FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy

Blog Date: Thursday, July 25, 2013 - 15:16

I’ve been thinking about the Invite to Decline (also known as the ‘Scorched Earth’) strategy that teams sometimes employ during alliance selection.

For those unaware of this strategy, I’ll outline it. Imagine the alliance selection process at an event is getting started. The #1 ranked team is interested in preventing some of the other top eight ranked teams from working together, because they could form powerful alliances that would be hard to beat in the elimination rounds. Our rules state that once a team declines an invitation to join an alliance, they may never be picked again at that event (‘no second chance’) – if the team that declines is an alliance captain they still can still do the picking, but they can’t be picked themselves. So, to break up other potential alliances, the #1 ranked team sequentially invites other teams from the top eight to join their alliance, even though they may have no interest in actually working with them. They expect these teams to decline, and when they do, they can’t be picked by any other teams. The #1 team can keep giving invitations until they get a ‘yes’, as there are no rules limiting the number of times a team’s invitations can get declined. In theory, other teams who are alliance captains may use this same strategy later during the selection process with lower-ranked alliance captains during the first round of picks – if there are still teams left who have not yet declined an invitation.

I understand the no second chance rule was put in place to prevent teams from essentially assembling any alliance they wanted to by being able to decline an unlimited number of sincere invitations until they got invited by the team they wanted to work with. I may be mistaken, but I believe this rule led unintentionally to the Invite to Decline strategy.

There’s no question in my mind that this strategy is within the rules. I see no gray area here – the rules are clear. Teams employing this approach are thinking carefully and strategically – something we encourage - to give themselves the greatest chance of winning the event within the rules of competition as they’ve been presented to them.

Still, something feels not completely right to me about this. Maybe it’s because teams using this strategy are giving the appearance of wanting to have a team join their alliance, when that’s not their actual objective. (Ever been invited to a party when you know the host doesn’t really want you there?) Maybe it’s because this strategy gives an individual team great power in being able to break up several other potential alliances. Maybe it’s just because the community often calls this strategy ‘Scorched Earth’, which sounds, at the very least, unfriendly.

But maybe this is OK. What do you think? In this situation, does legal = right? Please put your comments below.



I’ll blog again soon.

Frank

P.S. There will be no Frank Answers Fridays feature this week. Enjoy the rest of July and we'll start back up next week.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Two things:

1) I like the serpentine draft, but 1-8,1-8 is going to reduce the number of declines if that's the desired outcome.

2) More qualification matches is going to reduce the likelihood that the top seeded team is somebody that other teams would decline.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I left a comment there (guess it's still in queue), but I'll say it again:

#1 seed earns the privilege, and they do run a risk of being stuck with a team they're trying to scorch. (If you're trying to scorch 3-6 to land #2, what happens when 6 accepts out of the blue? Hope you were okay with your new plan!)

Scorched-earth doesn't even seem to happen all that often at events I wind up at (does anyone have statistics on declines?). Until someone shows me a better way*, I say this needs to stay as-is.

*No, "no picking among captains" is not a better way unless you enjoy teams taking Saturday morning dives to remain pickable.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I'm not sure I understand your #1 - The toughest part to deal with in the "Scorched Earth" strategy is in the initial 1-8 selection. I think if they allowed you to decline and be picked, and teams did that in the second round of selections (1-8 or 8-1 doesn't matter) a lot of teams would hurt themselves by wanting to be picked by a different team, and declining an alliance, and then possibly not being picked by the captain they wanted to be picked by. So the only time a decline and be picked really helps anyone is if you are in the top 8 and already guaranteed a spot, get picked by say #2, but want to work with #4.

I personally have zero problems with the alliance selection today. Even the "scorched earth" strategy. I think in 99% of the cases, scorched earth is unfortunately caused/used by teams who managed to make it into the top 8 and its perceived that maybe they shouldnt have (had a lucky schedule, caught some lucky ref calls, etc...). Its not usually a powerhouse team who just wants to break up other power house alliances.

Plus I feel like if they allowed declines, say a cardboard box on wheels managed to make it into seed 3. Say that almost no one in the 45 teams at an event wants to work with this team because they know it means sure loosing. The box on wheels makes a pick list (mostly based on rank) and starts picking... it takes them 30 teams before someone says yes... do YOU want to sit through those alliance selections?? Ugh they take long enough as it is!! I don't want it to suck up the entire lunch and then some! But if they made some weird rule like a team could only be declined 5 times... then that 6th team gets "stuck" just like anyone above or below them would.

I think one of the things I've always liked about the current alliance selections - both the "zero declines" and the "1-8, 8-1" is it does help even out the alliances in most of the regionals. I understand the argument of the #1 seed "earning the right to select first", but I think they get that by having the first pick. The biggest problem is that there is such a wide variety of FIRST teams currently. I think as we proceed to more and more district championships, Super regionals, and IRI type events where 90% of the teams are amazing... I think then it may be time to relook at the alliance selection. If you give me events with 30+ awesome robots, then Im ok with 1-8, 1-8. But if we allowed teams to build powerhouse alliances no matter what rank they were, I think it would be unfair to the teams that seeded high, and we'd just be setting ourselves up for some incredibly boring finals where we see a lot of 80-5 scores and certain alliances just get completely trounced. I personally like when the eliminations are exciting and its anyone's game. I think changing the declines or the serpentine in standard events would make it boring and make it easy to build powerhouse alliances.

