A New Concept for the Tournament Structure in 2004

[Andrew]

One of the problems that has occured with the 2v2, random pairings in Qualifying Matches is that some teams get tough pairings and other teams get advantageous pairings. This affects the overall tournement outcome, even for teams that are not directly affected by these particular pairings.

In other words, if you get paired with tough pairings and advantageous pairings equally, but someone else gets only advantageous pairings, you have to perform at a higher level in order to maintain the same ranking.

What if the tournament structure continued as is (2v2, 4 random teams selected for each match, what teams are in a match are announced in advance) however the alliance pairings were determined at match time based on current rankings.

The highest seed is allied with the lowest seed (call this the blue alliance) and the middle seeds are paired with each other (call this the red alliance).

This concept would guarantee that the eight best teams floated to the top.

[Ryan Foley]

thats a really good idea. It would keep things a lot more equal and fair. I like it.

[MrB]

I agree.. did you get a chance to present this to FIRST at the discussion forums a couple weeks ago?

did they give any feedback?

[D.J. Fluck]

In 2000 I believe (yes I was around) FIRST used to do something similar to that. It gave you the match list with 4 teams in a match, but you didnt know who your partner was until you got to staging. Once all 4 teams were there (or as many that showed up) they told who was partnered with who, based on an automated selection. Even that would also work. In 2001, you really couldn't use that system. In 2002 and 2003 they flat out told you your partner before hand.

[Andrew]

did you get a chance to present this to FIRST at the discussion forums a couple weeks ago?

We almost sent someone to the Forum this year. But, we were all recovering from the season.

[Ryan Foley]

Also, like DJ said, with Andrew's method you wont know your partner until match time. This makes things more interesting, and in my opinion, more exciting. How you know your partner for evey match at the start of the competition makes coming up with strategies way to easy. With the older method, it required teams to come up with quick strategies in less than 2 min. It required more skill at being able to think quickly.

[Ryan Dognaux]

This pairing sounds interesting... I'd like to see it make a comeback for next season's competitions. Matches would be very unpredictible... can anyone say.. scouting nightmare? ;)

[Yan Wang]

I like the idea very much. It'd be pratical and would spread out the competition a lot better.

[pauluffel]

I agree that it sounds fun and I would like to see this come into play in the future. It probably wouldn"t be that difficult to scout because if there was a simple rule that would always be used to determine what the pairings would be out of the 3 you could be paired with, you could guess fairly easily which team you would be with. This vagueness would also make it much more fun for scouts as well, because they would have to think up 3 strategies for each match. If you think about it, the 6 week build is a nightmare too, but that"s what makes it fun :D
I love challenges, eh?

[apk]

Originally posted by Ryan Dognaux
Matches would be very unpredictible... can anyone say.. scouting nightmare? ;)

If this were the case, we (fsn) are going to be put to the test.

[patrickrd]

Sounds like a good idea to me. The rankings would have to be locked maybe 3 matches beforehand in order to give the teams a chance to get to the proper side of the staging area and collaborate with ally, etc.

At nationals in 2002, we were ranked #1 for our division for most of qualifications. This was in part because we had one great ally after another, all who could score enormous amounts of balls quickly. With this new system, we wouldn't have had the good allies time after time, while other teams were never fortunate enough to get any good ally.

Well, g2g
Patrick, NY

[Ken Leung]

What if the highest seed in the 4 teams keep getting paired with the lowest seeded teams with non-functional robot?

Then most of their matches they will be stuck to fight against 2 functional robots.

That's what happened to my team at 2000, and every match we were paired with really bad partners a lot of times.

[Rob Colatutto]

That becomes a problem at smaller regionals. I know from the SBPLI regional, of about 35 teams....there are sometimes up to 10 robots that don't really work. So thats how a lot of really good robots end up seedling low, because of bad partners and facing 2 working robots.

[Joe Matt]

Oh yeah, not to be blunt, but I hate the idea.

Yeah, I might be a trouble maker, but look at it this way: FIRST isn't about making everything even for everyone since it would remove the fun and competitiveness of it (as Dean said.) This 'new' system would take away the real life aspects of the game such as that you won't be able to win every time and there won't be a god like figure that would automatically pair you with alliance partner that is the same using formulas. FIRST is about replicating situations that you might face in real life, if your an engineer or not.

I vote no...


Why am I always the one who disagrees? :(

[Mike o.]

