Re: Wild Card 2013
 

The wildcard slot goes unused in both cases. The only case in which a wildcard gets passed down is if the team receiving the wildcard already qualified at a PREVIOUS event. Additional qualifications at the same event do not count.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

I see, that explains it. My extended question, though, is whether FIRST should do something so that X number of new teams (6, I believe? RCA, EI, Rookie All-Star, and 3 Winners normally) qualify for Championships from each regional. For example, reworking the Wild Card rules so that doubling qualifying by winning RCA/EI/All-Star and the regional itself at the same event doesn't "take away" a Championship slot from someone else at that event.

I'm not sure I stand one way or another on this issue, I'm just interested in getting more thoughts.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

If they were to always say 6 new teams per regional, it would total up to more then 400 teams that would qualify. I think the reason they added the wild card the way they did is that they took away the early registration for champs, and adding the wild card in the current way most likely evens out the teams that would have come from that.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

1288 and 1756 just earned wild card spots at the Crossroads Regional, courtesy of 234 and 868's win and 447's previous qualification.

2996 and 1410 just earned wild card spots at the Colorado Regional, courtesy of 701 and 2169's win.

4001 just earned a wild card spot at the Western Canadian Regional, courtesy of 1334's win.

4159 just earned a wild card spot at the Silicon Valley Regional, courtesy of 254 and 118's win. The other wild card spot went to waste, the first wasted spot of the season.

2403 just earned a wild card spot at the Las Vegas Regional, courtesy of 1717's win and 973 and 1868's previous qualifications.

1899 and 3145 just earned wild card spots at the Spokane Regional, courtesy of 2471 and 1983's win.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

4001 just earned a wildcard at Western Canada, courtesy of 1334's wildcard/EI last week.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Wildcards at play in Vegas too! :)

IIRC, 2403 qualifies for Champs either way, very cool since they only recently registered for Vegas after some hard fundraising about a week ago! Very happy for their team.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Silicon Vally just had an unused wildcard.

254 and 118 both created wildcards. 1868 won Chairman's at Sacramento, and 973 won LA, so one wildcard went to 4159, and the other got lost in the abyss.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

All 6 finalist teams at Crossroads qualified.

Winners 868 and 234 had previously qualified.
That passed two slots to the finalist alliance.

Finalist 447 (Captain) had previously qualified.
1288 and 1756 got the slots.

very cool that all 6 teams playing qualified for CHP.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Yes that is verrrrry cool! Says Team 1288.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

I attached a file that includes all teams that have qualified for the Championship during this season (and therefore all teams that can open wild card spots in their later events). It also shows those teams' Week 7 events (excluding MSC & MARCMP; will update later this week). Finally, how each team qualified, in a separate worksheet.

10 wild card spots were opened in Week 6; only 7 were used. Teams that earned wild card spots were listed in a previous post. Congratulations to Congratulations to all those teams. 3 wild card spots were wasted this week: one at the Silicon Valley Regional because the entire finalist alliance had qualified before using the second wild card spot. The others were teams that qualified via award at the same event as they earned a wild card spot: 2996 (RCA at the Colorado Regional) and 2403 (EI at the Las Vegas Regional).

There have been 51 "extra" qualifications, 28 wild card spots generated, and 23 wild card spots used. The following teams are listed with (# of qualifications, # of wild card spots opened):
118 (4, 2)
1983 (4, 2)
2056 (4, 2)
1114 (3, 2)
1986 (3, 2)
525 (3, 1)
701 (3, 1)
1334 (3, 1)
79 (2, 1)
148 (2, 1)
234 (2, 1)
254 (2, 1)
359 (2, 1)
379 (2, 1)
868 (2, 1)
1538 (2, 1)
1717 (2, 1)
1806 (2, 1)
2052 (2, 1)
2169 (2, 1)
2468 (2, 1)
2471 (2, 1)
2789 (2, 1)
116 (2, 0)
126 (2, 0)
128 (2, 0)
358 (2, 0)
948 (2, 0)
987 (2, 0)
1208 (2, 0)
1732 (2, 0)
1902 (2, 0)
2046 (2, 0)
2341 (2, 0)
2403 (2, 0)
2648 (2, 0)
2996 (2, 0)
3880 (2, 0)
3990 (2, 0)
4451 (2, 0)
4499 (2, 0)
4543 (2, 0)
4607 (2, 0)
4814 (2, 0)

With only the Chesapeake Regional this week, only a few teams can open wild card slots in Week 7. I'll list them here:
Chesapeake: 128, 1086, 1111, 1559, 1885, 4122, 4464 & 4505

If any of these teams are Regional Champions at the Chesapeake Regional, they will open a wild card spot for a team from the Finalist Alliance.

