

[Mr. Van]

Hello All-

So here is my take on the situation:

I honestly do not believe that very many FIRST teams participated in "agreements" with the intention of "cheating", "making up for their robot's shortcomings" or "knocking teams down in the seeding ranks".

I believe that most teams who participated in "agreements" felt that they were executing a strategy that was within the rules and perhaps even encouraged by the rules. Perhaps even being an example of adversaries working together as is often supported by FIRST.

The problem is that not all teams have interpreted the rules in this way. The solution is to clarify the rules. Since "official" FIRST responses have been somewhat vague, I suggest the following:

At each regional to come, announce a meeting of ADULT COACHES on THURSDAY (perhaps at lunch, or after the last practice round) to discus (briefly) and ultimately agree on the "opposing alliance agreement issue". Take a vote if necessary, but I feel confident that if we consider what we are doing and WHY we are doing it, people at each regional can come to an agreement before the next match is played.

Level the playing field again, help each other, celebrate what we've learned and get back to what FIRST is all about.

-Mr. Van
Coach, Team 599
RoboDox

[Koko Ed]

Ever since I have been here I have seen poster who list what accomplishments their teams have done in what competitions, arguments about student built vs. engineerer built robots and constant constant complaints of rookie spoiling it for everyone when the veteran team act just as bad.
Now all of the sudden this and everyone say "All they care about is winning." And these other people didn't? If winning never matter then why list how your team did in every regional, the nationals and ever off-season comp they attend. Don't go blacklisting these teams for taking the next step from what they see from everybody else here. This has been a policy of alot of team for a long time!

[DougHogg]

Originally posted by sevisehda
I have yet to see any matches where it appears teams have fixed a match. FIRST has been about coopertition for the past 4 years. 3 yeras ago you had to cooperate. I don't see it fixing a match for everyone to agree not to knock over stacks, or to let everyone on top of the ramp. Its a strategic move in order to increase your score. It may be a little "cheap" but there have been other teams with strategys that some would deam cheap and others think are beautiful.


Personnaly I'd love to see 4 teams go out there with human player human player 4 stacks knock down the wall, only fight over the fallen boxes, then all 4 take the ramp. A score in the high 400 would be great. It doesn't hurt anyone it doesn't break any rules. Dean and the Judges would love it and teh crowd would go nuts over the score. It may not be as exciting as bots tipping but it would great when they posted the scores. Then maybe the stackers would have something to do.

But would you want to see every match with human player 8 stacks at each end untouched, the bins split between the teams (with 1 pushed out) and then all 4 teams on top of the ramp, match after match for 2 days?. Every match would have scores over 400, and all the same (unless someone dropped a bin). At that point, it becomes a farce and boring beyond belief. That is where the "agreement with your opponents" leads. If 1 agreement with your opponents is okay, then any such agreement is okay, and then we don't have a game. In Arizona, one team was ready to vote on withdrawing and going home because of the "opponent agreements".

(I don't think any stacker robot is going to be doing much stacking with 8 high human stacks just sitting there.)

Originally posted by Jason Morrella, FIRST

- I DID say that if I was still coaching a team, I personally wouldn't make one of these agreements.
...
- I did say that "if EVERY team and EVERY match had these agreements, it would be bad for the competition in my opinion".

From the FIRST Forum

http://jive.ilearning.com/thread.jsp?forum=2&thread=740&tstart=360&trange=15
Gabriel
Posts: 1
Registered: Jan, 2003

"rigging" the game Posted: Jan 12, 2003 3:47 PM _
If the two alliances decide before the beginning of a match how they will play the game and execute a strategy where the two alliances cooperate with each other to acheive a tie, are the two alliances violating the spirit of FIRST or the maxim of "gracious professionalism"?

first
Posts: 1,519
Registered: Dec, 2002

Re: "rigging" the game Posted: Jan 12, 2003 9:28 PM _
Yes
36F

At the Arizona Regional, Team 68, 624 and 980 and others went around to ask teams to sign an agreement not to make pre-match agreements with their opponents to leave up each others stacks. That was effective in getting teams to stop making such agreements. However, Jason Morella told me that if enough teams petitioned in this forum that they do not want to have pre-match agreements between opponents, then FIRST would take notice.

Therefore if you would like to have competitions with no "opponents agreements", please sign our petition at
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19301

[Rook]

Pro-Agreement people say... Teams who have adopted this strategy should be congradulated for using their minds to maximize their scores.

I say... Not every good idea is morally sound. A bank robber may come up with the perfect plan to rob a bank. Society does not pat him on the back for his great idea and let him keep the money. I am not placing teams that use this strategy on the same level as bank robbers, but you get the point.



Pro-Agreement people say... FIRST is about cooperation. Teams making agreements are cooperating.