I'm glad that FIRST/Frank are kicking around ideas on how to change/improve the program, but this is one I think they should leave just as it is for now.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

As long as the qualification system remains the way it was this year where teams are ranked by wins (not including coopertition points) and the first tie breaker is based on that teams performance (such as AP, CP, TP), not something based on the performance of the teams they are playing against (such as Qualification Score), then the likelihood of a team that somebody would decline seeding high is very low. This is especially true at events with a reasonable amount of qualification matches to help filter out the undesirable teams from seeding high.

When teams do implement the "scorch the earth" strategy, they are trying to keep strong alliances from forming, therefore they are picking strong teams and aren't really getting stuck with anyone, they just might be getting their number 2 or 3 choice rather than their number 1 choice.

I agree that teams earn the privilege to implement this strategy. However, as long as there are enough matches at each event and the ranking system lends itself to ranking the stronger teams high, I don't think we will see this strategy implemented very often. I would guess that the "scorch the earth" strategy was used much less this year that it has for the past several years.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

The FRC rulebook is just as much about what is stated versus what is not stated. I, personally, find no issue with it, mainly due to the fact that, as Billfred pointed out, your own "Scorched Earth" can burn you too. The only way this would become an issue if there was no possible downside to the strategy, and therefore, no reason NOT to do this.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Nemo is saying that there is an added incentive to accept the number 1 selection from a less desirable partner in this case because in doing so, you also get the first choice for the second round of selection. In 2009, the Thunder Chickens rejected an early selection at Championships simply because they reasoned they could form a more potent alliance from a lower seed.

I believe scorched earth strategies are acceptable. That team earned their high rank, they should be able to select their alliance in a manner that maximizes their chance at winning the event. If other teams decide it is best to reject that team in favor of other partners or strategies, then so be it, they have that right too because they earned an alliance captain spot. Sure other teams may be more deserving, but we can't play an endless number of qualification matches to figure that out. If teams are employing a scorched earth strategy strictly aiming to maximize their chances of winning an event, then that is professionalism. It would be a disservice to their eventual partners not to employ this strategy. If teams are employing a scorched earth strategy with malicious intent, then it is unGP. I think this is extremely rare though.

At one of our events this year, we saw the 6th best team (according to our scouting; and based on subjective observation I agree) get rejected multiple times from the 3rd seed. As a member of the #1 seeded alliance, we were glad to see this from a competitive stand point because it broke up the best teams on the 3-8 alliances. However, I have to scratch my head looking back. The team's strategy was very compatible with all of the remaining robots, and they were a pleasure to work with in qualifications. I guess teams were either uninformed of this team's performance or they have different criterion for alliance selection aside from maximizing their chances of winning the event, such as playing with friends or teams they are used to. Or they may have made a judgement call that they could form a better alliance from a lower seed.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I have no problem with the rules as is. What I find interesting about the analogy of being invited to a party you know the host doesn't want you at is exactly the opposite in the scorched earth strategy. Its not that the host doesn't want you, its that the party goer doesn't want the invitation.

I think we rarely see the scorched earth strategy played out like we think it is. Most of the time it is genuinely a team that has seeded high and they are just going down their pick list of top teams until they get a yes. That is them doing their job. Anyone in their shoes would do the exact same thing, pick the top teams.

In the cases where it really is scorched earth, it is still playing smart. FIRST will never come up with a ranking system that is completely fair and ranks teams properly. More qualification matches or grading different metrics will fix that. Until then there will still be teams who sneak into the top 8 or powerful teams who don't perform on their game and seed low.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I see a lot of talk about so-called "scorched earth" strategies.

I've never really seen one in practice.

About the closest I've seen was 1815's selections at GTREast 2012. Due to the coop bridge, and some lucky scheduling, 1815 ended up ranked significantly higher than their robot performance should have put them, but they were still not #1. They were declined by 4 or 5 teams before someone agreed to play with them. Their initial strategy had they seeded #1 was to break up 1114/2056/610/188.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I've never heard of this being called a "scorched earth" strategy. Maybe it's an east coast thing? I've just heard it as "splitting the powerhouses" or something similar.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I've seen this happen, and remember at least one time on the receiving end of a definite strategic play.

The easiest solution is to try to make the rankings accurately affect how good a team actually is. So if a, say, #2 team tries to pick #4, #2 is actually better than #4 and #4 will just accept.

The easiest way is to do that play more qualification matches so the randomness of random partners (on both sides) has less effect on the rankings, and keep the primary sorting based on metrics that actually reflect how good a team is (win/loss/tie does this, auton points is a good secondary, the coopertition bonus from 2012 was really bad for this).

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

My reply on the blog post is pasted below.

"Scorched Earth" is much more a side effect than it is a strategy that teams pursue. Assuming the top ranked team only ever attempts to pick the best robot available for them, there is no possible outcome that is inherently 'bad' for them. Either they get the best team available, or the best team available declines and becomes less likely to pose a threat by nature of being a lower seed and not being able to accept later. I see nothing wrong with the top seeded team wanting to pick the best team available, though doing so may sometimes result in a Scorched Earth.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

See Curie 2013.

It's a part of the game, and I have no yearning for it change. What I do hope for is a seeding system and enough qualification matches to allow the top robots to be the top seeds.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Newton in 2006 also comes to mind as a true scorching. I do not disagree with the practice at all. A team has earned the right to invite what ever team they want as a potential alliance partner. It does make the alliance selections fell "awkward" when teams do start declining, but it is a two way street. I expected it to happen on curie this year and was surprised when 1717 or 1310 didn't accept just because they were in the middle of the picks.(At that point it's better to decline from a lower position due to two close picks and a higher position due to the immediate picks IMO). I talked to Micheal a bit on it after they had made the picks and he said that they felt confident playing with any of the declined teams had they actually accepted their offer.

