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I guess I was pretty off-topic now that I look back. What I had done was went and talked with a Statistician in our group who has a strong interest in game theory. I asked him about methods people use for match pairing and we ended up talking about how OCCRA (and FIRST) are really different than all the other types of competitions he is familiar with, like Backgammon, Scrabble, Euker (sp?), etc. It got me thinking about why we are different. I've heard Dean Kamen talk about that in FIRST he wants people to achieve goals, not prevent others from doing so. I believe this is what lead us into this crazy average score qualification matches where you can make up for losses by achieving really high scores (something we were really good at).
The problem is, for the most part, that it is easier to play defense in OCCRA this year than it is to play offense. It is far easier to just park in front of the goal than it is to pick up balls and try to put them in the goal. I believe last year was better in this aspect because the huge goal made it very difficult to see your robot on the other side of the goal.
My whole point is that if we go to a 1 on 1 format where winning is what is important, we can create a much better seeding process and in the end I believe a better elimination tournament. If we keep the good lessons from FIRST like having 4 player stations for 2 robots you can play nearly twice as many matches because one team can set up while the other is leaving the playing field, and therefore play the same number of matches.
my 2 cents
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