We also have the Michigan State Championship and Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship this week. Teams attending these events that have already qualified and/or registered for the FRC Championship and win an award may "take up" a Championship spot that won't be passed down. I'll post a list of these teams later this week once all teams are registered, but here's on example. Team 27 qualified for the FRC CMP by winning EI at Northern Lights. They're a contender for a Chairman's Award at MSC. If 27 wins a CA, their spot won't be given to the next ranked team; it'll go the way of wasted wild card spots and Michigan will have 26 Championship slots instead of 27.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

With no wild card spots generated or used in week 7, the previous stats remain pretty much unchanged. The situation with Team 27 did occur and 26 teams have earned CMP qualification at the Michigan State Championship. Nothing similar happened at the MAR Championship; they qualified their normal 14 teams.


That leaves us at 51 "extra" qualifications, 28 wild card spots generated, and 23 wild card spots used.

~55% of extra qualifications generated a wild card spot
~45% of extra qualifications generated a wild card spot that was used

1114 and 1986 were "wild card heroes," creating as many wild card spots as any other team in the world while maintaining a 1:1 extra qualification to wild card spot generation ratio.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Now that Wild Cards have run their course for the season, what do people think?

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

300% support them. The greats can continue to win, and it is getting much harder for people to complain about it.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

So far, awesome!

Lets hope it increases the competitiveness at the Championship.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

I think they've really changed some of the dynamics of the later regionals with elite teams attending. Instead of teams expecting that they won't qualify for worlds, they still have hope that they can. This really opens doors for good-but-not-great teams.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

As a Canadian who has competed alongside 1114 for 11 years and 2056 for 7, I LOVE the wildcard system.

As far as I'm concerned its one of the best changes HQ has made in a long time.

The only way it could be better is if ANY team pre-qualified for ANY reason (HOF, Original, Previous Year CMP Winners, Previous Year EI Winner), OR earning >1 seat at the SAME event should generate a wildcard. Meaning ANY time a team earns a second seat, regardless of when/how the 2 seats were earned should generate a wildcard at the event that generated the 2nd seat.

Additionally, have a few more teams eligible to earn wildcard seats after the finalist alliance, like say ID winner, or EE winner, or IiC winner, or Highest seed not on the winner or finalist alliance.

My goal with such changes is to have each event qualifying 6 teams not otherwise qualified. Yes I realize this quickly means a bigger Championship. I'm OK with that. It's easy to solve, by having 2 side-by-side fields for each CMP division. Basically doubles match throughput, allowing for more matches/team with more teams, without the sound pollution and additional volunteers needed to run an 8 division CMP.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

This same sentiment has been brought up before but the same question still remains, who do you then give that next spot to? What are the criteria for the next spot? If your RCA doubles up, do you give it to the ticket to the 2nd place Chairman's team? But then they are going to CMP for something they didnt get and wont compete for. The same thing could be said for REI too. I think how it is now is how it should stay.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

It's a start, but there's gotta be a way to get deserving teams from earlier events or different positions in the tournament to Champs as well. Sometimes the second best alliance plays the first best in the quarterfinals.

I'm quite glad it exists as is, but it could always be better.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

I think at least the Finalist Alliance Captains of events without Wild Card generators should be given first position in the Championship waitlist. This would throw a cookie out to finalists at early season events who may be equally as "worthy" as later season finalist wild cards, but who didn't have the good fortune of earning their finalist award at a wild card qualifying event.

If there are more finalist waitlist teams than available waitlist CMP spots, FIRST can hold a quick lottery to determine which ones to invite.

I agree that we should be doing anything we can to maximize the number of teams at the CMP who are competitive on the playing field. This is another way to accomplish that goal.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

+1

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

I also think not giving Wild Card berths to 1st wins from pre-qualified teams is a little bit silly. We will have eight fewer pre-qualified teams next year, what's the harm in allowing finalists behind any team that won the event and is already going to Championship?

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

It would certainly make this rule easier to explain to parents at events.... I've had to explain the wild car system far too many times this year.

It'd be a lot easier to say, "Anytime a team loses in finals to a team already qualified for champs".

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

@dodar: simple.