As for the co-op bridge in 2012...Let's just say that I think it caused more anti-GP that promoting GP, which is unfortunately very sad.:(

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Even if you accept the notion that the "scorced earth" draft is a negative thing, I feel it's clearly the lesser of two evils. While it certainly happens, it happens only a couple times per season. It's a rare occurance that may be unavoidable in particular situations unless you want teams to jump down their picklist to the first team who will accept them and leave everyone else on the table. It's definitely the better option than allowing declines, in my mind.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I like it as-is.

More matches will help sort out the rankings.

Teams that employ this strategy only to break up other alliances run the risk of someone saying "yes" when they don't expect it, so if you start doing this, you should actually want to play with the team you are inviting.

I don't like the idea of being able to decline and later say yes. If we go that way, allinaces could just be formed in the pits and you could go tell the scoring table who your partners are.

I also think sometimes a team will decline not because they don't want to play with the #1 or #2 team, but because they can put together a more balanced and competetive alliance by having an earlier pick in Round 2 if the overall field is not deep. Some events having pick 8 & 9 or 7 & 10 is way better than pick 1 & 16.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

About the only way you could stop the Scorched Earth strategy is to not allow the top 8 team to pick any of the other top 8 teams :ahh:
Now that would make some interesting alliances.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

But then you would have teams "fighting" for 9th place.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I really think it's the opposite. I've seen a lot of scorched earth in my day, and it seems to usually happen because the top teams don't want to be with the higher seeded team. They've gone to the top teams and they've said they'll decline if invited. So they work their way down to a lower seeded team that will accept. Imagine hosting a party where everyone says that they don't want to come... because you'll be there :( . I understand that sometimes high seeded teams make a deal with a lower seeded team to do scorched earth to give their alliance a better chance at winning, but I think that's perfectly fine. Every team that decides to decline is taking a risk, and the team inviting is taking a risk... I think scorched earth is a perfectly legitimate strategy that requires teams to use better strategy and scouting in order to win rather than relying simply on the strength of their top two robots.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

This is what the offseason event in Kansas City does. It makes for an interesting alliance selection in that teams pick based on knowing who they have to play. This year it might be neat with the cttd having two division finalists and another frc top 25 team competing.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

There's no way to prevent this strategy while still preserving the right to decline.

That said, I haven't the slightest of problems with it. It makes eliminations far more interesting every single time it happens. It provides the top seeds with an important additional incentive that compensates for the disadvantage given to them by the serpentine draft. Perhaps the only thing that bothers me about it is that it's a little awkward.

If you've seeded in the top 8, you should have the right to form your own alliance. Imagine if this wasn't the case. Imagine 6-7 FIRST teams openly lying to the first seed about the state of their robot to try and avoid getting picked. Imagine the off-field deals this would incentivise ("if you don't pick us, we won't pick team xxx that you want on the back half of the draft"). Even more teams would more actively hope to not be on an alliance with someone.

I mean, I guess scorched earth should be avoided, in the sense that we shouldn't have a seeding system and number of qual matches that commonly allows carried teams to seed first / second / third. However, to at least some small extent this is unavoidable. Even in 2010 there were teams with better schedules than others (and, as good at ranking teams as it was, not a ton of people want to go back to 2010 for some reason).

It's also worth noting that not all declines are because the chosen team thinks the top seed sucks or whatever. The serpentine allows for better alliances at lower seeds sometimes. In addition, almost every decline in Canada last year was done in order to play at a seed that faces #1 in the finals, in order to earn wild card slots.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

There is one expo tournament we've played several times (the IGVC invitational) with exactly 24 teams, where teams are assigned alliances (1-9-17, 2-10-18... 8-16-24). Saturday morning there is sometimes a strong incentive for a team thats 7th or 8th to lose a match to drop to 9th-12th and get a better overall alliance.

If you disallow picking within the top 8, teams will do the same thing to get below 8th to allow themselves to be picked first.

OCCRA does a similar thing (no picking within the top 6). There was a team this year who was 4th going into their last match and planned on throwing it to drop below 6th. Another team (I don't remember their exact placing) who was opposing them in this match knew this and decided to play for the opposing alliance to prevent them from throwing the match and dropping below the cutoff to be pickable (the outcome did not affect this team enough for them to be concerned). In the match, both teams in question scored points for the opposing alliance, so they were literally both trying their hardest to increase their opponents score. The fans were shouting "YOURE BLUE YOUR BLUE" and "NO YOUR RED" and it was really strange. You would see the same exact thing happen in FIRST if picking within the top 8 was forbidden.


I have no issue with scorched earth plays as far as the rules or GP is concerned. The 1st seed has earned their spot by the rules of the game. If we want the best alliances possible (which I think we do), we just need to play more matches so the 1st seed is really the best (or very good) and the lower seeds would have little reason to decline. Changing the rules in any way I can think of would just make everything worse.

The 2010 seeding system was quite good when everyone played to win IMHO, but I think a lot of people still remember the 6v0 plays and scoring for opponents to increase your seeding and dislike it for that reason. And before the +5 in a team update there was no reason to score if you knew you had no hope of winning (this was hotly debated, but we did play a 6v0 once successfully, and talked it about at least two other times).

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Even if you add more matches it will "help" but it won't solve the problem. That's if you would even call it a problem. Over the years we have been given more matches but even then there are still teams who slip into the top 8 who aren't the best and top teams who have rough matches.

Rankings is mainly determined by performance. I'll use our team as an example. Our team had the same record as team 2648 at the Pine Tree Regional (12-1) the difference came down to our autonomous points. Our team had two matches we missed all of our shots due to different reasons. One match we had an air tank pushing down on our plate causing all shots to go low. Another we had a driver station error that prevented us from selecting the proper speed before a match. In the one match we lost we had one partner who was struggling with shooter problems and another who lost all controls to their drivebase.