I say... So where do we draw the line? What if I can get the other alliance to throw the match completely? Say we have something they need. We agee to give them what they need for the win. I haven't looked in the rules, but I bet there is nothing that states a team can not throw a match if they want to. So does that make it OK? No, of course it doesn't. The same goes for agreements to maximize scores. The reason is it is unfair to the other teams who have not made any agreements.



Pro-Agreement people say... The simple fix is that all teams should adopt this strategy. Then we will all be playing on the same level.

I say... That is easier said than done. It won't happen because many people see these kinds of agreements as morally wrong. So, if one team doesn't partake in this strategy, then no teams should. Even if all teams did agree, it would remove a basic part of the game out of play. Stacking robots are no longer useful since human player made stacks are now the only stacks needed.



Pro-Agreement people say... The agreements have no affect on the outcome of the competition. The best teams will still win.

I say... Then why do it? But, anyway, it has already been pointed out many times how making these agreements could alter the outcome.


I do not agree with blacklisting or other hardball tactics to stop these agreemements from being made. Teams using this strategy are NOT bad teams or bad people. They just see things differently. I'm hoping that by vocalizing why this practice is not to the mutual liking of all FIRST teams, that all teams will agree to no longer make these deals, even if they do not agree with the morality issue. In that way, we can keep the competition friendly and fair. I hope that FIRST will in the future consider this issue when designing games. The coop game of 2001 wasn't a bad idea. I liked it. But, in the least, teams can be kept in the dark on who they are playing against, or find a different scoring system altogether.

[sevisehda]

Making agreements to throw a match for a spare part would kill a team. They wouldn't get any kind of award for years if the judges ever heard about it. More than likely they would be asked to leave for just suggesting it.

Since I haven't seen any 8 stacks and few 4 stacks survive I don't even know why this topic is being debated. Its a waste of time. There is no problem with teams making this kind of agreement. I said that making such agreements not to knock over stacks or to allow everyone on the ramp would would be legal and actually encouraged by FIRST. Alot of people posted arguements against me earlier in the season because I thought rampdoms would be a effective bot. Many of you argued rampdoms killed scores and stackers were better because they only increased scores. So if an agreement not to knock down stacks also increased both teams scores then why is it wrong?

I hadn't posted until today because I didn't see any indication teams were making unscrupulous agreements and thought this whole thread was a waste. But after 4 threads and hundreds of replies I had to throw in my 2 cents.

[CHSRobotics03]

Just because you have not witnessed an event does not mean it hasn't happened. In both Sacramento and Arizona, these agreements had HUGE effects on the competition. Out of curiosity, just how many matches and competitions have you witnessed? Maybe you should realize that there are quite a few more that you haven't where there was a possibility of it happening and where it did happen. I saw at least 4 matches where there were two human player stacks of 7 left over at the end. And to reply to your comment about allowing everyone on the ramp and keeping the boxes-- how would it be a competition anymore? You've explained yourself why it doesn't work. It will lead to everyone being on the ramp in the end, and everyone having ties each match and each team in a tie at the end-- how will anyone show their robots strengths or do ANYTHING except a pre-planned routine that is the same for each match. If that's what you want you should join the WWF.

Alexis

[Ben Mitchell]

Stop this childish bickering.

When stacks are left standing on both sides of the field, everyone benefits, the losers, the winners. There is no sense in knocking stacks down, since it translates into a lower score for everyone.

This discussion is better suited for a FIRST forum, with FIRST officials. This is just becoming a flame war.

[Jason Morrella]

I would respectfully request that people try to promote/support their views with their arguments and not use conversations with other people. Let people speak for themselves.

In Phoenix as in other events, I tried very hard to hear out every team member who wanted to speak about any issue.

Again, I told each team member who requested to speak to me that the issue of "agreements" is not one which I can speak for FIRST.


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Jason Morrella, FIRST

- I DID say that if I was still coaching a team, I personally wouldn't make one of these agreements.
...
- I did say that "if EVERY team and EVERY match had these agreements, it would be bad for the competition in my opinion".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Did I say these things - yes. But each of these statements and many others are taken out of the context of the full conversations. I never said or implied anything other than if EVERY team and EVERY match was the same, it would be bad for the competition. THIS IS NOT THE CASE THIS YEAR and WILL NOT BECOME THE CASE, regardless of what "hypothetical scenarios" people can logically come up with. Just like if EVERY team built the same stacking robot, or every team built a king of the hill robot which couldn't go under that bar, the game would not be as good.