I must agree and disagree with the situation

I agree in the sense that it seems fair and all and that its a little logical in the sense of the phrase "crunchtime thinking"

I disagree in the respect that it takes away the funn of being able to plan ahead and just process your battle plan(strategy).

truthfully i am very mixed up, i would althogh probably like to see stay the same

Mike

[SarahB]

Originally posted by Rob Colatutto
That becomes a problem at smaller regionals. I know from the SBPLI regional, of about 35 teams....there are sometimes up to 10 robots that don't really work. So thats how a lot of really good robots end up seedling low, because of bad partners and facing 2 working robots.

At SBPLI many of those really good teams ranked low were also those that weren’t really working. Rage, arguably one of the best teams there, was broken for a good portion of Friday, as were many other good teams.

The point of this system is to try to even out the number of good and bad partners. If you’re highly ranked and you get paired with a team that isn’t working, chances are you’ll drop in the rankings. So most likely next time you’ll be paired with the middle ranked team. If the partner is working then they have a good chance of moving up, if not you’ll move down further and next round you’ll probably be paired with the highest ranked team and thus you should have a good chance of scoring well and moving up. The cycle would continue like that throughout the competition so the advantages and disadvantages would balance each other out. In the current system you could very likely get paired with the lowest ranked partner every time and you’d get screwed even worse. Or you could get paired with the highest ranked every time and you’d be ranked artificially high.

[pauluffel]

Eh, even though this is an attempt to make things "more fair," it would not limit competitiveness in my mind, rather it would level out the discrepancies of "evenness" among everyone without the consequences of more limiting methods.
About this making the best teams always have to play along side the worst teams...I think that"s a great idea, because doesn"t their status as one of the "best" teams show that they are more readily able to handle a problem like an inoperative alliance partner? As a member on a team last year that was paired a couple of times with a team that was immobile yet still one, I really don't like being stuck with a broken team, yet it was still fun and it made the matches for the broken team fun too because even though their robot didn"t work, they still got some success as a very tangible award for their hard work. This year I was on a different team that was one of those teams that didn't move (well, we moved about 5' average in each of our matches [and yes, that was generally a straight line]). We were initially buoyed up in the standings by our placements with good teams (we still did a bit in the match where most of our points came from, but we couldn"t have one with another robot like ourselves as a partner) but in the end we fell back as the leaders were shown and we were very logically not picked as an alliance member.

Synopsis (for those of you who couldn"t understand my rambling or chose not to read it) This system would more evenly spread the joy of a competition around the teams and it would not prevent the good teams from showing their worth as a partner (because when looking for people to choose as alliance members, scouts will know that the rankings do not tell all [which would also be helpful for those of us teams who may have 5|<1ll2 but aren"t that good at seeding highly]).

(Also, you wouldn"t be that pressed for time to think up strategies, because after everyone scheduled for your next match had finished their previous match, you four wouldn"t exchange spots, you would merely have other teams moving around you in the rankings. And JosephM, it seems KenL disagrees at least somewhat too, so don"t feel too alone.)

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally posted by pauluffel
About this making the best teams always have to play along side the worst teams...I think that"s a great idea, because doesn"t their status as one of the "best" teams show that they are more readily able to handle a problem like an inoperative alliance partner?)

Personally, I disagree with that point 100%. I know from personal experience that "good" teams aren't necessarily prepared to go it alone. At Nats in 2002 and 2003, my team was seeded #2 in our respective division. We did it not because we were a do-it-all team that could go out and win matches singlehandedly, but because we were great strategists and team players. When paired with any decent team, we could go out and rack up respectable scores, and the few times we got really good alliances, we'd go out and clean up the match. However, both times, we were hurt and missed out on the #1 seed because we were stuck with an inoperable partner in one of our last matches of the day. While a team that could do it all alone, like, say, 71 in 2002, might be able to survive continuous matchups with broken bots, teams like mine would be hurt because we did well as part of an alliance, not just our team going it alone. This idea is intriguing, but I just don't think it's a good idea. Better randomization of match pairings is the only way to truly give a fair experience.

[Joe Johnson]

I don't know if I agree with the particulars of the proposal but I think that it would be worth giving some thought to how do you seed teams more effectively.

There are many many cases where teams that do not belong on top end up highly ranked due to lucky partners, lucky opponents or whatever.

I don't have a good answer, but I think it is worth thinking about.

Part of me feels that there is a lot of information in peoples heads about teams.

Is there some way we could allow teams to rate their opponents and their partners performance during the last round and then use this information to help guide the seeding process?

I know there could be a lot of problems with this, but perhaps we could devise a system that could deal with this situation.