In the end we would have selected 2648 if we seeded higher but the story holds true in that it didn't matter who had the better robot, it mattered in who could pull it off every match. 2648's autonomous and teleop game were dead on the entire weekend which gave them the number 1 spot. Similarly 125 also had one of the best robots at the event but seeded #20 after a tough match schedule. 1114 was one of the best in the Archimedes division last year but they finished 66th after some issues and were the second pick.

If anything I wished we had less qualification matches. Friday we had 9 matches some with only a 4 match turnaround leaving no time to fix problems.

Unless you have a panel of judges who strictly make the rankings based on robot performance, you will never go into alliance selections with teams ranked where they "should" be.

I like the system the way it is. No 1-8, 1-8, no picking in the top 8, etc.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I thought it was great that 4 teams declined 1678 on Curie, who responded by winning the division. Alliance selection drama is something I always find myself talking about after an event. I really don't think the rules should be changed, and I think any attempt to do so would make selections needlessly complicated.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Maybe, much more likely, the #1 team would very much like to work with the teams they are picking, but they suspect those teams don't feel the same about working with them. Lovely. Well #1 has zero obligation to let "high-powered" teams form the alliances they want to form.

I see nothing wrong with putting lower-ranked alliance captains on the spot and forcing them to make a choice, even if some of those captains have explicitly asked the #1 team to not pick them or tried the reverse psychology "we'll decline if you pick us" ploy (it happens). That's almost a guarantee of a scorched-earth pick if I were in #1's shoes - if you play any kind of thinly-veiled condescension card, you is gonna get burned!

What I'd like to know is whether Frank decided to bring up this topic by himself, or if others shared with him their disdain for "Scorched Earth" strategies, and that prompted this blog post.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I was wondering the same thing, i.e. if this is some kind of feeler to gauge sentiment in advance of a contemplated selection process rule change. My .02, leave the current process as is, it isn't perfect but it isn't broken either...

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I've come to believe that the current alliance selection system is just like democracy. It's the worst system possible, aside from all the other ones.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Let's not forget 3928 who has shown to be quite capable at being a game changer for an alliance. If any one of these 4 teams gets a hard schedule or (unfortunately) decides to throw a match or two, you could end up with alliance partners that look like:
3928-1986
3928-1806
3928-3284
3284-1986
3284-1806
Or even the feared and well practiced combination of 1986-1806.

That's not counting other high-scoring bots being in the mix like 1939, 3528, etc.

But even so, throwing a match is harder than it sounds. If it's the last match of the day and you're paired up with someone who's decent at scoring and has a vested interest in making sure you don't fall outside the top 8 and are suddenly allowed to form a super-alliance, you more than likely aren't going to be able to throw it unless you're playing against the team you want to be with in the first place.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I honestly love thinking about alliance selections.
"If they pick them, then they need to have a full-court blocker, so they'll pick XXXX, but they also have a ______ autonomous, and XXXX needs to counter that sooo..."
And then:
"But if that match goes that way instead, then XXXX will seed first, and XXXX will decline them, then they can pick 20 later in the draft!"

Not that that scenario happened to us or anything. Nah. :P

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I actually think that a 1-8, 1-8 selection would help to discourage scorched earth. 1-8, 1-8 helps captains 1-3, has no effect on captains 4-5, and hurts captains 6-8 when compared against the serpentine draft.

In a serpentine draft, seeds 6-8 are hesitant to accept the invitation of a mediocre #1 seed because the remaining partner will be the 16th pick. (Using seed 7 as an example) If the 7 seed declines, they still get the 7th and 10th picks.
In a 1-8, 1-8 draft however, if the 1 seed invites 7, 7 is much more likely to accept. 1's&7's second pick will be #9. If 7 declines, in contrast, they are stuck with the 7th and 15th pick. Assuming minimal difference between pick 7 and 9, 1 only needs to be marginally better than the 15th pick (could be as low as 23rd overall robot) for them to accept. Not to mention an easier schedule in eliminations.

Since scorched earth strategies rarely (if ever) come from a seed lower than 3, this would definitely limit the occurrences of scorched earth.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Speaking as someone whose team won a World Championship (from #2) during the last year 1-8, 1-8 was used, there is a definite downside. And that is this:

Blowout city. Think about it. 1st seed gets 1st and 9th picks; 2nd gets #2 and #10 picks; 8th seed gets what's left at the #8 and #16 pick slots, which can get pretty thin at smaller events, particularly the #16 pick (and the third robot can make or break an alliance). When divisional QFs set the world high score, and it's not close even with each alliance having its own set of game pieces...

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't necessarily like a blowout. I'd rather have both sides be able to get the win, just one plays a bit better and wins, like the Einstein semis/finals that year. With the serpentine, it's any alliance's game to win, at least in theory. With "straight", it's just a bit easier for the higher alliance to win.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I think the people in this thread are generally on the right track: Nobody should be suprised when a team does what's in its best interest. In my mind, the most important condition for the alliance selection method is that teams are incentivized to perform well in the qualification rounds.

The current setup has worked pretty well, but there is at least one case I haven't seen mentioned yet where it would break down. With the recent games, getting to pick 1st and 16th has almost always been better than 2/15 which is better than 3/14 and so on down to picking 8th and 9th. That's true because the performance gap between the very best teams is higher than the performance gap between average teams.