But I also said:
"there is no rule against it - so FIRST will not make any announcement or judgment on this issue, it is up to each team to decide"
"it is not fixing or cheating in my view. It may be score manipulating or maybe even collusion, but not cheating"
"While I wouldn't choose to do it, I also wouldn't get too worked up about other teams doing it. I'm not going to judge them either harshly or negatively. In my opinion teams still have to outplay other alliances and win the majority of their matches to seed in the top 8, plus 24 teams make the playoffs. FIRST teams scout, and they are smart - top performing teams typically make the playoffs regardless of where they seed"
Also, yes I said some FIRST staff monitor forums like these. I said FIRST tries hard to follow the views of the teams during the season and at the Team Forums. If that implied that any point of view would get "official" approval by FIRST just because it was supported by many teams on an Internet forum thread, then I miscommunicated and apologize. These forums are good for discussion - and these threads have shown that teams have different views on the subject.

I am flattered that some posts seem to think that referencing my opinion holds any value (there are many who would like to sit these people down and set them straight :) ) - but to take things out of context, or to imply I said things which I didn't, or to imply that I am speaking for FIRST on this issue is not fair to myself, FIRST, this forum, or the people exchanging their own views. My opinion about stack agreements is no more important or valuable than that of anyone else. I was asked by many to discuss it, and I did. Team leaders from Sacramento or Arizona should not refer to conversations to support their views, when I specifically said I am not the voice of FIRST on this issue other than to say "it is not against the rules and it is an issue for each team to decide" . If you want someone to give their opinion in a post, just ask them to post it - but please don't speak for people or take their thoughts out of context.

While there have been a number of reckless, irresponsible, and unproductive posts in these threads - MANY people have expressed very valid points and are having a very valid discussion. There is so much gracious professionalism in FIRST, and I was nothing but impressed by the quality of teams and people I have met at the events so far this year. Being able to speak with and get the views of very impressive people including the leaders from teams such as 60, 64, 68, 599, 624, 698, 980 and others was and is a great part of working with FIRST. I left the events with a TREMENDOUS amount of respect for each of the people I spoke with, and very much look forward to working with them and speaking with them at future events this year and for years to come. I learn a great deal from hearing the different views of different teams, and normally I learn that things are not as black & white as I may have first felt, that there is normally a middle ground with well intentioned thoughts on both sides.
"My" take in this FIRST discussion is that things will work themselves out as they usually do. Again - I don't speak for FIRST or anyone else, it's all my opinion.

Heck, even countries in the United Nations can't agree if War should be a last resort or is justified if you haven't been attacked first. Many opinions on both sides, and both sides seem convinced they are right and the other side is crazy. (sound familiar?). So if the United Nations can't come to a consensus about going to war, maybe working out little tiny issues like these "agreements" in qualifying matches can help us create future generations of better qualified and skilled leaders who understand the importance of working things out.

Good luck to everyone in week three and the rest of the season - have a great time and celebrate the great things your teams have done!!!

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by Ben Mitchell
Stop this childish bickering.
This discussion is better suited for a FIRST forum, with FIRST officials. This is just becoming a flame war.

*confused* I don't experience it all as childish bickering, and FIRST has addressed the issue.

definitions (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=148923#post148923)

FIRST (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=148892#post148892)

[Kris Verdeyen]

Everyone is getting very bent out of shape here, for what many people have already shown is a non-issue.

The biggest opposition I would have, personally, to my team doing this (and I'd like to think that most drive teams are with me here) is that it limits the chances a team has to win.

Picture two scenarios:
1 - Your team is losing near the end of a match, and you can't get on the ramp because your opponent is blocking you. You left his HP stacks standing because you're concerned about QP's, and this is the smartest way to increase your score. So what do you do? You knock over his stacks because it makes sense in the context of the game.

2. Same deal, only this time you left the stacks standing because you promised your opponent you would. Now you have to choose between winning the match and going back on your word. (Which, incidentally, is the same situation a boxer who has agreed to throw a match is in.)

What agreements like this do is limit the options that you have in the context of the match, which is bad because you never know what will happen once the match starts.


And on a side note - let's please tone down the rhetoric in this discussion - there's no need for it to be as heated as it has been.

[team222badbrad]

Play the game however you want to but don't go crying to me when team A Knocks down team B's stack at the last second.

The TIGERTRONS will not participate in this "fixing of matches". We may have been the only team to get a high score of 210 in Arizona, without participating in this.

We may also have been the first to have been asked to participate in this but we said to the one guy:

If you can guarantee us a WIN, we will guarantee you that your STACKS will stand. The guy replied no......

Our team didn't build a robot in 6 weeks to play the game with 3 robots we built it to play with 1 robot, our alliance......

What fun would it be to watch sports if teams started making agreements like this??????

[redbeard0531]

Several anti-agreement people said that their team follows the strategy of not knocking down the other teams stacks unless nessisary. Now, you obviously feel that it is ok to tell others your strategy b/c you're posting it here. How is it different to tell your opponent this strategy.