There is a priority list of who the wildcards go to. It starts as it should with the finalist alliance. It should not matter if the wildcard was generated by a team winning CA or EI or RAS, the first wildcard generated at a given event goes to the finalist captain. I'm just suggesting additions to the list beyond Finalist Backup Bot, and suggesting that it not simply be just wins that generate a wildcard, but rather, any qualification beyond a team's first.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Exactly, how do you justify giving the WC spot generated by the RAS/EI/CA to a robot performance team rather than the teams that would have won those awards had those other teams not won it?

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Again, easy.

Think of it as though the wild card they generate is from their non-RCA qualification.

You can't qualify extra RAS/CA/EI teams. That would devalue those awards.

Besides, the number of teams that double qualify with 2x EI in the same year or RCA+EI can probably be counted on one hand.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Im not talking about multiples of the same award or combos of non-winning awards; Im talking about a team that had already qualified by any means that won RAS/EI/CA, how do you justify giving it to teams that say didnt submit for the RA at that event when a lot of other teams did that didnt win and arent signed up for CMP? Thats the conundrum that is given when having this conversation.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

I guess I just don't see it as a problem. The team was awarded for the non robot award. If winning said award earned the team a 2nd CMP qualification so be it. Qualifying teams on non robot awards sends them so they compete for those awards at the cmp level.

If they were already going either on robot merit or something else, then give the extra seat to a team on some measure of robot merit, thereby improving competitiveness at cmp.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Once again, playing devil's advocate, how do you short change that 2nd place Chairman's team though? They worked hard enough that, if that double qualify team hadnt been there, they would have won RCA and qualified for CMP.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

I don't see it as being shortchanged. You can only submit for RCA at one event. Therefore, nobody is going around scooping up more than one. If you chose to submit at a particular event, you knew who you were up against.

The double qualify team won fair and square.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Then why can you say that teams that double qualify through on field merit deserves to open up WC slots?

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Because there are 400 competitors for the world championship, and a very limited number of judging spots for the CCA. If you think of the RCA not as a vehicle to get teams in the dome and instead as a way to find the most qualified CCA team it will all make sense. By definition the second place CA team can't possibly be a bigger contender for the CCA than the winning team, at least in theory. The same is in no way true for finding the World Champion winning alliance.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

It's not just match throughput. Where do you put the extra pits (and fields)? It's tight in here. It does take lots of extra volunteers--almost everyone for the 4 extra fields, plus more inspectors, judges, and crowd control at least. Not to mention extra FedEx donations, all kinds of supplies, and any number of other things we don't know about.

I'm all for equalizing the wildcard system across all events, but it needs to be scalable.

That said, I'm not sure what to do beyond the status quo. The only absolute way of regulating invitations is to rank teams for a set number of open slots. Districts already do this, but it's not impossible to implement in the regional infrastructure. Point rank the teams, but you still have to decide what events to count (1st only, average 1st and 2nd), and when invites go out, etc.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

As far as I understand it, we were only using 1 of several halls in the building housing the pits. I know thats how it was in Atlanta. Additionally, it seems to me from that map that there's a bunch of extra space in the FLL pits (the gaps between them, specifically).

No matter which way you slice it, you either have to start qualifying less teams to CMP or make CMP bigger, as the program is already filling CMP to capacity, and each year a couple more regionals come online. If that means that CMP's current home can't hold us, then so be it.

You can't chop the 6 teams that qualify from a regional (the winning alliance should go, and celebrating RCA/EI/RAS winners is critical to FIRSTs mission), which means the only answer from that front is to migrate more regions to the district model, but it still doesn't solve the problem. Its not fair to district model adopting regions to kneecap their number of available CMP berths relative to regions where the traditional regional model is used, so IMO, the ONLY viable option is for the big show to get bigger. For the big show to get bigger, it needs more space for pits, more volunteers, and more fields, for more match throughput (since we all know <9 matches per robot is just unacceptable.)

To me, 4x doublefield divisions is less of a strain on the system than 8x single field divisions. You can get away with fewer volunteers (note: this may vary by game [in 2013 for example, field reset were often used to help with scoring]) for field reset, scorekeeping, refereeing, and more.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

2 fields per division would be the same strain as 8 fields...

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Worse in that it would be much harder to scout 2 fields.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Its not like matches are simultaneously happening on 2 fields. You interleave them. FieldA resets and gets the next 6 robots connected while FieldB plays. You would place them adjacent to one another.

2004 and 2006 Greater Toronto regional were done this way.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

That'd be just as hard to scout.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

How do teams even change their WPA key for each field in their division?

Not to mention that running matches twice as fast leaves half as much time between a teams' matches. But the travel time between the pits and field remains the same. Basically no time to do repairs.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Both fields for a division run the same set of WPA keys, besides, we're the midst of a control system overhaul for 2015. They could easily plan for this capability.

