Re: Success of the #1 seeds at the Championship Event
 

Jack,

According to the FIRST websitre, the winning alliance in Grand Rapids was the 4th ranked alliance of Teams 107, 66 and 93. They defeated 5th ranked alliance of Teams 288, 888 & 85 in QF2.

Re: Success of the #1 seeds at the Championship Event
 

This year was probably to most exciting adn equal playing field that FIRST has ever had, and hopefully they'll keep the three team alliances because I think it opens up the door for a lot of stratgey and situations that wouldn't have been possible with 2 vs 2 alliances.

The comment about acrcamedes with the 9 dominate teams is pretty much true to a degree as far as outstanding teams. I believe the 6th seeded alliance beat the #3 seeded alliance, and the #7 seed almost beat the #2 seed. There is no way that anybody could say team 173, 1071, 191, 1592 were not dominate teams when it came time for eliminations and any of those bottom 4 alliance captains could compete with the best of them.

Koko ed is right about the penalities being really big in nationals this year, if you even got a 10pt penalty in a lot of matches this year it seemed to me like they made a difference more times than not... In our quaterfinals it got really aggressive and luckily 4 disqualifications (2 per each alliance in 3 matches) balanced eachother out, and although my team's alliance lost I think all 6 teams agree we're happy it ended in a penalty free match with a 7pt difference, so if that #2 seed made just 1 mistake and got a 10pt penalty they would have gone home.

We had the pleasure to be alligned with former world champions in Atlanta and I believe all three teams were regional champions this season or at least finalists and Triple Play really stumped all three vetran drive teamswith adult coaches on the field and pit support stationed all over the place to discuss what they saw during the previous match.

Re: Success of the #1 seeds at the Championship Event
 

I think there are four reasons that contributed to the worse-than-average showing at nationals for the #1 seeds. Two have been mentioned already, but I'll repeat them.

1) Three teams per alliance lowered the importance of a good robot. (already mentioned)

2) Three teams per alliance made the qualifying a little less reliable this year. (alread mentioned)

3) This to me is the most important reason: lack of variation between robots and no single dominant strategy. In past years, there was generally a single dominant strategy that only a few teams figured out. If these teams didn't qualify #1, they would usually be picked by the #1 seed and then roll through the eliminations.

This year, virtually every good robot did the same thing and it was all about driving, efficiency, and (let's face it) a little luck on the timing. What do I mean by luck on the timing? During the final 4 in Atlanta, most of the matches ended with each alliance having practically the same (very high) number of tetras. The team that won was the team to be in the right position during their scoring cycle that they ended up with the last tetra on top in a key position. This was very similar to the high-scoring football games where you hear the announcer say, "whoever has the ball last is going to win." Sure there is some strategy involved in getting the last one on top, but it appeared that the teams in the finals were generally playing very similar strategies.

4) (not yet mentioned) Statistical variation. The performance of the #1 seeds in the eliminations is going to fluctuate a little year-to-year. Some of this year's performance might just be simple statistical variation.

Re: Success of the #1 seeds at the Championship Event
 

This isn't true. The 4 winners all relized that it didn't matter how many rows you had just as long as you out capped your opponent. This is why defense was lacking in the finals too because when you didn't score they got more than you.

Re: Success of the #1 seeds at the Championship Event
 

we did like 175 and 33 basically from the start as number 2 seed we knew we were getting either the best capper as our partner or the second best soo we went by how many tetras were scored per match by the teams and the #1 seed wasnt one of the top two and lucky for us we were able to get team 254. i hope theirs no hard feeling between us and 1089 for that. and i have not heard of anyone else turning the #1 seed down i heard 173 turned somebody down on archimedies but im not entirely sure

Re: Success of the #1 seeds at the Championship Event
 

Team 173 was ranked 9th, except the 8th seed was already picked so they were bumped up. team 191 picked RAGE to be their partner on the 6th ranked alliance (which would have been awsome for my team) however RAGE turned them down to to be their own alliance captian. That essisentally eliminated our chance at picking them as a #7 seed and then team 191 picked team 179 which was the last team we had listed on our "MUST HAVE IF WE DON'T GET PICKED HIGHER AND STILL PLAN ON WINNING" list.

After checking into the stats.. that 191/179/??? alliance ended up reaching the division finals

Re: Success of the #1 seeds at the Championship Event
 

716 picked Rage and was turned down. We had the Children of the Swamp the whole time.
The third team was our FLR partners the Martians whos experience and defensive prowess helped us navigate through the tourney.

Re: Success of the #1 seeds at the Championship Event
 

Hold it! One row could out score six tetras (assuming those tetras were not in a row). Also, you forget one thing. The national champions won because of rows. The other alliance had more tetras and no rows. 330, 67, and 503 had two rows and won.

You are right about the defense--almost. If a quick defense opportunity came along, it was taken--anything from knocking tetras off another robot's top to capping the opponents home row. Read my signature to find out the type of defense that was played every match.

Re: Success of the #1 seeds at the Championship Event
 

This is exactly right. We won our division, and our first round on Einstein thanks solely to our strategy of getting rows (and we tried for them in the finals, too). This game was all about scoring as many tetras as you can while making as many rows as you can (and trying to limit your opponents' rows). If capping en mass, and not caring about rows was the way to win then our robot would have been capping 12 per match on 2 goals, instead of 6-9 per match on 5 different goals. Every robot in the final round was made for "blitzing" and attempting to get/disrupt rows.

Re: Success of the #1 seeds at the Championship Event
 

Man, everytime I say something in this forum i am completly wrong. Well i guess the only thing left for me to do is tip my hat and call Karthik, Chris Hibner, EricH and Bill Gold my daddy.