Collusion at the championship event?
 

I know this will probably start another flame...

But did anyone witness or take part in any collusion in houston?

I know that before one of our matches our alliance told us that one of our oponents had approached them about leaving the stacks on both sides untouched. We declined (as pledged in the collusion on galileo thread) and ended up beating our opponent and getting a QP of 246...very nice match without collusion.

I personaly didn't see any going on in galileo but i didn't get to watch very many matches on other fields... What did you guys observe?

Curie was apparently a clean field full of hard playing robots. The few high scores achieved were the result of great gamesmanship and a little luck.

WC

I heard that Woodie Flowers had written a memo about collusion, but I never saw one. Did anyone else see such a memo?

There was one match on Curie that had me a bit suspicious... in my corner of the field (red) I saw a blue robot roll up to a human player stack of 4, stay there for a second, then turn around and go back. I didn't see, but the ref on the other side (blue) told me the same thing happend with a red bot with a blue stack. I don't remember which teams it was, or which match number, but myself and another ref thought it odd that both stacks should remain standing, with all four bots on the top at the end...

It was the only match where we suspected something, every other match where stacks remained, the appropriate alliance bot defended the stack to the death, much to my personal delight.

45 did not endorse nor participate in any colluding. Also I did not personally witness any colluding, however i did not see very many matches because of my presence in the pit and behind the OI, and absence from the stands most of the day.

ok since i voulentered on archimedes on Friday and Saturday, i can say that i did not see any time when 2 teams on different alliances had a plan made up for getting high QP scores, and we had 4 of the top 5 high scores from nats at the end of the event.

~Dez

Every game in Newton was watched by at least someone on my team, and I didn't hear anyone mention a thing about rigged matches.

I saw a lot of stack defense going on, though, which was great fun to watch. :)

Hahaha DJ came up to me before our match against you and was all "Hey josh wanna collude? We can just leave the HP stacks up"

I figured he was joking but he said it so straight faced...silly DJ messing with my head:P

Evidently a few of my team members were in on the joke!

There was a team that came up to us twice (one aginst and once with) that wanted to do collusion. We disagreed, and he was kinda mad, but i didn't really care. I didn't wish to do that...

No collusion, a lot of stupid play Friday
 

Most of the Friday matches I saw at Newton were like elimination matches, Clear the boxes, battle for the top and then try to beat your opponent 25 or 50 to nothing. I saw this tactic even if only one robot showed up or became disabled. I saw 67 (Hot) in a qualifier in one match where there opponents got tangled up on their side with 1 minute left to go with both blue robots on the platform 67 proceeded to clear out any remaining boxes I think they ended up with about 4 extra QP's. I asked the mentor what
the heck they were doing and he answered 'winning'. Maybe he was smarter than me because they did get finalists at Newton.

I saw another match in which the loser deliberately threw away their 25 points in the last 3 seconds of the match just to spite their opponents, who had not done anything particularly egregious to them. They left them some crate points, and left plenty of room in the middle of the platform for them to drive on.

In general on Saturday AM the play was much better - it was hard and rough, but purposefully so.


There certainly was no collusion in the elimination rounds.

In a hard fought match 1108 and 469 score 302 QP points agaist team 34 and another team. THe highest score for archimedes and second highest of the championship. There were four stacks in both areas, we defended ours and left 34's alone knowing we had more boxes. Then all four robots managed to get on top. It was awesome. There was no collusion. We had won LSR allianced with 34 the week before but we both did all we could to win.

Thankfully, I saw no collusion on Galileo field. On a couple of occasions, my qualifying match partners had said that they relied on collusion during their regionals but that they were not going to do it here.

In the end, all of my team's matches ended up being incredibly nail-biting affairs...the way it should be.

Now, why couldn't people be as noble during the regionals?

We got the memo.....

I really wanted to see that. Any chance you could post the text of the memo here.

Watching the webcast, I did not see any signs evident of collusion, but a lot of great game strategy. Of course, there is nothing wrong with leaving your opponent's stacks alone for strategic reasons during a match... but when it is preplanned, it becomes a problem.

