Agreements are worthless. Last match of quals at stl, we were against our pit neighbors, and we had been pretty friendly with them the whole time, and we were both ranked pretty dismally so they approached us about leaving HP stacks alone and I thought, wth, it could get us out of the 30's. Anyway, early in the match I was shoving them around (their bot was light and fast . . . and weak) and killed their drivetrain(without realizing it) so they hit our stack because they could no longer turn. It called for retaliation. I got their stacks. their alliance partner wasn't doing so well, so we won by a decent amount to a little. We got more points out of non-agreed matches, so we decided the whole practise is flawed, moral considerations aside . . . . .

If you agree to leave your opponents stack intact, no matter what

then you HAVE agreed to possibly loosing the game, when you might have won if you used all your machines capibilities.

I dont see any problem with any/all teams choosing to leave stacks intact until the last few seconds, as a strategy to maximize Q points

but if you agree to forego an legal and valid game tactic (knocking their stack down), even if it means you loose the match - then you are agreeing to loose intentionally under some conditions.

Mo matter what the field situation is, if you can win the match instead of loosing, by knocking down your opponents stack at any point in the game, then you WILL have a higher Q point than you would if you allow yourself to loose.

Intentionally loosing for any reason is poor sportsmanship! Its also against the rules and intent of the games. I have also seen this in the playoffs, where a team will get a very high score in the first round, then deliberately devistate the field in the second round, knowing they will loose, but their opponent will not be able to get enough points to offset the Q points from the first match.

This is also BAD FORM - LOUSY SPORTSMANSHIP!!!

If you play, play your best, play to score, give it your best shot. and give your opponent every opportunity to do his best too.

If you win buy deliberately loosing your second match in the playoffs, dont be surprized if you hear the crowd BOOOOing you! Is your machine so bad that you cant win two rounds in a row?

If you are not going to try to score points to win, then hit the power button on your bots and let it sit dead for the whole round. Are you afraid the other team will beat you? afraid to go head to head two rounds in a row?

Sportsmanship is about taking the high road. Making sure every team, every player, gets a fair chance, all the time, in every match.

Let every team use their machine to its fullest capibilities, and then the best team will win.

in response to IronSlayTallica, i would have to say yes that happens and it happened to our agreement (the second and last one we made), however our robot managed to pull out and we won with a fair amount of point (about 120 or so)...

some one or people have already mentioned that it might even be strategy to have the agreement and then see if anyone breaks it or not (like mind games, you know?)
And then if you hae a stacker, you can rebuild the stack... in fact if you have a stacker then you make breaking agreements kinda pointless... (you build a stack as your ally goes and breaks theirs)

Prior to Arizona, our team never finished better than 18th ranked and we were also never picked to go to the finals until Arizona. At AZ, we finished the qualifying rounds ranked 6th. We are totally stoked about our performance, however, we feel that it is UNFAIR that there are teams ranked higher than us that used collusion in order to get there.
It might sound petty to put so much emphasis on our ranking, but it means so much to us to have achieved what we did legitimately when other teams needed to "bend the rules" in order to do it themselves!

The way I see it, such an agreement is unethical.

It really doesn't matter how FIRST meant the game to be played; the game is what it turned out to be. My making pacts, teams essentially cheat to raise their scores against those that wish to play competitively and solely by their own merit and skill.

I see agreements to be essentially the same as two alliances planning to boost one alliance with higher QP points by creating a one-point difference between the two sides to maximize scores. You might as well cheat.

Unless FIRST decides that ALL HP stacks can't be knocked over, there shouldn't be any agreements that in some matches HP stacks are not allowed to be knocked over.

Give it your best, and if that isn't enough to win, have satisfaction in what you DID accomplish. Agreements need not be part of the mentality and ideals of FIRST.

And to Libel: Mind games, backstabbing, and such tactics are definitely NOT in the spirit of FIRST nor are they fitting with common courtesy or gracious professionalism.

i have to agree with you in saying that the agreements arent as good as they should be but there are some levels where you can say they are good...

::sigh:: but yeah it does suck that other teams have advantage even without their hardest labor...
(not that some teams dont work their best in their teams..)

"Agreements", as defined in the initial post, cause harm. They harm the chances for teams who do not participate in the practice by lessening their chances to make the playoffs, and they harm the teams who DO participate, because they are learning the wrong lessons.

If the message to be taught is "winning at all costs is the goal", then these types of gentlemen's agreements certainly fit. However, I believe that the real message is to win by creating the best robot design, and playing the intended game to it's fullest.

Just to put things in perspective, these "agreements" are basically collusion. That is, 4 teams agree to artificially increase their scores by NOT playing the game to it's fullest. If these competitions fell into the real of professional or collegiate athletics, this practice would not only be considered unethical, it is outright ILLEGAL! People have gone to jail for this.

Nuff said

it totally helps!! we had told the other teams and our allience not to knocl down the HP stacks and leave the game to the last :15 sec. where they would go for the King Of The Hill. thats how we got the 2nd highest score for the Buckeye Regional.

We'll have a new 'agreement/collusion/fixing' thread started up this evening.