Originally Posted by Ether (Post 1355984)

So, questions remaining:

- Any particular rationale for the 3rd match being the surrogate?

- If for some reason a team cannot play their last match, does their "surrogate" match become official?

Originally Posted by Ether (Post 1355999)

Thanks guys. I'll link this thread if I ever see this question pop up again.

Originally Posted by dlavery (Post 715511)

Good observation. This was just the sort of situation that drove the new structure for the surrogate matches. There were too many teams that were not playing their surrogate matches in the same manner and with the same intensity as their other matches. This seemed to be exacerbated by having the surrogate match as the last match of the schedule, when some teams thought they could "lighten up" their style of play without any adverse effects. Having the surrogate match last in the schedule allowed a team to have full knowledge of how they and other teams were performing, and how playing at full intensity (or not) would affect the other teams in the match.

In the very worst case, having the surrogate matches as the last match in the schedule provided the opportunity to play some pretty ugly tactics. Consider the case of team that was assigned to a surrogate match with alliance partners that were ranked higher than them in the standings. Knowing that the match would not count for (or against) them, they would look instead at how the match would affect the standings of their alliance partners and opponents. They could find themselves in the position where if they intentionally "threw" the match and lost, it would cause their alliance partners to drop in the standings, but they would not. In particular cases, this could bump them up high enough to be in the top eight slots, and suddenly become a picking team during alliance selections. The potential for that sort of disingenuous play was to be avoided.

I am not saying that there are any teams that were actually observed doing this (unfortunately, I am also not saying that there were not). But just the potential for a scenario like this to happen was enough to force reconsideration of how the surrogate matches were assigned.

-dave



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Originally Posted by Navid Shafa (Post 1356005)

Anybody know why they are replaying Semi 1-1? It was recorded as a win for the #1 Alliance and they have said there's a replay, but haven't stated rationale....

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa (Post 1356005)

Anybody know why they are replaying Semi 1-1? It was recorded as a win for the #1 Alliance and they have said there's a replay, but haven't stated rationale....

Originally Posted by Cory (Post 1355978)

973 had issues all weekend. They replaced literally every component on their robot in an attempt to be able to connect to the field reliably. There was easily 100+ years of FRC experience between 973 and 254 attempting to figure out the problem last night, which was finally traced to a bad PDB.

If they were sandbagging we would have been trying to pick them with the 23rd pick, not the 1st pick.

Originally Posted by Chris is me (Post 1355966)

1. 973 would absolutely not do this. 973 would not throw 9 matches to be the first selection of the draft, and 254 would definitely not take a gamble with someone going "trust me, we're really good, we just threw matches so you would pick us". Especially when you consider one of 973's highest scoring and closest losses was against 254. Not to mention there is almost no incentive for 973 to throw matches if they're the first pick of the draft. The number one seed picks first.

2. Do you really want judges to be able to "do anything" to a team based on an alleged fishy looking hunch? What action could possibly be appropriate for a judge to take here?

Originally Posted by Bitbucket99 (Post 1355958)

973 pick looks very fishy to me. Smells of collusion, but would the judges ever do anything? Don't think so.