pic: Houston Venue for Championship 2017
 

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How large it is compairing to the Dome in St. Louis and the Dome in Atlanta?

Re: pic: Houston Venue for Championship 2017
 

Well those domes were for those cities football teams. The Toyota Center is for basketball and Minute Maid Park is for baseball. Both are smaller but the convention center is almost twice the size of the one in St. Louis so I think that will make up for it.

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Are robots moving between the three listed sites, or is all of FRC taking place in the convention center?

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My understanding, after asking about it at the meeting at 2015 Champs, is that all of FRC will be taking place in the convention center. All matches. They did not have an answer for whether or not Einstein would take place in one of the arenas.

This continues to be the one piece of information that it seems most people have overlooked. I don't know what St. Louis in 2017 is supposed to be like but Houston and Detroit are supposedly going to be resurrecting the fields in the pits from 2011.

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I understand from the announcement that all matches will be held in the convention center.

No details yet, that I could find. If each field has 100 ft of 15 row bleachers on each side, about 1200 per field could be seated. Each field would occupy about 16,000 sq.ft. This would be much larger than the pit-area fields that St. Louis used a few years ago, but I think it is necessary to provide enough seating in subdivisions. Einstein will be another matter -- not sure how that is going to fit in a convention hall.

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Yayyy, back to not having enough seating around the fields. What an upgrade...

#2isgreaterthan1champs

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:( . Time to bring butt pads for prolonged seating on hard bleachers. I hope Einstein South isnt on one of those proposed fields.

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I do hope they don't move robots/pits around. Houston has a reputation of rain and flooding happening in minutes and to transport to those other venues, I don't see much covering available. The convention center is very large and has 3 different floors. If they only have 4 divisions, I can see it all fitting nicely in the convention center. Maybe two divisions on the first and second floor with Einstein being on the 3rd floor. FLL and FTC could be on the third floor all together.

It could all work out but I think they would want use the Toyota Center or Minute Maid Park for opening and closing ceremonies. It would give them the seating that everyone is used to from past Championships.

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I know, let's take all of our teams and split them between 2 lesser quality events. Everyone will love it!

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If they use the bleachers that are used for Lone Star, they are quite comfortable ;)

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"Bleachers" and "Comfortable" are oxymorons

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No, it won't be a repeat of the 2003 debacle. Lucia Sevcik (LSR RD) continues to insist to me that George R Brown will host FRC quals and division elims, but Einstein is supposed to happen in Minute Maid Park, which makes sense to me from a logistics and venue size standpoint. I can't see any possible way of fitting enough seating in one area of the GRB to make Einstein work there, even if you cram all 4 fields together and surround them with seats to the rafters.

Assuming this is the case, it would mean pit fields again for divisions, though probably with adequate seating since GRB has a lot more room than America's Center. Like, 500K SQF vs. 340K SQF. I don't think the stands in the pit fields will be nearly as crowded.

I'm assuming here that FTC, FLL, and FLLjr get tossed to the third floor where there's another 223K SQF which sounds like enough considering FTC was in 100 (awkward) SQF at Union Station and FLL was crammed in 50K in Hall 1 at America's Center. 50% more spcae for those programs will probably be sufficient.

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Sounds like a cool setup. I had far less problems with the pit fields in 2011 than most of my peers. Any idea on the logistics of moving robots and pits from the convention center to Minute Maid for Einstein? How far is this walk?

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Looks like about a half mile on google maps. Maybe less depending on entrance of Minute Maid/what area of the convention center. Seems too far for teams to haul their stuff on foot though.

I didn't mind the pit fields that much in 2011, other than the bleachers being very uncomfortable. Hopefully FIRST springs for some with seatbacks this time around.

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This. There is nothing worse than sitting the entire day in the stands scouting without seat backs.

Please, dear FIRST, give me seat backs.

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So if the fields take up 64K SqF, that would leave about 440K SqF on the first floor for pits etc. Which is 150K SqF more than was allotted to FRC pits this year for 600 teams. Provided there is enough rentable seating available in Houston, I think FIRST can manage to have enough seating available around the fields.

Xavier is referring to the pullout seating on the 3rd floor of GRB. It's made of individual molded, padded seats with armrests and everything:

I can assure you it is indeed quite comfortable, but I don't know if it's the seating that will be used on the 1st floor where FRC is bound to land.