Assume for a minute that teams score a constant number of points per round and do nothing but offense. The top 5 teams might score 70, 60, 52, 46 and 40 pts while the 20th through 24th teams might score 20, 19, 18, 17, and 16 points. In that case, you can see that having the 2nd best robot on your alliance is worth 60-52=8 points per round more than having the 3rd best robot on your alliance. Meanwhile, the choosing last vs. next to last is worth only 17-16=1 point per round. Since where you pick in the first round makes a bigger impact than where you pick in the second round, you want to be a higher alliance captain despite the serpentine.

However, if the top 16 teams had very similar scoring potential while there was a big drop off in performance between the 17th best robot and the 24th best then it would be better to have the 8th and 9th picks than to have the 1st and 16th because picks 1 and 8 are interchangable while pick 9 is much better than pick 16.

I think having a game where this happens isn't outside the realm of possibility. I would have to look at some historical data to know for sure, but I have an inkling that there might have been more differentiation in the second round than the first in 2005. Edit: Though at a quick glance it appears this was not the case

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

If this is a problem - and I'm not sure it is - what about this solution? If any team is declined X times (X = 2, 3, whatever) they lose their pick until the end of the round. Now the earth they are scorching may be their own!

I've seen two instances:

1. A team wasn't really thrilled with playing with a top seed, but agreed to accept if the seed would first pick others in the top 8 who presumably would decline. This is the true scorched-earth scenario Frank presents.

2. A team ranked #1 based on the strength of its schedule in quals. Other teams thought the #1 alliance had no chance, and so they were declined multiple times. I don't recall for sure, but I think they finally picked someone outside the top 8 who had to accept or risk not playing at all.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I think that the alliance selection process is perfect.

"Scorched-Earth" strategies are just as beautiful to me as making a dark-horse pick that truly pays off or creating a powerhouse alliance.

We all play qualification matches to try and seed #1. The team that does deserves to pick their alliance however they see fit. Likewise, the teams below them have the same right.

Watching that dynamic play out is fascinating and addicting. I think it's the greatest 20 minutes of every event.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Okay so the first thing I would like to say is that the rankings DO NOT reflect how good teams are. At both of our regionals this year we ranked below the top 8 but were picked by #2. We also won one of our regionals undefeated in eliminations.
At buckeye #1 picked #21 and #2 picked #20 (us). Tell me that these rankings aren't messed up.

The alliance selection process is fine.
The rankings most certainly are not.

I have been team representative for the past two years. I was on the receiving end of this strategy in 2012 and I can tell you it felt terrible.
We were ranked 4th. #1 picked #2 as usual. #3 was a rookie team who got there as a result of coopertition points and good matches. The next best robot after us was ranked #8. We wanted to pick them, if we had been able to pair up we probably could have won the regional. #3 asked us if we would be interested in pairing up right before selections and we told them that we wanted to start our own alliance. They also asked #8 and they said that they would say no. They asked #8 during selections anyways and #8 declined.
This broke up our alliance with #8, and with the remaining teams there was no combination of robots that would be able to defeat alliance 1.

As I said, the selection process is fine, but the ranking system is WAY too dependent on schedule. This needs to be changed.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Haha there's some awesome declining going on at TRR right now. The "oohhh"s and stuff are a bit hilarious to hear.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Yea and the mc explaining that everything is all right is a bit funny.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I know Frank wanted folks to comment on the blog page, but I will trust he reads it here:

I like the process the way it is, and don't see a problem.

Legal != Right in every case, but in this case it is just fine. Strategy is strategy, and eliminating this possibility may degrade the game somewhat. An efficient (meaning 'effective and accurate') ranking system helps reduce the negative effects of such a strategy, so the ranking system needs to be designed carefully. Trying to "cure" this non-problem may have unintended effects worse than the (non-) problem.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Like the others above, I don't have any problems with the existing alliance selection process. I think the rules are the best option available. If it switched to 1-8,1-8 instead of 1-8,8-1, I could live with it but I prefer the system we have.

Maybe it could be 1-8,1-8 for regional/world championship events and serpentine for regional and district events.

I'd also like to add that I really like the 3rd round of selections that IRI has. I think it would be cool of FIRST added that, at least at the Championship level. Teams draft their own backup robots and can start any three robots they want. I'll point out that if this turned into a rule where you were forced to play the backup bot in at least one match (like in FTC), I would no longer favor drafting a 3rd partner.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

As your rookie year was 2009, I don't think you're aware of the pre-2006 drafting (and certainly not the pre-2005). Here is your update on what you missed.

2005: 1-8, 1-8, no backups (other than the top 8 seeded teams still standing). Besides the odd blowout, er, common blowout, there were no downsides.

Before 2005, however, the sequence was 1-8, 1-8, second round is your backup (matches were 2v2). Backups HAD to be played once per round. I kind of liked that... but it could get clunky. And blowouts were still relatively common.


I'd go with an IRI (1-8, 1-8, 8-1) or full serpentine (1-8, 8-1, 1-8) where yet another set of backup rules were adopted. I forget the offseason event, but their rule is that the backup robot must play at least ONCE in the eliminations. If you're 1 match from elimination and your backup hasn't played, you have to play them; otherwise, whoever you want to goes out there.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I would presume the 2nd scenario is more prevalent, but I don't know that. Does anyone know what the ratio is? I also think Pinecone's suggestion that teams decline to play for a wildcard is an interesting development. It makes perfectly good sense against an overpowered #1 alliance to opt for the other side of bracket, its just another weird strategic twist in how FRC tournaments play out.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Thanks for the context. I agree that blowouts are an issue with 1-8,1-8, so that's why I'm generally in favor of serpentine drafting. That said, it's pretty rare that an 8 seed beats a 1 seed. I might be convinced that in some events (with 40 teams or less, for example) it might make more sense to draft 6 alliances and give a bye to #1 and #2.

