How do divisions work at champs?
 

I know this may be a stupid question, but how does FIRST put the divisions together? I mean, what determines what division you are put in?

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

Pseudo-random magic.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

Oh ok so it IS random... thanks
I wasn't sure and I was really curious. Excuse my noobishness:D

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

It's magic. I don't know how it works, I doubt many people do (besides the folks at FIRST who make it happen), and I've never seen a reasonable explanation.

Very good question, but I doubt you'll get a good answer.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

Frank made a blog post earlier this year explaining how they assign teams to divisions. Im sure it will change next year though.

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...atch-Schedules

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

I doubt it will change much as it makes perfect sense. Distribute the rookies evenly, distribute the veterans evenly. The only tweak they'd need is to change it from counting from 1 to 4 to counting from 1 to 8, or however many divisions there are in 2015.

It's pretty hard, probably impossible, to hack that system to guarantee you end up in any particular division.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

Anyone watch the order of teams who have already registered carefully enough to work out who's in which division if we have 6 or 8 divisions. :)

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

I believe Frank did say somewhere that they were looking into having between 6 and 8 divisions...I'm still hoping for 7. ;)

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

I'm still confused how 6 would work for Einstein... Do you seed one division over the others, do you round robin between all then an NFL style elims? It just seems so confusing

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

We'll find out. FIRST has done some odd brackets before...Might run double-elimination round-robin. Lose two, you're out. Last two standing play best two out of three.


That said, I'd suspect 8 divisions of about 75 teams each would be the better way to handle this. Works better on Einstein.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

I'd really like to see this. Especially if they have two Einstein fields and they play back to back matches (one resets while the other plays). Otherwise, a double length Einstein might be too much.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

Rookies can't register yet, and they get assigned to divisions first*.

*Assuming divisions are assigned using the same system as last year as described by Frank.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

Correct, but assuming it is done the same way every 8th* prequalified team to register would be in the same division.

*assuming 8 divisions, can substitute for any number of divisions.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

I agree. Double elimination would be very interesting...would probably let us see more unique matchups.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

Frank Said in his blog that 8 divisions would likely be too many just by the sheer size 4 additional fields would take up. Even with FTC gone it doesn't save that much room.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

Vex has done a number of divisions that isn't a power of 2 for their equivalent of Einstein. I believe they used a round robin format of some sort.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

If you get 6 divisions, it seems to me the only "fair" way to do it would be a round-robin of some kind. Otherwise, you would have to get a bit complicated with your brackets because a bye gives some divisions an inherent "advantage" over the others.

I put "fair" and "advantage" in quotes because it wouldn't be any fault of the teams, and also that even if the bracket did have a bye, it would probably just be a question of semantics as to who were quarterfinalists (losing in the Ro6 vs the Ro4).

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

I really hope they do 8 divisions. I personally think a simple, single elimination bracket makes a lot more sense for Einstein. Round Robin doesn't make each match feel as awesome to me. Plus with a single elimination tournament it's much easier to say you were a Semifinalist or something like that, instead of saying you had such and such a record on Einstein.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

I honestly would be a fan of round-robin just for the novelty factor - that would be a lot of fun matches! I'm worried about the timing, though - 15 matches plus a potential tiebreaker match or matches (we're not going to decide the champion on tiebreakers, are we?) would be a lot. So would 8 divisions, though...

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

I could see them doing round-robin one year and then bumping it up to a full 8-team bracket the next year (due to being more comfortable with the amount of teams/ the inevitable complaining).

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

The system they use also should spread out the pre-registered teams (Chairman's, legacy, and last year's winners, who are all great teams), which explains why we never have a division with 254, 1114, 67, etc together. Since they all registered first, they will be distributed evenly.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

Divisions and the number of teams are changing next year, but I don't think I'm allowed to say anything else about it.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

First has but fields in the pits before...I wouldn't throw away this idea. It is very possible they will have 1-2 competition fields in the pit area.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

And it was awful. Just awful.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

On the crowd, seating, and scouting perspectives, it was really quite awful. It did at least make it very easy for the drive team, robot, pit crew, scouts, and others to get back and forth between the field and the pits! ;-)

I think the bigger slap in the face that annoyed me about the two pit fields in 2011 was the dishonesty from FIRST about it. At the time FIRST was extremely closed about decisions... It was the first year that CMP was in St. Louis and FIRST insisted that the pit fields were necessary because the fields wouldn't all fit in the Edward Jones Dome, not because they had 30-40% of the dome closed off every day for the Black Eyed Peas concert on Friday night. Let's just say that many of us saw through it...

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

I am open to the idea but FIRST has hinted at the fact there will likely be less than 8 fields. More fields means more teams and competition which would be cool.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

After experiencing pit fields in 2011, I would not want to see fields in the pit ever again.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

The concept of pit fields at CMP pre-dated the concept of the concert. The pit fields weren't there because of that.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

It was awful when there were 100 teams in the division. I would be willing to give it another try with fewer teams per division, especially if it allowed a regular 8 alliance playoff on Einstein.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

Has anyone ever elaborated on the "pre-concert" rationale for this decision? I just don't see how it could make sense, especially when it really wasn't hard to fit all the fields in the dome in the years following.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

Wow...This discussion got really interesting very quickly.
So what I've picked up is that divisions are semi-random and there may be more of them in the coming year. I think it should be interesting to see how this all plays out. I appreciate the quick and helpful answers.

Re: How do divisions work at champs?
 

The divisions are "semi-random" in the sense that there is a system in which people COULD manipulate what division they're in, but there wouldn't be any end result until they were actually placed in the division, and the whole process is basically impossible. Technically though if you had information on the registry of every team ever, when and in what order, you could aim to be in one of 4 divisions. I highly doubt you could coordinate (or FIRST would even allow) every team to be in cahoots about how they register to get desired alliance, and plus random teams just kind of string their way in, so there really is no way around it being a dice roll.

Also on the note of more divisions, if it was an even number you could keep the same structure we have now.

tl;dr: If you want to keep everything fair and balanced to everyone, keep it out of the control of those it pertains to.