Success of the #1 Seeds at the Championship Event

[Karthik]

I was just thinking back to the results of the Championship Event since the onset of divisions, and I realized that the number seeds have done phenomenally well. (I know this isn't land breaking news, I mean they are #1 seeds for a reason, but still the amount of success may come as a surprise to some)

In fact 2004 was the worst year at Championships for #1 seeds, as only wo progressed managed to win their divisions, while the other two lost in the quarterfinals.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane.

2001

3 #1 seeds win their divisions

Newton #1: 71, 294, 125, 365, 279 (Championship Winner)
Archimedes #1: 33, 254, 111, 349, 144 (Championship Finalist)
Curie #1: 60, 85, 75, 217, 115

The fourth division champion was a #2 seed

Galileo #2: 177, 59, 122, 53, 340

1 #1 seed was a division finalist

Galileo #1: 45, 249, 128, 135, 108

2002

3 #1 seeds win their divisions

Newton #1: 173, 71, 66 (Championship Winner)
Einstein #1: 311, 308, 180 (Championship Finalist)
Curie #1: 144, 60, 64

The fourth division champion was a #3 seed

Archimedes #3: 233, 25, 118

1 #1 seed was a division finalist

Archimedes #1: 121, 469, 230



2003

3 #1 seeds win their divisions

Archimedes #1: 111, 469, 65 (Championship Winner)
Curie #1: 343, 25, 494 (Championship Finalist)
Newton #1: 292, 378, 302

The fourth division champion was a #4 seed

Galileo #4: 341, 175, 236

1 #1 seed was a division semfinalist

Galileo #1: 74, 68, 9

2004

2 #1 seeds win their divisions

Galileo #1: 1218, 469, 868 (Championship Finalist)
Newton #1: 1126, 67, 340

2 division champions were #4 seeds

Archimedes #4: 71, 494, 435 (Championship Winner)
Curie #4: 1038, 175, 1388

2 #1 seeds were division quarterfinalists

Curie #1: 47, 126, 148
Archimedes #1: 60, 33, 1241

I'm not sure why I found this to be so interesting. It's no surprise that the #1 seeds have been so successful, especially with the ability to pick from anywhere within the field. It is interesting to look at the difficulties some #1 seeds had this year. I think it's safe to say that the reason they weren't as dominant in as in the past, was because their was a lack of "dominant" robots this year. Fewer teams could control a match on their own. As a result, their are more variable, and more of a margin of error for the elite teams.

Just a thought for the off-season...

[Elgin Clock]

Uh oh..

Does this mean that the Archimeds winning streak for overall Championship event winner is over??

By gosh by golly, I see a pattern..

2001 Newton took it all
2002 Newton again
2003 Archimedes took it all
2004 Archimedes again
Anyone have the info on what division won in previous years??
Would be an interesting study.. to some at least.. ;)

[Karthik]

Anyone have the info on what division won in previous years??
Would be an interesting study.. to some at least.. ;)Sorry Elgin,

There were no divisions prior to 2001...

[Elgin Clock]

Sorry Elgin,

There were no division prior to 2001...
Whoa.. mind blowing.. lol

Sorry bout that.. My first year in FIRST was in 2001.. So I just assumed... (Always a bad thing to do)

Anyways, how did Nationals work back in the day, for my personal knowledge and all others who are curious?

[Max Lobovsky]

I'm not sure why I found this to be so interesting. It's no surprise that the #1 seeds have been so successful, especially with the ability to pick from anywhere within the field.
I think that is the main reason, not just a little bonus. From what I have seen, there are very different games played during qualifying matches and during semis and finals (and sometimes quarters). Very often, the robots that got highest seed were not nearly the best in finals. They usually just had a reliable, but modest score (consistent hangers are a great example). In semi and final matches, these high seeds were often seen giving up their points in favor of doing negative points to the other teams bots that could put some serious points on the board.

[D.J. Fluck]

Anyways, how did Nationals work back in the day, for my personal knowledge and all others who are curious?


My first post in over a week..haha


Imagine back in the day a nationals where there are 240 teams and no division split.

They take the top 16 teams, and they get to pick their two alliance partners, which leaves 224 possible picks. That got to be way too much scouting. So that was the reasoning for the divisions. In previous years, with the less amount of teams it just seemed more like a large regional.

[Elgin Clock]

Wow.. I totally lost the point of the thread for a minute there, I was so concerned with the "raw data". See, that'll teach me. .

Anyways, I know at least this year, we ended up being bumped to the 8th seed in the finals in Archimedes (from 11th) and ended up beating the 1st seed. I loved that.. Something about the last place (in the bracket) achieving over the top seed just made me extremely happy, because this competition this year was so well designed, that it could be done.
I think this happened in some of the other divisions this year as well, 8th seed beating the 1st. I don't recall where though.

Oh, and as for us, as you can tell, we lost eventually in the finals in our division, but oh well...
We lost to the National Champions, so that makes the loss that less painful.:rolleyes:

I was rooting for them cause they were from our division, I didn't care that they beat us.. I just wanted to see our division win. If it were us, I would be extremely happy, but I just wanted to see our division win again, like in 2003.

Nevermind the fact that I predicted Archimedes to win, and I wanted the claim to a correct prediction.. Which I got. :D

[Karthik]

Anyways, how did Nationals work back in the day, for my personal knowledge and all others who are curious?
In the post-alliance era, 1999 and onwards, there were only two years without divisions, 1999, 2000. During these two years, the top 16 teams would draft their alliance partners from the entire field of competitors! In 1999, this field was 207 teams, while in 2000 it was 268 teams.

As you can imagine the scouting process was immense. There were just too many teams to scout. It was nearly impossible to collect information on all the teams. As a result many top teams felt as though they were overlooked. The other major issue was that only twice as many teams made it to the elimination rounds as a regional, yet the number of competing teams was anywhere from 3 to 8 times as large as a regional. Because of this many teams left EPCOT feeling a little empty handed.

So after much discussion, FIRST adopted it's current division setup. The new system ensured that you only had to scout 70-75 teams, a much more reasonable number. And that approximately 1/3 of the teams made the elimnations rounds. A quite desirable ratio.

I would hate to have run my strategy operation under the 1999 constraints ever agin. It was quite the chore back then.