2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Waterloo is going to start in a few days - here is the list of teams:
I know 4917 is very excited about the competition - we're looking forward to being a part of such a strong competition again. Can't wait to see how it goes!

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

I am very excited to be making the trip from Detroit, MI on Saturday to come see the competition.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

I hope for a good competition for my teams and the other teams there, and a special hope that my dads truck doesn't get stolen again! Hahaha. Good luck to all! Cant wait to watch.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Did anyone notice the match schedule? 2056 and 1114 are together twice. Match 14 and match 20. Its looking good for a new record breaking high score.

Be sure to watch the webcast! We're broadcasting both full field and a mixed video stream. http://www.watchfirstnow.com/live

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Watching the first match, 1114 going to be hard to beat at Worlds....

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Did anyone see the co-op stack that wasn't counted in match #3? It is at about 2:07:30 in the Waterloo normal field stream (here). I know of the "3-second of free-standing", but do those 3 seconds have to occur DURING the match and can't be after the ending of the match? The stack was clearly finished before the end of the match, and didn't seem to have anything wrong with it, but wasn't counted on the final score.
It did look like there was a possibility of the stack being supported by one of the grey totes next to it, but wouldn't there still be a co-op SET counted?
Does anyone have an idea of why this might have happened?

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

They clarified afterwards that the coop stack did count.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

That's good. It just didn't show up with the "final" score and what was immediately posted (they probably announced it over the speakers, but I'm watching the stream muted). I thought that co-op stack was pretty incredible because it seemed it was started at ~15 seconds from the end, and 2056 put the 3 on at about 5 seconds; just in time.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

I hope everyone is ready for match 14.
http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2015onwa_qm14

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

How are 1114 and 2056 partners in back-to-back qualification matches?

There are 30 teams in attendance, and each team gets 13 qual matches. That means there are 26 spots for partners...

Given that who you are competing "against" doesn't matter this year, why would the match making algorithm possibly come up with a schedule with this quirk?

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Last year, at a 36-team event, we played against 107 in three consecutive matches.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Hold on I have something for this



I knew it would be useful one day....

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Waterloo is always fun to watch...

e.g. QM16, 1676,2702,1285 and 5406 4917 1334 just put up 138 and 148 points during day 1 of qualifications.

Dat intensity.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

The schedule isn't random, though. There are parameters that are used by FMS to generate the schedule. Things like minimum turnaround time for teams between matches can make it difficult to get a full sampling of alliance combinations.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

284 points

:ahh:

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Are we going to see 300+ this weekend? Can't see how 1114 + 2056 + ____ won't cross that.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

wow... 252 just put up... im VERY impressed with the level of competition at waterloo

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

1114's qualification average is now higher then the old world record high score.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

5406 is a phenomenal rookie team.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Here's HD full-field footage of the record-breaking match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTz0ezZKMHQ

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Closer view with some full field and live scoring here.http://watchfirstnow.com/archives/122770292

Thanks Bochek! As always I love the quick match uploads and live video feeds from watchfirstnow!

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

I would say that they are phenomenal for any team!

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Makes me wonder: Has anyone out there tried writing a better scheduling app? Were you successful?

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

FMS uses the same scheduling algorithm this year it has in the past: MatchMaker. The output of the algorithm shows the number of unique partners and "opponents" (which doesn't matter this year), and the scorekeeper makes sure they're all the same. This is harder to ensure at small events, especially when the algorithm also prioritizes a gap between teams' consecutive matches. It's typically common for a few different schedules be generated until the output is even, again especially with smaller events. Or, a schedule could be selected to try and have the teams who haven't passed inspection play their first match as late as possible, to make sure they can pass. So there are a lot of variables that go into generating a schedule, and sometimes these anomalies sneak through while selecting for other things.

While FIRST probably could have had IdleLoop update MatchMaker for this year and treat "opposing" robots the same as different matches, it probably wasn't worth the time/money/testing and they instead went with what was already known to work pretty well. Go figure.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

I can't be the only one who's noticed the sheer depth of this field.

29th seed in Waterloo has a QA high enough to be 4th alliance captain at Palmetto in week 1. Or 2nd alliance captain at NYC.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

To be fair, part of that is Waterloo and part of that is week number. Waterloo's #29 (of 30) 57.1 QA would get you #32 of 39 in Central IL right now, #35 of 39 at Purdue, #39 of 40 at West MI, and #40 of 40 at St. Joe's. Yes, last place out of 40. Now that's nuts (#39 has 57.33).

I'm also not sure that QA is really a good proxy for depth, particularly after teams have played 10 matches in a field of 30. (The other events are at 8-9 matches each now--round of applause to the Waterloo field crew.) I haven't done any math to that effect, but Waterloo actually has the lowest #25 OPR of the events I mentioned, losing to next-to-last Central IL by almost 10 points (18.41 to 27.58).

Without knowing, I'd suspect that QAs might be less about depth all the way through and more about the density from the top being spread through their qual alliances. And it is really, really dense at the top: the #1 OPR at St. Joe's would put you #5 at Waterloo. I'd be interested in a fuller analysis, though. Let me think about the stats options.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

The cost function used by MatchMaker already prioritizes maximizing the number of partners over maximizing the number of opponents.
In my experience in the District model it's not a good idea to run MatchMaker several times since you're introducing more bias by manually selecting for specific features.

Matchmaker does a very good job for typical regional sized events, where the set of reasonable solutions is fairly large, but it does not perform as well as smaller District sized events. I've played around with several other scheduling algorithms with some success for Districts where having a fixed number of qualification rounds makes it possible to pre-calculate much of the schedule.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Waterloo is always one of my favourite events to watch, but this year's event is even more spectacular than usual.