However, I did hear of collusion in the Galileo division during Nats, and from a respectable team. I was surprised that anyone tried colluding with anyone else after the numerous threads and flames here on CD and the controversy that it caused. I wish the same - that all of this collusion business never happened, and that hopefully FIRST will create a collusion-free game next year that is a little less controversial. We shall see...

We were offered a collusion for one of our matches, I took the Memo from FIRST, handed it to their driver and said, "We'll play our game, you play yours, we'll see what happens"

From what I saw on TV, every match appeared clean and well fought out.

we are proud to say that, as the number 1 seed in Galileo, we did not collude at any time. After playing at West Michigan and Midwest we ironed out a very good strategy which we used for about 3/4 of our matches: we defend the stacks, and our partner controls the bins. This kind of became our specialty, even though some of the more maneuverable and faster bots could and did get around us.

Oh yeah, we got the memo from woody too. It basically stated that everyone should play the same game, and colluding was not keeping things fair for all teams.

Cahoots!!!
 

Yeah, I believe in my heart that it was going on in the Gallileo Div. because our alliance in one of the matches told us that we should leave the stacks standing, like they knew if they talked us into it then the other team that we were against would pick them for the finals. I checked the other teams standings and sure enough they were in 4th place at that time. So just before the match I told the coach of the other team to defend our stack as in most play and they never came over to our side of the field to attempt to defend, we lost that match. And if they had played on our side I believe we could have seeded high up.
Our first match of Fri. we showed up on the field and our alliance partners didn't. We played our game as we had planned and won against 2 robots, it was a low scoring event 17QP's but we still won. Later on we were involved in a match that had no collusion what so ever and scored the highest QP's in Gallileo of 272 points. And we did it with one of the same team robots that we had beat in the first round when it was 2 bots on our one. Yeah I hope there will be a game next year that doesn't lend the opportunity to this type of "PREPLANNING" See ya all next year...

Interesting - because Buzz and Techno Ticks won the Granite State regional at NH together and the Techno Ticks and Buzz were in the top 2 alliances at the finals at the UTC Regional in CT.

Teams being picked does not dictate they had colluded efforts anywhere.

Buzz and the Ticks won a regional, therefore they become prime picking material for the top 8 seeds. Nothing surprising about them being picked.

We were at the Nationals, but I never saw the Memo from FIRST. After all the discussion in this forum, I am dying to see it.

Does anyone have a copy?

Can you post the text here or mail me one or ...

I think that a minimum awarded score would have squelched the collusions. But i know a team that offered collusions at least one time in the Newton division.

A minimum score of 100 or 150 for the winning alliance would have made teams like the 17 point winners feel a little better about taking on 2 teams single handed, and provide a bit more action in the qualifiers.

Then again i totally hated how this year was scored, it favored luck more than anything... and that's exactly how we lost. No luck.

Scoring
 

I feel similarly. The way things were scored didn't benefit our teams. I don't mean this in an offensive way, but I saw teams out one of our regionals that seeded in the top 8 that weren't very strong, nor in my opinion, very good either.

It really is sad for me to see in my eyes, because every year I've participated on FIRST, the robots who didn't do well never got anywhere. Our team was always one of those robots. This year we built an amazing robot which I am proud to have been part of, but because the way scoring worked, we still didn't do well. :(

Yes, thanks John for the help :D

Josh's reaction was classic...I almost cracked up right then and there...

Chris and Shannon wanted to see it too, but I guess you were too busy to come back to the pit so we could all laugh :D

Josh: remember what my board said after you figured out it was a joke? That was my opinion of collusion :cool:

:ahh: --> this is what you jtosh looked like when D.J. asked you to collude!

...which is why we picked them. How is that in any way collusion?

These two teams are as noble as any in FIRST...one is a national Chairman's winner, the other a regional Chairman's winner. They win through skill and luck, the way it is supposed to be. And if you saw their robots, you'd understand why they did so well.

Sorry, I misread "qualifying match partners" from your first post thinking that you meant your partners for the finals. I was just so shocked and I jumped to conclusions.

wait wasn't it blank except for your number and my number and my alliances number? Thats all i remeber...

Ohh and i remeber that your board is cooler then mine so once again i feel liek the technokats are better then us:) Hehe...until we tip you!:yikes:


_edit_

That isn't collusion at all, and people shouldn't assume that it is.