Think about it.

Joe J.

[Andrew]

I know from personal experience that "good" teams aren't necessarily prepared to go it alone.

I think you missed the point. Only in rare circumstances would a team have to "go it alone." And that circumstance is no different than the random chance that you have to "go it alone" right now.

Consider the case where the number 1 and 2 teams come up against the number 39 and 40 teams. 1+2 versus 39+40 will usually end in a blow out and an uninteresting match. 1 and 2 will become more ensconced in the rankings, while 39 and 40 will be lodged at the bottom more firmly.

However, 1+40 versus 2+39 should be an interesting match. It should be more fun for all concerned. A competitive match is more fun to play and gives you a better feeling at the end than a blow out.

The case that many of the nay-sayers are articulating is when 1, 2, 3, and 40 occur. Then, 1+40 will have a tough time against 2+3. They would rather have 1+2 go against 3+40.

I know from the SBPLI regional, of about 35 teams....there are sometimes up to 10 robots that don't really work.

This is a whole different problem. However, if everyone does their scouting, if you are one out of 24 working robots, you should get picked for elims and the qualifying rounds are really not important.

[Andy Grady]

This is a good idea, I just don't think it would be good for FIRST. If you think about it, the best teams float to the top anyway, because what makes a team good is when they can win reguardless of who the partner is. As for the teams who aren't so good that just happen to make it up to the top? Well, they are the cinderella's. Its always fun to root for the teams who are the underdogs. If you try to weed them out, you would have teams year after year getting nixed out of the playoffs, instead of having a chance to experience the energy that the elimination rounds bring.

Good Luck All,
Andy Grady

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally posted by Joe Johnson
I know there could be a lot of problems with this, but perhaps we could devise a system that could deal with this situation.

Think about it.

I think that this proposal could be a great thing for FIRST once all the bugs are worked out.

Can you imagine? Indeed, scouting would be a nightmare. However, scouting would become a more important part of competition - instead of relying on seeding position to determine who the best of the best are, you could analyze match play (not that we don't do that now, but now every team would have to be carefully watched instead of just the traditional powerhouse teams and excellent rookies of the year).

I'm very excited. I think this is a great idea... and might just spice things up a bit in the FIRST community.

[Steve Shade]

I agree with Andy Grady here. Over the years I've been in FIRST, I've been on both sides of 2 higher seeded teams just lay out 2 lower seeded teams; 2 middle seeded teams contest closely with the upper and lower seeded team; and 2 lower seeded teams beating 2 higher (in some cases much higher) seeded teams. By the end of an event, the good teams always find their way to the top. The excitement value comes as much from the game as it does from the robots that participate in a particular round, and seeding has little to do with this. I would be OK with going back to only knowing partners 2 minutes before a match, but would not want to get partnered with a team based on seeding.

Steve Shade

[Joe Johnson]

I like to think about seeding this way:

Suppose there is some "true" ranking that the gods on Mt. Olympus hand down (via their oracle at Delphi -- notice how I slipped that greek god reference in there smooth as butter ;-), then the ranking we obtain via seeding match information can be viewed as a hypothesis (or guess) at these "true" rankings.

The seeding matches can then be viewed as tests of the hypothesis.

The job of a seeding and ranking is to produce the ranking that is most likey to be the best approximation (which I will define as the ranking with lowest average ranking error).

Thinking about seeding/ranking this way, perhaps there is a method where every team plays a round of seeding. Then we produce a ranking hypothesis. Then we produce another seeding round to test the hypothesis (perhaps teams with ranks near eachother would be have eachother as opponents, as an example). Then we produce another ranking hypothesis, and so on.

I think that this could produce a better ranking in the end (especially if we could figure out a way to include human information in the rank estimates such as what I proposed earlier in this thread).

There are a number of problems, of course. FIRST would be required to do more work -- they are already overworked and need more to do like they need to have 100 lbs strapped to their backs. Also, I am not convinced that FIRST actually WANTS an improved ranking system -- I think FIRST generally believes there are advantages to baking in some randomness (it keeps high end teams from dominating too much and keeps low end teams from hopelessness).

But... ...don't let that stop us. I think the idea of an improved system is worth thinking about. Perhaps we can come up with a system that not only provides an improved ranking method but also provides other benefits (e.g. more exciting competitions) that are worth implementing.


Joe J.

[JVN]

Originally posted by Steve Shade
I would be OK with going back to only knowing partners 2 minutes before a match...