Xavier, there's 3 floors but only 1st and 3rd have actual floor space. 2nd floor is a long hallway, a few conference room, and some windows staring out into the 35' of ceiling space on 1st floor.

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Google says 0.2mi from the nearest corner of GRB to the near side of Minute Maid. Convolutions to get down to the field would add some time and distance to this. IF* they do it this way, there's obviously going to be a fair bit of traffic to get field crew, etc. down there. They'd probably close down the roads, though I don't know that they'd provide covering as well. I would actually hope for a solution like rolling everything into a 15 foot UHaul and making a short drive over. If we're talking about pit fields, then it's not like you're dragging your entire pit onto the field for division elims again like this year, so it'd only be one giant move between Division Finals and Einstein for 16 teams.

I will certainly pass that request along. I can see that seating with seat backs is rentable, so I'm going to assume that it'd come down to cost vs. benefit thing. I'll try to explain the benefit as clearly as possible to Lucia.

*Caveat that the event is a year off and my information is from a single member of the board.

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The thing that I want to know is how many fields will there be at each event.

This year we had 8 for 600 teams at ~75 teams per division. This was nice because everyone got 10 matches and for the most part didn't seem rushed. The negative is that is spread the team talent out.

Assuming that each Championship gets 400 teams, are we going to see 4 ~100 team divisions (like the 2014 champs) meaning we will likely see 8 matches per division or are we going to see 8 divisions with 50 teams? (which seems like a bad idea from robot strength but fun when you get to play 12 matches). Could 6 fields work? How would eliminations work on Einstein in that case?


Has this been announced anywhere?

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6 fields would work just fine with Recycle Rush's points based quarter-finals. *ducks*

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EricH and I hashed out the math here. With a 6-minute cycle time (so either a really fast reset game and/or dual fields), you can get 10 plays out of the 2016 schedule with four 100-team divisions.

And people said will.i.am used dirty words...

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They could do it MSC style and have each division have tow fields and bounce back and forth between even and odd matches and do a dozen matches for each team like like MSC does.

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I propose we take a page out the VEX playbook.

5 Divisions each with 80 teams and a full round robin for Einstein. Everyone plays every other division once and the best 2 records play a best 2 out 3 finals.

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While it does work well for drive teams and volunteers, MSC two-field style is not going to be good for those in the stands. This is because bleacher seats for two fields will not provide adequate viewing of both fields. The much larger seating capacity of the Deltaplex (22 rows on one side, 36 rows on the other) make seeing both MSC fields easy from most seats. Bleacher seats will likely be 15 rows.

80 teams is still too many to share bleachers and allow adequate views for scouting.

So, I think 8 subdivisions of 50 teams each makes the most sense. 100 qualifying matches, 12 plays per team. That will sort out the subdivision seeds.

I also like round robin Einstein, but maybe in four groups? Four alliances per round robin group, comprising finalists from each subdivision. Then send group winners to the final four. Group play on the convention hall fields, final four in the big arena.

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I'd rather have 8 matches than have 50 team divisions...if they go with 8 divisions you may as well crown the champ on Friday night because those will be about the shallowest fields ever.

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Or you know, watch them pull the top 50 in this year's Newton

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And then watch Newton get eliminated on Einstein anyways. How different would it really be with 8/50? I'd you think it's that predictable, you're basically assuming 1seeds out of each division. Would the 1 seeds out of 8/50 look that different than 1 and 2 out of 4/100? 2nd and 3rd picks would be weaker, but there's usually a big drop off there anyways.

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So if my team escaped the 64-team Palmetto Regional (where 24 make the show), we'd attend a 50-team Championship subdivision (where 32 make the show)?

I know I've been one of the people ill at ease over the dilution of the Championship, but this feels like someone took the can of Diet Dew and poured it in a 5-gallon bucket of water.

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I decided to work on a 6 alliance elimination schedule. This is probably a crazy idea, but it'll probably work.
(repeat each match, then do tie breakers, like normal eliminations)

To explain this, the Tri-Finals (for lack of a better name) would be the equivalent of the current Quarters. The Semi-Finals is where it gets weird. They get split up into two Semi finals, one with TF1 and TF2 winners, and one with TF2 and TF3 winners. The big caveat of this is that TF2 winners have to play two semi final matches instead of one like everyone else, unless they win both of their matches (both SF1 and SF2),in which case, they do a tiebreaker for the two losers. The two winning alliances then go onto regular finals.