I can understand why some people would like 1-8,1-8 drafting for deeper events, so I can see some advantages either way. Another advantage of 1-8,1-8 is that the second pick (who will qualify for Champs) is going to be a better team in most cases.

Like I said, I think things are good the way they are. I don't think "scorched earth" is a problem, and any rule change to prevent that would cause more harm than good.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

The only problem i could see with a system like this is that you would then have 7 robots qualifying at each event, which wouldn't be an issue if champs weren't already cramped as it is

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

As much as it bugs me, I really don't mind the presence of the serpentine anywhere but IRI. It gives the low seeds a fighting chance at regionals, and honestly at lower levels of play the captain and first pick usually are the teams with the biggest impact on the final score anyway. Yes, teams might decline because of it, but why have we decided that's a bad thing?

Pick your own backup would be kinda cool, but especially at smaller events teams have trouble making a list of 24 pickable robots as it is. Upping that to 32 is asking a lot of teams and scouts, plus it adds more "weak" robots to the Championship roster, which I don't think anyone wants.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Yeah, the declining at TRR was a bit shocking to the audience. We as a team kinda expected to be declined because we aren't that well known. But hey, it ended up in our favor anyways.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

A lot of people still aren't familiar with the most important aspect of the "Scorched Earth" strategy:

The fact that you save your top pick till the end, AFTER you've scorched everyone else...

To maximize the strategy, you need to "scorch" everyone else's alliance, but still build the best one you possibly can. You need to communicate with your top pick, and let them know you intend on breaking up everyone else, and hopefully you convince them that after having done so, you can now form an alliance capable of winning the event.

To illustrate, lets say you are a "weak" #1 ranked team.

Teams ranked #2-#9 are all very strong and ranked in order of strength. You also know all these teams would rather form their own alliances, than accept your invitation.

You need to pick #3-#9 and have them all decline, THEN pick #2 (your top pick) last.

That gets you the best team at the event on your alliance, and 3-9 are all unable to pair up.

In a lot of cases, this break-up is enough to make a #1 and #2 alliance the best possible at the event. An alliance of #1 and #2 might be better than the alternative #2 and #11 - and if so, it would probably be better than all the other possible alliances from #3-#9.

"Scorched Earth" is NOT just about screwing everyone else, it's more about giving yourself the best chance at winning by selectively picking, and taking full advantage of the #1 ranking you've earned.

What amazes me is that this doesn't happen more often - that there is a negative stigma attached to it - and that a lot of people are still VERY resistant to it - likely because they haven't had the ENTIRE process explained to them!

It's takes some communication, co-operation, a bit of trust between teams, and the ability to see a few steps beyond what's immediately in front of you.

I wouldn't take away the opportunity for this strategy to happen, because I personally think it's a pretty great and ingenious way to build some pretty important critical thinking, reasoning and relationship building skills.

Despite the poor optics of a decline, and the requisite booing that inevitably happens, I think the opportunity for co-opertition and learning that goes on behind the scenes is far more valuable.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

See attached.

-Nick

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

This strategy is a great exercise in critical thinking but what examples can we come up with in real life that matches this situation?

I will keep this brief.

1. I like the current selection approach.

2. Like Frank, I am troubled by the need for teams who want the best chance of winning, resorting to select someone without intending to partner with them. This is not a behaviour that FIRST would like to promote.

To satisfy both needs, while maintaining the overall selection structure, I would like to hear your thoughts on a proposed adjustment to get rid of those awkward declines.

"The "Host your own party" card"

This 1 time only card can be used by the current team selecting its partners. Once used, all following team captains must "Host their own party" and be captains only.

This CARD essentially achieves the same effect, enabling the teams to enjoy their hard earned rights to break up the top teams, without going through awkward declines. As a bonus, it speeds up the process and remove the negative predicament of employing this strategy.

Thoughts?

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

This wouldn't always be used, because as was mentioned before a lot of the time teams don't intend to use scorched earth, it just kind of ends up that way. And even if a team intentionally wants to use scorched earth, it could be to their advantage to pick a few teams first, in hopes that one would accept. Then, once they felt it was time, they would use the card and pick someone outside the top 8.

Anyways, I see no problem with scorched earth. I'm not going to list out my reasons why, because other people in this thread have already done that for me.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I think it's neat the Frank sought out the community's opinion on this one. I also think it's neat that the community (at least the people vocal enough to post on ChiefDelphi) has pretty much come out an said they like the current system. Consensus is a good a thing. Of course, this is easy for me to say since I agree with the consensus that is being presented.

There's no reason for me to rehash why I think the current system works, since that's been taken care of quite eloquently by many of the above posters. But I do want to draw some attention to one major thing that can be improved. The current system works best when the best robots are ranked high. What can FRC do to ensure that the top robots end up being the top ranked teams?

Maximize the number of matches each team gets at an event.

There will always be randomness in FRC, because of the nature of the random alliances involved in qualification matches. The alliance system is central to FRC, and is not something that's going away. So to minimize the randomness it introduces, we need to play as many matches as possible. This is happening in the regions that have gone to districts, as well as Ontario, where teams are consistently getting 12 qualifying matches at events of 30-40 teams. This is great. Only getting 8 qualifying matches per team at the Championship in 2013 was simply unacceptable. The good news is that FIRST recognized this problem and is making efforts to fix it for 2014. Still, as FRC grows there will be a tendency to want to add teams to the Championship Event. This is fine, but FIRST needs to make sure that as they allow for growth of the event, they simultaneously allow for growth in the number of matches.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Scorched earth strategy of a robot tournament doesn’t directly apply to my ‘real world’ experience. But I use this type of critical thinking everyday.