There have been multiple instances every year of competition where a bot might be excellent in both strategy and gameplay, and get picked (or win) several regionals. In 2001 Beatty won both the West Mich Regional and the MMR, and then won the national title. That doesn't mean that they colluded... it just means that they had a good bot and people knew it.

The Techno Ticks and Buzz are just two really great teams... I am positive that they would never do anything like that...


On Newton I saw one match that look a little odd but I don't think they did any planning on it...

Actually a number of "great teams" discovered "opponent agreements" this year. (I have no personal knowledge of any teams doing so at the Championships. I was way too busy.) Some very helpful people thought it was great. In fact in my survey (flawed because I mistakenly allowed multiple votes), about 30% of votes were in favor of the idea. The fact is that the rules favored it. The answer is to change the scoring so that we are all operating on the same rules.

When I was a kid, I remember adults sometimes letting the kids win at Monopoly so they wouldn't get upset. Of course, later when the kids realized this was happening, they didn't like it--they wanted to win for real. Well a scoring system that rewards dominent teams for giving points to the loser, is like letting the kids win at Monopoly. Sooner or later they realize that they didn't really get their points on their own merits. Then the whole practice becomes patronizing and a not-so-subtle slam on the capabilities of the newer teams.

Hey, yeh, I am part of a newer team, but I am grown up now, so I can take it if we lose. In fact I will use that experience to learn and to make our robot better next year.

If we want to see the end of "opponent agreements", then we need to get rid of a scoring system where you get double your opponent's score. Otherwise, don't be surprised if some teams "discover" this "hidden layer" in the game again next year.

...but at the same time, it is this "cooperative scoring" that keeps matches interesting; otherwise, I guarantee that most matches will be close to shutouts.

The problem with this particular game is that it is entirely possible - even quite common - to come away from a colluded losing match with a higher score than that from winning a lower scoring, more competitive one. Last year, there was almost no point in collusion - a losing team rarely got over 60qps, whereas winners most frequently did. This year, teams were losing with 80-100qps where others were winning with 40-50...it is this that causes collusion to become such a "desirable" option for some teams.

Collusion in Curie?
 

The most likely candidate match for collusion would probably have to be 81 in Curie, based on score. 304 QPs were awarded to 16 and 87, the highest QP total throughout the entire competition, I believe. To start, I must say that the drive team (as well as the rest of the team) never expected such an outcome.

I figure it would likely be best to state our standing on the match before being accused of any collusion. To start, 87 proved to be a rather resilient alliance partner (we were paired with them twice throughout the qualification matches). 66 and 291 had previously been damaged in preceding matches, thus minimizing any strong opposition. Near the start of the match, one of our opponents was knocked over, further limiting our opponents' abilities.

At the end of the match, there were 4-bin multipliers left in both scoring zones, as well as numerous other bins. Ours was threatened once, but quick defensive maneuvers by our driver helped protect it (so yes, it was threatened). As for theirs, our overwhelming advantage provided no reason for knocking it down. Our alliance's robots were on the ramp at the end of the match, as well as one of theirs.

No collusion was involved, simply a good deal of luck through alliance pairings and match outcome.

True, this year's scoring tended to keep teams involved to the end of the match.

However I think that we could achieve an even higher level of interest with a game where your qualifying points were based on the point spread. A score of 60 to 53 would only be worth 7 qualifying points. Teams who wanted high qualifying points would really have to earn them. Rather than letting your opponents up on the ramp to get extra points, teams would be pushing opponent robots off for an extra 25 points each.

Also with a somewhat different field setup, stacking could have become a big part of the game. QP's based on point spread would have a been a further incentive to make really high stacks (and knock them down).

If we want our game to be popular with audiences, we need a genuine competition.
Matt's post suggests another very good reason for changing the scoring to eliminate any way to benefit from "opponent agreements". We wouldn't be wondering if every high score was the result of "collusion".

When we see a post claiming the highest score in the country, wouldn't it be nice to know, with no doubts or wondering, that the team didn't get it through an "opponent agreement".

Basically we are talking about establishing a firm footing for the game, so everyone knows where they stand in the rankings and why.