Rigged partner assignments?
 

What? I thought partner and opposition assignment was completely random! This makes certain things very unfair. As you said, FIRST makes an "attempt" to put veterans w/ rookies. That means sometimes they can't, and some rookies get ripped off.

For three years I've been under the assumption that all partner and opponent assignments are random. Someone, clarify!!! :ahh:

[edit]If you can, specifiy a specific rule in the manual or a quote from a official FIRST person.[/edit]

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

I believe (note not sure) that the algorithum randomly mixes up all team numbers and then from that senerio mixes again for matches. From what I have had explained to me, there is no matching going on. I will try to clarify at the Canadian Regional this week.

Edit- another note is that it would not be unfair to rookie teams but maybe unfair to veteran teams as there are always more vets than rookies. After seeing the rookies at Philadelphia , I think I would have wanted them as my alliance partner. Great job by rookie teams this year.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

Karthik, can you give any specifics on what you were talking about?

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

Having it completely random would not be a good thing. That would lead to situations such as having to play two consecutive matches occuring, which would be very difficult for most teams. Match assignment is done as fairly as possible, but there are just so many things to take into account that it will never be oerfect.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

Absolutely.

Is there anyone in CD land that works/volunteers for FIRST who can shed some light or give us some insight on exactly how they set up the matches and what, if anything, is taken into account when the matches are set up.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

I don't agree with this, but anyway.

Can anyone cite a specific rule from the manual that says how matches are created?

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

it seemed to me that almost all of the teams we were allied with, we were also opposted to in later matches

was that only a cooincidence for our team? it sure seemed odd, out of 60 teams present

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

That happened a lot to my team at our regional also. Its been happening like that always I thought.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

It works like this for all teams, from what I've seen. Unfortuately, logic dictates that it'll continue to be this way.

Taken from an older post of mine...

I honestly don't think that FIRST has found a better system; if they had, we'd probably be using it by now.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

I dont see a consistant amount of time between ALL matches to be an issue - if you have 20 minutes between two matches then 90 until your next one, it would let you tackle some bigger fixes on your bot - 45 minutes is not much time to tear something apart and put it back together

I would rather have a chance to play with/against a broader selection of teams.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

Built into the algorithum is a time factor that allows certain "rests" between matches. Because certain teams all start in the same time frame then they will probabbly advance in the algorithum equally. This is unofficial and hearsay from people on the field that are involved.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

That's definitely happened for us, and I just now had a flash of brillance and figured out why. :)

Edit: see IMDWalrus's post. Beat me to it. Oh well. At least I had a proud moment when I figured it out myself. =)

You're likely to get paired with teams you've just played with because of the time issue. Of course, you may be able to mix in some teams from the matches right before or after your original match. But for the most part you're with that particular group.

Then your next match you may play with a team that played right before or after your second match. So you'll get some switching that way, but between any 2 consecutive matches there's bound to be some overlap.

I think Ken has a point, you don't need consistent time between matches. But I think (I don't really know, I'm not good at this stuff) that that would make it even more complicated to schedule, wouldn't it?

Just my thoughts.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

Wait... let's return to the original intent of this thread...

Having a rest time is fine... but that does not say anything about purposely putting veterans with rookies as partners.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

maybe putting 4 veteran teams in the same match would be too boring? they would bash each other to pieces in auton mode, then nothing would happen for the remaining 1:45?

some weird logic along those lines?

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

But putting 4 veteran teams in the same match happens a lot. Sometimes the bashing makes it all the more fun ;-)

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

Ill shed some light on this situation. There is no place in the algorithim which places any team with another team depending on number, age or sponsor or anything! The algorithim has dependencies on time between matches, 4 teams/match, even # of matches/team, 2 red bots and 2 blue / match, who you have all ready been with/against and a few other items but none are matching teams with other teams due to their age or team status. Also it does not look at what competitions you have all ready been to or what awards you have won.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

What are the "few other items"?

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

I dont exactly remember every line in the algoritm but there are many spots in it which are there to prevent bugs... These are more or less copies of prior statements in there to work as a fall back so it checks 2 times to make sure you have the time between matches and you have only 2 blue bots and 2 red bots per match and such like that.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

Are these algorithms public? If they are can you give us a link. The information you already gave was very useful.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

The title of the thread asks if matches are rigged. I do not believe this to be the case at all.

I can say for sure (at least from experience) that there are groups that are supposedly random that play together. In 2002 at the Midwest Regional, we (Team 71, at the time) always played right before Wildstang. Thats not very random. This year we (1064) would play with a team in one match, then against them in the next match - it happened three times.

As far as time goes, I like the idea, but I don't like what it does to the matches. And still, 71 ended up playing two matche spaced 5 rounds apart at the Midwest this year.

Back in 99 and 2000 at least, it did happen that we would play a few matches close together and have a long break...but with only 35 teams at the regional, a long break was never more than an hour...and we had 13 matches. Only rarely did a team see another team more than once on the field. I miss those days....

Kev

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

Looking at the top 5 seeds at the chesapeake regional, it doesn't look like the parter assignments are rigged. Since the team number is a pretty good indication of the amount of time a team has been in FIRST, I simply averaged the team numbers of each of the top 5 seeds parters and opponents
If anything, the two newest teams had worse partners and better opponents then the 3 teams that had been around for more the 5 years.

Obviously, this is a very small sample. It would be better to do it on a smaller regional, where there are more matches to average out the differences.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

I'm not sure of the constraints of the base algorithm other than the obvious attempt to put some time between a team's matches.

Anyway, it doesnt matter much since that algorithm's output is not specific to any team. It generates matches with teams numbered 1 though N, the number of teams. These are pregenerated for various numbers of teams. During the actual events the teams that are present at an event are randomly assigned to those N numbers and thats that.

I do remember people said that at one event they played some practice matches and then the next day the qualification matches paired them with and against the same exact teams. This would happen if the seed wasn't changed between generation of practice matches and qualification matches. Since the pregenerated list of matches was the same (same number of teams present), the same seed made the teams be assigned to the same numbers as they were in the practice matches.

Hope this explains some things and if anyone has a really good and fast algorithm that you think would be good, suggest it to FIRST (and I would also like to hear about it).

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

This whole issue was discussed at length last year at length. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=19012 The most interesting posts are Nate Smith's at the very end.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

it seems like this is not a very good way to go- if you are aligned with 3 or 4 other excellent teams then your matches have a better chance of running up high scores, which affects your placement

and if you are always playing with or against very simple bots that cant score many points, you are not going to be ranked very high at the end of the qual matches

surely FIRST, with all the brainpower at its disposal, can find a way to make sure teams are not always playing in matches together all day long and ensure that enough time is allowed between matches to at least get a new battery and make any quick needed repairs.

there has to be at least ONE person in FIRST who is good at math :^)

im mean, come on now - even if you slip the teams by one match (2 minutes) that means one of the teams you played with last time will play one match before you next time, and one will play one match behind you next time - if you do that all day long you will play with different teams in every match - some are on a 40minute schedule, some are on 44, some are on 48 and some are on 52 - to make up for the difference you switch ends on saturday and move the other way.

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

Yeah I agree.... the constraint to this whole system is how much time is "enough." What's the constant's value set at in the program?

Re: Rigged partner assignments?
 

Well it looks like it has been discussed but doesn't seem to have been resolved. One "Nate Smith" mentions he has the solution to all the problems but I fail to locate the algorithm used and considering that thread is kind of old, if the algorithm was now being used by FIRST, we shouldn't be having all these match list problems now. Or am I missing something?