I disagree entirely.
I like knowing your partners ahead of time. I feel that one can better analyze a match ahead of time, and come up with a better strategy when one doesn't need to think about 2 other matches that could possibly occur.

I'm a HUGE fan of pre-match strategy. In 2000/2001 things were too hectic to do this effectively. Just imagine how 2001 would have run if we knew our partners ahead of time. I think we would have seen a few more big scores.

Another reason...
Remember the "screaming coaches" from 2001 that everyone hated so much? Strategy discussions that were more like arguments? If we go back to the "seat of our pants" strategy, we'll see a lot more of this.

Some people may believe that by only allowing a team 1 coach in the booth, this won't happen, but I disagree. In order to keep the peace, FIRST should keep things as they are. Match planning runs so smoothly now. It is also easier for teams to queue without having to discuss strategies "on the fly".

$.02

John

[ChrisH]

I agree with John,

Too often a 2-minute strategy session becomes a case of "the team that shouts the loudest sets the strategy". The shouting does not have to be physical either. Sometimes a team's standing in the rankings is enough to make things happen their way. Not that this is necessarily their fault. How can they know the little guy had a better idea if he never says anything about it?

Knowing the match pairings well ahead of time allows time for discussion and consideration (in both senses of the word). On the other hand I don't think it is necessary to know every match for the whole weekend on Thursday morning. So adjusting the match schedule based on rankings for Saturday morning could work. An hour's notice should be enough IMO.

[Steve W]

Everyone seems to be talking about scouting being harder and the best teams rising to the top. Being on a team that never broke the top 20 in 2 regionals and championships I question the "best" rising to the top. In both regionals our team was chosen in the 1st round by one of the top 6 teams. Even though ranked around 50th at championship we were still chosen. We didn't have good pairing all the time and didn't run up high scores. We were consistant and could do our job well. Other teams noticed and we fit into their strategy. Were we the best? I guess it depends on what best is.
As was stated earlier, nothing is fair. What we have to do is our best. As someone who has been working for one company for 29 years, I know that the best doesn't rise to the top. I also know that satisfaction comes only from hard work and doing your best. You are not always rewarded or recognised, but sleeping is easy knowing that you have put your all into it.
The question I guess is is this a good idea? There are pluses and minuses on both sides. How about a 4 x 4 contest? better chances of getting more balanced teams. More matches per day. Less pit time for repairs. After this season maybe not less pit time.

[Joe Johnson]

I agree with those who argue against rushed revelations of partners and opponents.

Concerning the game in 2001, while the idea of not knowing your partners and opponents was novel, in practice it was aweful (IMHO).

It put WAY too much stress on the drive team especially with that year's game which had 4 teams of 5 people each (20 people!) that had to negotiate a strategy under stress in very rushed conditions. Top it off with the fact that one task was HUGE in terms of the final goal (which ment that the fate of all depended hugely on which team was selected to perform that huge task) and you had a system that was all but guarranteed to result in humans behaving badly*.

In any case, even if we don't have the added flaws of the 2001 game, I feel that a reasonable amount of time to plan a strategy is good for the game and therefore good for FIRST.

Joe J.

*I am quite serious about the stress on folks being way too high in the 2001 game. Our drive coach was so stressed out that he had chest pains serious enough that he went to see doctor after the New England Regional. We don't need that kind of stress.

[Joe Johnson]

Steve's point about ranking low (50th) but being selected high points to my idea that there is a disconnect between ranks as currenlty calculated and some notion of rank that reflects a team's "true" rank. Obviously the humans in the audience (or at least on the teams the did the drafting) thought your rank should have been much higher than your official ranking.

Humans do not rank teams with weighted averages and such, we are able to incorporate a lot of inputs from a variety of source and somehow (by magic?) come up with a relative ranking of robots.

I think that it would be an improvement to the seeding process if we could somehow incorporate this wonderful ability of humans to rank things on complex scales in a fair way that would not allow other less laudable human attributes (selfishness, pettiness, revenge, etc.) to screw it up.

I don't know if it is possible, but it is an interesting problem.

Joe J.

[pauluffel]

About only having two minutes to prepare for your match with this new partnering method...
For the last couple of years (and probably since before I got into this) FIRST has tried to schedule the matches so that each team has about an hour of pit time between matches. Say you're team A and you just had a match that team B was in as well. The other two teams that would be in your match - teams C and D - were in the previous match, and in about an hour, there would be a match involving teams A, B, C, and D. Once your match with B had concluded, none of the four teams would have another match until the match of ABCD came up around an hour later. Therefore, the rankings of ABC&D would not change in relation to each other until the match you all took part in. Because of this, you would know which teams were the best, worst, and between those extremes an hour before the match began and you would have an hour to strategize.
I tried to say this earlier, but I didn"t get it across. If this is still too cryptic, someone who understands please clarify it.