I have participated in technical qualification bids where my company competes against 6 to 8 other companies to win a long term agreement. You must understand your strengths and your competitors as they stack up the client’s requirements. Do you bid? Do you partner? Do you submit on your own strengths? 3, 2, 1, go!

FIRST has a recent example of this type bid where they requested proposals for the 2015 to 2019 FRC control system.

Competition is very real. Ethics is critical. Mentor wisely.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Though not close to being the same type of situation, similar thought processes can be applied to game theory. Off the top of my head, similar styles of thinking are involved in the "Prisoner's dilemma"

I guess that's sort of "real world"

I just find it funny how many people think that this happens on purpose. Half the time "scorched Earth" happens is when an unexpected team ranks high and doesn't really know what to do so they pick down the rankings.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

People have also blown this out of proportion both on Chief and in response to Frank's blog post. You'd think this is happening at every event and it's the only thing anyone is talking about-not true. There have only been two notable occurrences in FIRST history (at least that I can think of).

This rarely goes down as a true "pick from 3-8 and make them all say no". The only instance I can even recall something close to that happening was Curie this year. Far more often it means strategically picking 1-2 teams (that you would still like to play with!), causing them not to be ably to ally with the best robots when they deem you unworthy and decline, and then picking the best team that you know will say yes to you. It would be irresponsible not to do this if you knew you could not form a strong alliance as the number one seed.

I hope that Frank/FIRST largely ignore the specific advice given in the blog comments, because frankly most suggestions are horrible and will open the floodgates for teams to engage in legitimately nefarious behavior.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

This reminds me of the Cookie's alliance selection play this year. If I recall correctly, they only picked 971 and 1662 and "made" them decline. It was definitely a good strategic play, that combined with them picking 973 was almost certainly the reason they made it to the finals.

Stuff like preventing the top 8 from picking each other or messing with how declines work will do much more harm than good, like you said. To echo other's sentiments, the real "solution" for this is just to play more qual matches.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I'm not sure if anyone else has looked, but the discussion on the blog post comments is far more negative than this one.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Frank noticed, and Frank became more awesome.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I definitely agree with everyone. Scorched earth as a strategy is an artifact of teams doing what is in their best interest given their current position at the time of alliance selections.

If the seeding system did a better job of sorting the best robots to the top by playing more matches, and/or using sort metrics that are solely (or at least mostly) based on robot performance (ie. no 2012 Coop Bridges, 2010 QS), then you won't see scorched earth play out as often, because the team doing the selecting will be better than the team(s) they've selected.

Karthik is totally correct. Ontario and the Districts have done a good job. 12 matches in 30-40 team events seems to do a pretty good job of sorting based on WLT record. Its much harder to pull that off at Championship, without a huge change in how Championship works. To me, the obvious choice to both increase the Championship's team capacity, AND give every team more matches, without dramatically increasing time required, or volunteers required, is to move the divisions to having 2 fields each.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

My thought: We have enough trouble explaining alliance selection to the crowd as it is. A card only adds further complications for which we already have a fix (read: just do the invites).

And if you don't intend to partner with someone, don't pick them. Remember, scorched earth can tank if an unanticipated acceptance crops up

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

On Curie this year, we were the 4th team to have declined 1678.
While I cant speak for the other 3 teams selected/declined ahead of us, I can tell you that it was totally unexpected. In hindsight, maybe we should have accepted? Maybe not?
We didnt scout enough about team 1678, but instead figured to select our own alliance with several teams we had in mind. Having to choose 2nd in the 2nd round was enticing to us as we looked for several key teams we thought would be there to complement our own.
We never had a discussion with 1678 at all during CMP.
However, it definitely was scorched earth in the sense that teams ahead of us definitely had others they wanted to choose instead, if possible.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

The 'scorched earth' strategy doesn't seem possible to work; mostly I think that because my team's strategy for alliance selection always starts with "If someone above you picks you, say YES!". It's the "high confidence in others" strategy, and I would think a decent number of teams use it, and scorched earth doesn't work if many people use this strategy.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Please read Mr. Lim's post again. I quoted a relevant excerpt for your convenience.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

See, that's the thing. For many teams, that is their strategy. For many others, who happen to tend to be slightly better (or maybe more to the point, tend to end up in the top 8 more often than not), they might be a little more picky. They may have teams that they won't ally with, for whatever reason, regardless of situation. (Possible reasons may run back for quite a few years, but that's beside the point.) They may have teams that they really like to ally with, again for reasons that may run back a decade or more.

These teams are strategists and will look at the long picture. These are the teams who were playing 6v0 in 2010, or always going to the coop bridge in 2012. These are the teams who will decline if they think it will help them win. Many of them will have a strategy something like: "If we're picked by X, Y, Z, accept without hesitation. If it's F or D, decline. If A or B picks us, your call--see if you can chat with 'em in the mass of representatives."

It's the latter teams that will either play a scorched earth intentionally from the picking side, or "assist the play" from the defensive side. Because they tend to seed higher, they tend to be in better position to use it, and thus it gets used.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Great points here.

11 hasn't normally had the opportunity to decline in the past, but this season they did. It was a call that was debated for hours the previous night and many situations and scenarios/potential alliances were presented and analyzed. When 11 declined as the first selection at Bridgewater district, we heard "boos" and "ohhhhh" and I frankly thought that was way more disrespectful than any decline I've ever seen. The call was risky and in the end, didn't pan out as planned, but it was one we had to take or risk playing against much stronger alliances that could have been formed because we felt the top seed had a slightly easier schedule than many others (and the data showed this as well)

Very honestly - I think Frank should address the issue of how declines are perceived by the audience and by many teams in FRC, instead of the rarely seen "scorched Earth" strategy. The one being declined should not take it personally or be upset, and the audience should not do anything to make the declining team feel embarrassed or bad about their decision. We hear the booing and the "oohhh"s way too often at other events too, this really should be discouraged by the higher-ups in FIRST.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I feel that the "real" problem here isn't with the act of declining, but how it looks. What if captains said "Thanks for the invitation, but we would like to form our own alliance"? That is better in so many ways. For one, it's less harsh than "we decline", which is a more obvious and outright rejection that can look petty or disrespectful. Secondly, it explains *why* they are declining - the team believes it can form a better alliance from a different seeding position.