With only six alliances, there's a potential maximum of 27 rounds for eliminations, assuming each round goes to a tiebreaker. There's a minimum of 14, so I could see the wide variety of times to plan for an issue. But it proves that six alliance playoffs are possible.

EDIT: Made a quick flowchart of how this proposed flow would go:

Re: pic: Houston Venue for Championship 2017
 

I find the idea of shifting from the Championship event with 4 fields at 100 teams in 2014 to 16 fields between the 2 postseason expos at 50 in 2017 intriguing. Coupling that with the knowledge we have only had a 15.6% increase in the global team, it's a very thought provoking scenario. The thought: why not just save tens of thousands of dollars and go to a mid-tier out-of district event?

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I am confused how you get your two finalists, can you explain it again?

As I understand each round proceeds normally, there are two matches played, if each match goes to a different alliance than a third is played hopefully generating a winner. The winner of the TF1 round moves on, the winner of the TF2 round moves on and the winner of the TF3 moves on.

I do not understand how you narrow down from the three Tri-final winners to the two finalists.

Edit: The flowchart makes it easier to understand, I would suggest switching the names of SF2 and SF3. How do you even out the fact that TF2 has played twice as many matches as TF1 or TF3 if SF2(3) is not needed?

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I just did another edit to make it more clear again. The basic idea is that the winners of TF2 play both matches. If they loose both of them, TF1 and TF3 go onto finals. If they loose one, the one they lost against and the winner of the other Tri-Final go onto finals. If the win both, SM3 (or 5, numbering is hard here), is a Tie-Breaker between the winners of TF1 and TF2 to go onto finals with TF2.

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We are way off topic so this is going to be my last post on your proposal.

I suggest you create a table with the following columns:

Independent 1: Outcome of SF1/3
Independent 2: Outcome of SF2/4
Dependent 1: Is SF5/6 played?
Dependent 2: what alliances become finalists
Dependent 3: If D1 is no and D2 includes TF2 (I'm not 100% sure this is possible), how do you make things fair for TF1/3?

Another question: What if TF2 plays hard in matches 1 and 3 but doesn't try (maybe even doesn't field a robot) for matches 2/4?

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To give another example for this proposed system, I redid this years Einstein matches in this format. I had to cut two alliances (Sorry Archimedes and Carson, I still love you!), but I made some reasonable predictions so that the finals rounds would still be the same. The quarter finals are the same schedule as the Tri-Finals.

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First, here's that table:
In response to Dependent 3, this is where SF5 comes in. If TF2 wins both, they go to SF5. If they win only one of their Semi Final matches, they still are on the finalist alliance, but the winning team on the other semi final match goes into finals.

In responce to your other question, I feel that would be going against Gracious Professionalism. If they are not completely sure that they would win the other semi final match, this would not be a viable strategy. I would say if they refuse to field a robot on one of their semi final matches, they would be punished by forfeiting all semi final matches. In this case, the finalists would be TF1 and TF3.

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The thought was based on Cory pointing out how thin the Divisions would get. With division assignments being random, there's still an opportunity for a similar situation where a lot of quality tea\ms underperform due to a somewhat disadvantageous schedule. And yeah, Newton got kicked right out the gate, but those Division elims were so brutal on everyone involved that really wasn't a surprise

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With a bit of planning, the problem of poor viewing angles could be used to solve the problem of insufficient seating. If people can't stay in one spot and see every match they will naturally come and go to switch which field they're watching (or visit the pits, or something else), opening up seating.

Block out the prime sections for scouts and VIPs, and make sure everything else has intentionally bad sight lines to the further field (don't want to leave any prime seating free-for-all because people will fight over it).

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I'm starting to get worried that if this thread goes any farther, Bkeeney might stumble upon the forbidden words and summon the Elimination Bracket of Doom.

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Reserve your hotel rooms early !
There are many hotels downtown within walking distance of the convention center.

The light rail "Convention District" stop is the closest to the venue. http://www.houstontx.gov/abouthouston/lightrail.html

Houston has lots of parking, but Bus parking can get complicated especially with the new construction for the SuperBowl.

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I'm curious if any teams will check out the Houston tunnels for lunch Friday . . . so few people ever know about them and the East End expansion is just across Discovery Green now

http://www.downtownhouston.org/site_...DMAP2015-2.pdf

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Did they already say if they'll use the same scientists' names in both 'championships?'

I'd be cool with them adding some famous engineer names.