It's very impressive how easy Q20 looked. If that's a preview of top level division play at Worlds, it's going to be fascinating, if not the most exciting for a casual spectator.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Here are the elimination alliances:

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

I've often wondered if the scheduling problem could be formulated as linear program and solved with a large LP solver.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Something interesting to note... all 3 robots on the 1st seeded alliance have a wild card. So their opponents in the finals all qualify for champs. However, (this is where it gets interesting) 5406 is very likely to win Rookie All Star, so they also have a wildcard which I am guessing gets passed onto 4678? Can someone confirm?

EDIT: Scratch that. Got rookie qualifying awards confused.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

That 2nd seeded alliance took most of the cans and still lost F-1 :O

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Wildcards only go to the Finalist Alliance, in order of selection. No further. Admin Manual Section 7.3.3

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

I don't think 5719 has wild card-generating potential, because Rookie Inspiration (which they won at GTRE) is not Rookie All-Star (which sends you to St. Louis).

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

2056 and 3683 each grabbed two cans. One of Red's RCs got stuck in the corner of the field between one of the stacks and the ramp.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Yup thats what I realized soon after I posted it. :P

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Wild-card scenarios right now: First two teams on finalist alliance (1114 and 2056 previous wins generating). If either rookie picks up RAS, the entire finalist alliance has a berth. Ditto if one of the alliance members from either alliance picks up EI or RCA (1114 and the rookies are ineligible for the latter). Right now, 1334 is probably really hoping for one of those things to happen (and it's highly likely).

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

As of this regional, 2056 has won 21 regionals without being defeated. Their next regional ends on April 4th. Last year The Undertaker entered Wrestlemania with a 21-0 record. On April 6th he left 21-1. Will 2056 suffer the same fate with their Undertaker streak?

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

The biggest threat (in my opinion, in Canada) to 2056 is 1114. If for some reason 1114 ends up on the other side of the glass against 2056, it could end the streak.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

I'm convinced! How could they not suffer the same fate!

I think it's safe to say Wrestlemania statistics are underused.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

With this year's game scoring of total points (average score/match), I highly doubt you will see them on opposite sides of the glass.
In previous games of win vs loses, I can see a bad matchup where that has happened before. But this year, it doesnt matter who you play against. For past Waterloo events, people paid attention to when 1114 played against 2056. This year, the matchup doesnt matter.
In the end, the better teams just end up ranked higher. I cant remember a game where you could lock up the #1 seed after day 1 of qualifications, if ever.

Personally, I'm a fan of it. You are less affected by bad match schedules and bad alliance seeds on the way to the finals. The better alliances win, generally speaking. There is no, good 1-4-5-8 bracket and hoping to be in the 2-3-6-7 bracket if that route is "easier" to get to the finals. Last year that had huge implications, especially since wild cards were being given out.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

You're definitely right, I would be really surprised if 1114 and 2056 were not together.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

And I'd bet that 1114 and 2056 likes the scoring system much better than in the past of W-L's.

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Agreed. I just like the narrative is all. :P

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Even as a mortal team, I really like this year's qualification system (even though we seeded low. We deserved it with constant mechanical or driver glitches). I was following along alliance selection with TBA's top-15 OPR numbers, and rarely was a team more than 1 position away from their OPR number. The alliance selection also went basically in line with what our scouts predicted.

Especially in Ontario with the inevitable essentially unstoppable 1114/2056 alliance pairing, it was nice to know that performance could get us a trip to the finals instead of sheer luck avoiding the 1-4-5-8 bracket*. I hope FIRST tries to keep the spirit of this year's qualification/elimination system next year, even if they return to W-L-T as primary sorting metric.

*Especially once the "winners' 2nd champs tickets fall over to finalists" rules were introduced, avoiding the 1-4-5-8 bracket was the #1 priority for finals. I believe in 2013 we declined an alliance selection that would've made a stronger alliance simply because it would've lead us to 1114/2056 in the semis, but we needed to make the finals.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Big shout out to 5406 and 3683!

5406 you guys are absolutely an amazing rookie team and deserve ever award you guys racked in today! Love to see more and more Canadian teams becoming so good so fast!

3683 Amazing as always! Always a pleasure to see your bot and team in action!

Thank you for the opportunity to play with you and see you again soon!

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

5406 is looking like a team to rival 1717, or 4814 for best rookie season ever.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

What about 2056?

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

I love 1717, but their rookie season wasn't anything amazing when compared to 2056, or 5406 this year.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Interesting wildcard scenario here.

1114 and 2056 came in qualified for The Championship, so their win generated two wildcards. These were passed on to 3683 and 1334 (finalist first and second pick), as 5406 the finalist captain earned RAS.

In addition to winning the event, 2056 also won Chairman's which created a dead wildcard, as there was no one left on the finalist alliance to give it to.

1241 won EI after winning Chairman's two weeks ago which resulted in a second unused wildcard.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

There were only two rookies present, both of which played in the finals. This means that even if 5719 got rookie all star instead of 5406, everyone would have still qualified for worlds.

I was the ref on the red side doing the live scoring, and man was it fun trying to keep up with 1114 and 2056's stacks. It felt like every time I inputted a stack with litter another one was about to be placed.

Finally a big congrats to all teams who competed, Waterloo is always a high caliber event but it's really amazing to see the progression from Ontario's 1st event to 3rd event. We were having qualification matches that were rivaling that of other region's finals matches all day, with or without the big two.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Forgot about 2056's rookie season, on second thought I think the only one to rival winning IRI their rookie year is 4814 who captained their alliance to division finals.

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Pictures from The Waterloo Regional

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.926221647442889.1073741876.125661567498905& type=1

Re: 2015 Waterloo Regional
 

Despite their number, this is the first season that 4613 has competed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgaex5m52XM#t=440m20s