Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Top 32% this year. Unless you believe that the 3rd pick is inconsequential.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

I said top 24 because only those teams are guaranteed to play in elims. Chances are that no back up teams will be called, or only 1 - 2 at most so I figured it wasn't worth projecting elims based on robots that probably won't play.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

You may be right but just as a counterexample, we were picked for elims twice at IRI. Both times we were the final pick on the alliance. Both times we played the first match.

Wait list registration first opens to teams that did not attend Champs the year before. It then opens to all teams a few weeks later. So, that's the "filter".

Seems like a safe bet that we will rarely if ever get to that second group again, unless they move Champs to some location that causes a lot of invitation declines (which would be a shame).

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Einstein isn't decided by putting the top 25% from each division on the field at the same time (now, THAT would be interesting to watch!). Each division sends the alliance that demonstrated the best ability to win. Perhaps that was the two best robots in the division plus a sleeper, perhaps it was the combination that worked best together. Perhaps they just got lucky. Most likely it will be a combination of those. Winning alliances don't reflect the average quality of the top 25% of the division. They just reflect the ability of the 3 bots they put on the field. Any division can win it.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

400 being the target never made sense. You think you would want 408 teams, especially evidenced by the fact FRC pits last year had at least 8 empty spots in the back of Archimedes.

Anyone know if we are getting preliminary schedule this year?

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

In 2012 they played 9 qual matches so there were no surrogates. Now with 10 matches there are 2 surrogates per division in 167 matches.

If they like the 10 match format with the all day Thursday quals they may just plan for 102 per division. I don't think FIRST came into this year planning on 10 qual matches at Champs. Last year they were clearly planning on 9 matches but had to cut it to 8 due to belaying, manual disc count, etc... I think the pits can take 8 more teams, and the new schedules can take 3 more matches for an even 170 matches per division. MAR championships just did 83 qual matches on a Friday (which I am pretty sure is a record for qual matches in a day).

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Well I have heard that it is not first come first serve so I dont know what is the truth on that.
We did not attend champs last year and I got on the wait list in the first 15 seconds after it opened.
But, still no luck.
Best of luck to all you attending and above all, have a great time!!!

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Very much agreed with those who have said that OPR is pretty flawed for comparing team strength and those who have said predicting the World Champion by comparing divisional strength is silly.

As a result, I updated the aWAR spreadsheet so I could use that to compare divisions... :-) See the plot of the top 32 here (Attachment 16869).

By aWAR, the best division is almost unanimously Galileo. It doesn't matter if you look at the top 16, 32, or the entire division... aWAR strongly favors Galileo. Curie and Newton are nearly identical, regardless of which metric you look at across what population. Archimedes is the 2nd best division if you look at the top 16 or 32 (except by median), but if you look at the entire division it drops to last. The main reason for this is that it is comparable with Galileo in the top 4, comparable with Curie and Newton for the top 7-15, but then drops to last for the rest of the division.

My spreadsheet for looking at the divisions is attached here (Attachment 16868).

My post with the updated aWAR spreadsheet is here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...2&postcount=32).

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

I have a day job, so I haven't put the numbers together -- and someone's probably already done the analysis somewhere anyway -- but I'd be *very* surprised if the 24 teams with the top OPR in the "regular season" are always the teams in elims. Probably a large percentage of them, sure. But even if you discount high-OPR teams that break during quals & therefore aren't available for elims, not all of those teams end up in elims.

Also: I don't think that the 4th alliance robot should be considered a "backup". They're going to be a full-fledged member of the alliance, and I would expect (especially on the top 2 or 3 alliances) that there's going to be very little difference between the 2nd & 3rd pick. Seems to me that there's a lot of room for picking for varying tactics, not just emergencies. Having said that, I've never been to IRI, so I'll ask -- how often does that 4th robot not play unless one of the first 3 are broken?

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

I know we rotated our 4th bot into play at the 2013 IRI even though the first three were still fully functional.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

That would be entertaining, but I think we'd need a bigger field.

My statement was not absolute at all, it's simply a trend. Robots that have a higher OPR tend to win more often, I think we can all agree this is true. Curie division has the highest OPR's in their top 24 robots between all divisions. This is also true. Therefore it follows that it is likely that curie division will on average produce the alliances most likely to win. I think it logically follows that this statement is cogent and is more likely true than untrue.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

We were the 4th pick at IRI last year and played in all 3 of our QF matches. Our partners did have problems but we would have been in to block 148's full court shooting either way.

The divisions are very deep with teams that can really help an alliance. There may only be a few world class power forwards but there is no shortage of teams that can help get to three assists and play defense. The 4ths on a lot of alliances will get playing time for a variety of reasons. On the top seeds it makes sense to draft two teams with similar abilities. They can give them both a chance in the QFs and figure out which one fits better with the other two robots. Lower seeds might draft for riskier strategies such as catching or a robot with a lot of potential but lacks consistency.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Last year (IIRC) they released match schedules (with all the caveats that they were preliminary, tentative, subject to change, etc.) prior to the event. Does anybody know if they plan to do that again this year? Does anybody recall when the match schedules were released last year?

Re: When will Divisions be released?