Those that say that it removes the advantage of certain type of bots, are wrong. If a team feel that way then that team uses a different strategy, and the game is played with no agreement.

Also, seed number doesnt matter. Especially since a lot of you say that wining shouldnt be the goal. Dont forget that 2/3 of the teams in the finals DIDNT qualify! if a team has a well built robot then they will either qualify of be picked.

Our team didnt qualify, but we were picked. I consider it to be more of an honor to be "chosen" by another team than if we qualified.

It would be less GP to try to keep your score low to hurt your opponent. I saw this in a match where a team stayed off the ramp, b/c they knew it wouldnt make them win, and didnt want to help the other team (at least I think that was the reason).

btw- It is good strategy to let your opponant on the ramp. If you are winning by enough, it even makes since to take one of yours off and let both of theirs on. It is good for all 4 teams.

I dont like this type of scoring anyway. I think that teams should just get their points, and mabey 1/2 of their opponent's. This would cause teams to compeate b/c a box on your side is more valuable than their's.

just my $0.02 - sorry if I'm rambling

Matt

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[Ben Mitchell]

Originally posted by Redhead Jokes
*confused* I don't experience it all as childish bickering, and FIRST has addressed the issue.

Read some of these posts: people are getting SO upset and SO arguementative over this, to the point that it is becoming rediculous.

Oh, and dispite what "FIRST" said, it is NOT against the rules, and is very much a gray area, ethics wise.

After all: if I knock down my opponents stacks if I win, I get lower QPs. If I knock down my opponets stacks if I lose, they get lower QPs, and I get the same amount.

Which one is more professional - letting scores run high, or dragging your opponents into the grave with you?

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by Ben Mitchell
Oh, and dispite what "FIRST" said, it is NOT against the rules, and is very much a gray area, ethics wise.


*confused* FIRST didn't say it was against the rules.
FIRST said FIXING the game to achieve a tie is against Gracious Professionalism
link (http://jive.ilearning.com/thread.jsp?forum=2&thread=740&tstart=360&trange=15)

[Kris Verdeyen]

Originally posted by redbeard0531
...you obviously feel that it is ok to tell others your strategy b/c you're posting it here. How is it different to tell your opponent this strategy.

It's different because, prior to the match, you tell the other team that their stacks will be standing at the end of the match. That can limit your options, depending on the outcome of the match, to either losing or breaking your promise. There is nothing wrong with telling your opponents that you're going to leave their stacks alone until you're sure that you need to knock them down, but saying that the stacks will be left standing for the whole match is just a bad deal strategically.

[sevisehda]

To CHSRobotics03:

So far I've watched part or all of VCU, OHIO, BAE, UTC and NAVY. All of which are East coast regionals. The 2 regionals you mentioned(Arizona, Sacramento) are West coast. There are differences in how these regionals play out every year. 1 difference is the East coast are more physical than the West. Now I haven't seen it yet but apparently it has happend but is it an epidemic.

There are limits to everything. I can buy a gun but I can't buy a howitzer. If teams agree not to knock over a stack created by another bot or prevent bots from stacking then that is acceptable and isn't unfair. I'm not saying FIRST should make a rule saying teams can't knock down robot stacks but professional sports have rules that make the game more exciting. How long would basketball last if players could just knock down an opposing player and rip the ball from his hands? It would make some matches more exciting if stackers could make stacks and the points were huge. The limit would be "planning" a match for an 8 stack everyone on top maximized match. That is no fun. Should teams agree to let each other stack then it still challenges them to stack and get the wall and fight for the ramp.

Summary: Agreeing not to knock down stacks, OK.
Planning match for 8 stack, Tie for 500 pointsm not OK

[SteveO]

I don't know if this has been posted or not but what about in a case where a team is without a robot because of damage or something else? This was our case twice. We were allied with a team that had damaged their robot and were unable to compete. We made an agreement with the opponents. I don't see the unfairness in that.

As for fixing the match to maximize scores, it will eventually come down to the playoffs and that strategy won't work anymore. If your robot is really great, others will notice you even if you didn't make the big points. That was our case again, even though we were 28th after the seeding matches Clark Magnet Robotics was nice enough to pick us to compete with them. It's not against the rules to make the agreements, its just not very "professional."

[Brandon Martus]

I think the 3+ threads have accomplished enough discussion about this.

Let's put it on the back burner and bring it up in a week or so if there's more to be said.

Ken L said it best:Take a few steps back, spend a day or two reading what's been posted, organize your thoughts and think about it, and then figure out what's the best way to fix this problem. And I think locking some of the threads for a day or two will help folks think more clearly.