I feel like if the presentation is change, attitudes about it will change as well. Right now the rationale is obscured, the ceremony is awkward, and the audience is left confused. If we fix it, maybe these won't be a problem.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

I can't say I've actually ever seen anyone just say "we decline"... Most I've seen say "Team xxx respectfully declines as we would like to form our own alliance" or occassionally I guess the "team xxx graciously declines" (which is annoyingly bad grammar, but at least trying not to be rude). Even those responses are usually met with a slight audience shock of "Ohhhhh". But I think the problem is "Ohhh" "Ooooo" and "Boooo" all sound a lot alike... I've had trouble before trying to figure out if the audience is ooo'ing or boo'ing. But I agree, some of it is the perception.

I also think its very much the job of the MC to take care of the "how it is perceived". A good MC will always explain to the audience ahead of the alliance selections that it is an alliance captain's right to decline & form their own alliance if they think they have a better/more complimentary strategy that way. And the MC will always deal immediately with any decline by reinforcing to the audience that the declining team has a different strategy. I am pretty sure I've seen Blair, Karthik and Eric deal very well with this before... I'm sure there are others... but really the MC's can really help mitigate the confusion.

But ultimately, I think its sort of always going to be a small shock factor, because I would guess that maybe 70% of the FIRST population is like Skinkworks' team and is just excited to accept, so they have very little understanding why a team "would not trust" a higher ranked team, or what the strategy could possibly be that could be better than playing with a higher ranked team.

In reality it's all like a chess match... you have to envision your ultimate goal in the whole competition, and if it's to win the event, you need to step your way backwards through every move/match/selection in order to maximize your potential of winning. If there is a path through the selections & eliminations that leads you to a better chance of winning in the finals, then its very often worth the shot.

When I used to develop pick lists with 1511, we always had our selection of 1-30, and at some point in that list we drew a line and said "if anyone below this line picks you, decline and form your own alliance". Sometimes there were teams ranked higher than us that were below that line, or even below our top 30. In that case our student would decline, because we could form a much stronger alliance on our own.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

This was the best example of preventing a powerhouse alliance I've seen. With 118 then 1477 declining that made for some pretty even alliances. though it was disappointing to see "Alamo" alliances reform.
I never had a chance to find out if that was the strategy, but it did work out for CRyptonite in the end.

Thanks.

Chris is right on. If the question is changed to 'would you prefer to join or form your own alliance?'

It takes the negative out and the audience who are not very familiar with this type of strategies would understand the rationale better.

And yes, more games = more fun = more accurate rankings.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

This is a great idea. Having the MC ask in this manner would remove some of the stigma and negative connotations. It frames the question as a choice for the team being picked - join or make your own selections - rather than a "yes or no" towards the team making the pick. Veteran FRC competitors understand this choice already, but this would make it more apparent to the inexperienced observer.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

This.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Definitely doing this next year. Great, great idea.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

If anything is taken away from this thread and the blog post by Frank, this should be it. FIRST should send out emails to all MCs that will be at events next year and tell them to call selections like this.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

A challenge to all MCs:

Try and actually get the crowd to APPLAUD a decline by providing background/context/explanation during the picking process.

I'd NEVER thought I would see that happen - but that would be a pretty big triumph for an MC!

...and Billy Lo's suggestion above might already be enough to do it...

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Good work Billy and Picone!

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...-up-and-thanks

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

When we look at alliance selections, one of our concerns is the formation of an alliance we really don't want to play against. Such was the case at TRR when 3310 asked us if we would say yes if asked to join their alliance. If that had happened, we were pretty sure 624 and 118 would get together. We looked at what might happen if we did not accept and thought that gave us a better chance of winning TRR. We ended up with 359 just as we expected.

We told 3310 that we would decline their invitation but they asked us anyway. I found that a little surprising as it did not affect our ability to invite other teams and we were the second seeded alliance so no one else could ask us to join them. We knew 3310 had a good robot and drive team but an alliance between 118 and 624 was a little frightening.

I like the idea of asking teams if they want to accept or form their own alliance. This was definitely our thinking at the Bayou Regional where we thought we had a chance at a wild card slot if we met 118 in the finals and we were the alliance captain.

Scott Rippetoe
Texas Torque

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

Geez Scott,
I thought you were returning the favor after picking you folks at IRI the week before? :p
For the record, The best and 3rd time was when you folks asked us to join your alliance at the Texas Roadhouse for some BBQ ribs, fries, loaded baked potato and chicken after the event. I'll never forget that one.

Re: FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy
 

We picked you first because we felt you were the best robot there.

We picked 118 because we felt they were the second best robot, however we were a little surprised 118 declined (as I imagine you guys were).

It is possible 118 only declined because 1477 declined first. They may have had the same mentality as you guys in thinking that 3310 and 118 might not be able to beat 1477&624 - especially considering the experience those teams have working with one another. By declining they could break up that alliance.

But I think that TRR is a good example of the cost-benefit of declining in alliance selection. It shows the system really works in its current state - All of the elimination matches at TRR were intense and fairly even.