[ChrisH]

Originally posted by Joe Johnson
I think that it would be an improvement to the seeding process if we could somehow incorporate this wonderful ability of humans to rank things on complex scales in a fair way that would not allow other less laudable human attributes (selfishness, pettiness, revenge, etc.) to screw it up.

I don't know if it is possible, but it is an interesting problem.

I agree it is an interesting problem. However, humans being what they are, I doubt if it is solvable. While you might be able to make a system that is resistant to those less laudable inputs, I doubt they could be eliminated entirely.

One of the basic assumptions of the current tournament structure seems to be that two properly combined teams working together can out perform a single very capable team with a mediocre partner, or one that isn't a good fit. Smart teams look for synergy in scouting for partners. Steve's team was probably chosen because they could do one aspect of the game reliably and well. The Alliance leader could then concentrate on other things because they were pretty sure Steve's team would handle their end.

Because different teams will have different strengths and weaknesses, they should look for different things in a partner. That means they should use different weighting factors in evaluating other teams. The team that is a perfect fit for the BeachBots might be a team that does exactly the same things as Chief Delphi (to pick a couple of random examples ) :D So they might be the right team for us and the wrong one for CD. There are many factors that go into such a decision, so picking the right partner can be a real challenge. Especially if there are other smart teams out there looking for the same kinds of robots you are.

So I don't think we will ever be able to come up with any uniform ranking structure. We might be able to come up with a relatively consistent database for teams to use for their own ranking purposes. But even that would be a challenge.

[Andrew]

Now that the waters have been sufficiently muddied...

There have been some interesting questions raised by this discussion.

1. Is there a "true ranking" of teams?

2. Should the qualifying rounds be designed to produce this "true ranking"?

3. Since Eliminations are going to pit alliances (not teams) against each other, should the rankings incorporate the "functional class" into which a robot fits?

My answers are:
1. There are several "true rankings" of teams. The goal is to define a relevant ranking. Each ranking would be a scalar cost function which takes a set of inputs (the teams at a competition) and converges to the same values after a finite number of iterations (8 matches).

Since there are a finite number of teams and matches, this process should be deterministic rather than stochastic. Therefore, it should include the initial selection of teams for matches and should be invariant over the order in which teams are entered into the process.

2. I think that qualifying should produce true ranking. However, there seems to be some debate.

If some random component to seeding were desired, I would prefer to play a few qualifying matches and then draw seeds out of a hat, where the order of the draw is determined by your rank at the end of qualifying. With such a system, we could dispense with qualifying in half a day and go to a double elimination tournament for the next day and a half. (Note: there is heavy sarcasm in the above statement. Don't take it seriously.)

3. Each year, there have been generally about five practical "solutions" to the game. Each one of these solutions could be called a class (A, B, C, D, E). Robots generally fit into one or two classes.

This year the classes seem to be:
A = strong man, hill taker
B = autonomous stack attack
C = bin pusher, sweeper, collector
D = stacker
E = hill dominator

In a well ordered world (ie one in which rock-paper-scissors doesn't work), the combination of the best in class for two of the classes will always be the winning alliance.

In other words, best(A) + best(B) will always beat best(C)+best(D), best(C)+best(E), best(D)+best(E), second best(A) + second best(B), second best(A)+best(C,D,E), second best(B)+best(C,D,E).

The ideal ranking procedure should accomplish two things. It should establish the precedence (A > B > C > D > E) and it should establish ranking within the classes. In the case of multi-class robots, they would potentially fall in between. In other words, an A+B robot (which is not either best(A) or best(B)) should fall in between best(A) and best(B) in the rankings.

