Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Ore
A mentor for this team came to us and said they would be willing to make sure they stayed a low seed if we agreed to pick them as our 3rd alliance partner.
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^Fastest way to make our "Do Not Pick" list. PERIOD.
I've openly admitted to throwing a match in FRC before. I'm not going to call myself an "expert" by any means, but if you care to see my opinion on the matter, here's a situation summary on whether I would consider throwing the match:
OP's situation:
NO. Emphatically. Trophies, medals, division wins or not, any opportunity to beat the best team there, you take it every chance you get whether its Q1 or F3.
In our Canadian realm, I couldn't imagine backing down from ANY opportunity to try and beat 1114. Hypothetically if we were with 2056 and against 1114 in that situation, I play harder than I ever have and try and bury those guys. In order to be the best, you must beat the best.
To throw the match and screw 2056 out of all their hard work in ranking 1st, taking away their chance to pick the best alliance they can?
SIMPLY DESPICABLE...END OF STORY
This situation:
I threw the match back then, hated doing it at the time, but this one of the few times I felt it was justified. I lost sleep over it, but eventually made peace with myself. I have no regrets doing it. If faced with the exact same situation today, I throw the match again.
A few hypothetical match throwing situations that came up this year that we did not act upon, or never had the opportunity to:
Qualification rounds. You are ranked out of the potential Alliance Captain positions. You are playing with a very good alliance partner who you really want to help move up into the standings. You are predicted to win this match in a blowout, with the opponents scoring very little. I tell my alliance partners not to deploy minibots right away at 15s. I take a team DQ, by deploying a minibot (or 2
) on the opposing towers. My alliance deploys afterwards. Our alliance wins, but my team loses, our friends earn some major ranking points.
Qualification rounds. You are ranked out of the potential Alliance Captain positions. You are playing against a very good alliance that contains a team you want to knock down in the rankings. You are predicted to lose this match in a blowout, with your robot carrying the brunt of the scoring load. Instead of trying to win by scoring in teleop, our team plays the hardest defense we possibly can for the full 2 minutes, and does not even think about deploying a minitbot or trying to score. Alliance loses, but at least we win the ranking points battle.