When 1075 went to Atlanta in 2010 I don't recall match cycle times to have been an issue at all. They would get a bit shorter, but not 2x shorter, because you would have more teams

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

That's true... if you're talking about the Georgia World Congress Center. I believe only one of 3 giant halls were ever used for CMP, and I think the entirety of America's Center is used for CMP at the moment, but I could be wrong.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

One of the things I hate about the system is that when we won a regional, we didn't generate a wild card spot even though we're an original team and are qualified on that basis.
I think that HOF, Original, World Champion, and World EI winners should generate wildcard spots.

I also think there needs to be some way to give early season event-attendees wild card spots. A great example of this is 2791, Shaker Robotics. Shaker attended BAE Week one and did decently.
They then attended a Week 2 competition, WPI, and with their improvements managed to get the number one seed as well as become finalists. A number of factor prevented them (and us) from winning that regional, but their robot was top-notch. I think if they had the chance, they'd have more improvements at champs and be a force to be reckoned with.
But they do not, as they attended two early season regionals.

I don't know about Chairmans, EI, Rookie All-star generating a wild card spot if the team is already qualified. The criteria for that would be tough to judge fairly.
I also think that if a wild card spot would go unused, it should pass down until it IS used. Possibly to the next highest seed alliance captain, 1st pick, and so on.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

This should also include the Einstein teams from last year. It would have been great to see 216 qualify at the Western Canada FRC Regional.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

For the 2014 season, no more than 23 teams will pre-qualify (barring... complications, or a CCA or EI winner being an original team or CMP winner), and there are currently 22 spots left until FRC reaches its target of 408 this year. Assuming those are all going to be waitlist teams, why not go ahead and say "any team qualified for CMP and wins an event gives up a spot".

Waitlist priority should also be given to finalist captains and first picks. It seems inconsequential on a large level, but a good thing to give to teams.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

I think it's an absolute necessity for early season regional finalists to get something out of wild cards. Maybe if a wild card goes unused in a later regional, it goes to whomever would have gotten it at an earlier event, had that team been generating wild cards already.

As towards passing cards down into the semifinals, I don't really know how it could happen. Would you give it to the highest seeding semifinal alliance captain that didn't win? The one who was beaten by the eventual regional champion? Both those methods could work but it ends up being almost luck of the draw (though, waitlist is almost definition of that already).

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

I would pass it to awards before semifinals. More fair that way.

Maybe pass it to ID, EE, or IiC winner first.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Pre-qualification isn't the only method though--teams also qualify at 2 different times in the same event. Expanding the system, even into just pre-qualification wildcards, leaves no room for growth or a greater percent acceptance. Saying that anyone who's qualified and wins generates a wildcard would have put us over this year (assuming someone accepted).

You're correct that it's a fair and good thing to do, but I don't know how it's sustainable.

This is something a point system could help with. In the MAR point system, Shaker would have finished their 2 events with 89 points. The lowest points-qualifying team MAR sent this year got 77 in their first 2 districts. If wildcards had been reserved from Week 1 and fed into a list of competitors later in the season, 2791 probably would have been near the top of that list. But because of the regional they happened to attend, they didn't get that chance. :(


I think this whole 'line of succession' thing is begging for some FiM style data ;)

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Is there someone willing to compile this information for 2014? I don't have the time to do it myself this season.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

tl:dr, ....but do HOF teams create an auto wild card, if they should either win the tournament and/or EI?

Cant remember.

Just curious.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Also, what about previous year Einstein?

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

They didn't last year, so I would assume they don't this year.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

HoF and other pre-qualifying teams generate wild card spots just like teams that haven't qualified; they must "qualify" once before creating any spots.

This year's rules are exactly the same as last year.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

IIRC, you have to qualify during the season before you can generate a wildcard slot.

Essentially, if you win your first regional, THEN all other regionals attended will have a wildcard slot generated by 359. So after Northern Lights Regional you will carry a wildcard slot. ;)

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

I started doing it last year, you just kept beating me to the punch :D. I'll probably do it again and see what happens.

I'll start a new thread.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

No if you qualify at your first Regional you only generate a wild card slot if you win at your subsequent events. Winning Chairman's, Engineering Inspiration or Rookie All Star will not generate a wild card slot.

Note this is based on the rules for generating a wild card last season, I haven't paid that much attention this year since I'm in the new PNW district which does not use wild cards.

Re: Wild Card 2013
 

Still applies, the rules have not changed.