[JP_1163]

Seems to me that this issue is two-fold. First, does the strategy , effective robotics design and game play have anything to do with standings in all cases? An argument could be made that alliance and luck have something to do with it as well as the former. Thus the "standings" on the first day are arbitrary to some degree. Second, if a true pairing was to be made then the "practice day" would actually be a day for point allocation and a seeding process. In this case the "practice" sessions would be actual competition and teams would be "seeded" based upon their performance on this day. Doing this could create a tremendous amount of problems. Some teams are still on a "shakeout cruise" mode and need the day for trial and error. Some teams have already competed at one or more Regional events and are simply scoping out the competition and fine tuning their 'bot. Thus, some could argue that a true "seeding" is impossible. The only other means of a true seeding would be to take the first round scores of all teams, rank order and create a round-robin where the top and bottom teams would pair off in an elimination setup and only the strongest would survive into a pool where alliance teams could be managed. It would be a tremendous opportunity to really see who had what it takes but the administration of the "game" would be a logistical nightmare! I like the idea of fairness and ultimate selection of a "champion" but ultimately the goals of FIRST and a true, even and fair tournament may never be possible under the current system.
Happy 4th of July!
:cool:

[Joe Johnson]

In a well ordered world (ie one in which rock-paper-scissors doesn't work), the combination of the best in class for two of the classes will always be the winning alliance.

This brings up one problem I think with rankings. I think that Paper-Scissors-Rock situations happen all the time in FIRST competitions.

By this I mean that A can almost always beat B, B can almost always beat C, and C can almost always beat A.

Think back to your own experience. In the Elimination Rounds, how many times have you hoped that team XXX would come up against team YYY because you thought you would have difficulty with team XXX but you could beat YYY and that team YYY could probably beat XXX?

I can think of a number of times this has come up.

Joe J.

[Ken Patton]

I agree that rock-paper-scissors situations make it difficult to come up with a true ranking that is meaningful. Thats why it is so great to allow the teams to pick their partners for eliminations - they get to use their own strategy and opinion to decide on a team's rank.

Publishing the ally-opponent list is a great thing because it gets teams talking to each other. I strongly believe that we should not do away with this in any sort of seeding system.

Ken

[Andrew]

The best thing about 2v2 and publishing matches in advance is that you are really incentivized to talk to other teams.

The worst thing about the 4v0 year was that you had twelve teams in a flight and you didn't know who you were going to be paired with until instants before the match. That was a bad ide-ar!

My team only has enough focus to talk strategy for one match in advance, so an hour before the match is plenty of time to find out who our partner is.

This year's lack of randomization was disheartening because we didn't get much variety in pairings. Another reason for a partially deterministic approach.

I agree that rankings are never going to be absolute. However, it would be nice if the number 1 ranked team were better than the number 20 ranked team which is better than the number 40 ranked team.

I would also like to see more "marquee matchups." A system which opposes teams which are competitive with each other would yield matches which would be more interesting for us (the players) and the spectators.

As for including subjective information in the rankings...
If the qualifying followed a deterministic approach (high seeds playing each other, low seeds playing each other) I suppose you could have a "coaches poll" (like the college football rankings) at the end of practice day and form an initial seeding. After that, you go up or down based on performance.

[Tyler Olds]

Originally posted by Ryan Dognaux
This pairing sounds interesting... I'd like to see it make a comeback for next season's competitions. Matches would be very unpredictible... can anyone say.. scouting nightmare? ;)

Ok as head of all that stuff on my team. I would actually liek to relax. I prob got no more than 5 min of actualy sitting down doing nothing time at regionals. Those 5 min would become 0 if we went back to not knowing before.

Please, I would like to see my friends too!!!

[Ashley Weed]

Originally posted by Ken L
What if the highest seed in the 4 teams keep getting paired with the lowest seeded teams with non-functional robot?



If one's robot is truly that good, then the help of others is not necissary. In 2002, through 5 competitions, we had appx. 8 matches where we were alone (with a dead bot or a no-show), and those 8 matches were some of our best matches. We never had a problem winning, and when we were alone.. we sorta shined because we didn't have to worry about getting our parner back home. We were multi-functional.. and could easily score 40 points by ourselves. We really didn't play well with others! ;)

All in all, I drove through the games of Ramp Riot, Zone Zeal, and Stack Attack. It is a complete nightmare when you have no idea who you will be paired with in your next match. The 2 vs. 2 is a good setup so is 1 vs. 1 vs. 1 from back in the old day of '98.

[Tyler Olds]

Originally posted by weedie
If one's robot is truly that good, then the help of others is not necissary. In 2002, through 5 competitions, we had appx. 8 matches where we were alone (with a dead bot or a no-show), and those 8 matches were some of our best matches. We never had a problem winning, and when we were alone.. we sorta shined because we didn't have to worry about getting our parner back home. We were multi-functional.. and could easily score 40 points by ourselves. We really didn't play well with others! ;)



I would agree with you, as we won the play of the day in 2002 with a non functional partner. However this is not always the case as problems with your own robot can occur. Also I think the whole working together buisneuss thing is nice to have with the 2v2 matches.