[Anupam Goli]

With a topic title such as this, you would think this would be a "beginning of the season" topic, but it is really worth mentioning going into championships.

We all know the teams like HOT(67) and Miss Daisy(341) that have made triple balancing an art, and can do it within a timely manner. 67 has been seen to do it within 15 seconds. Then there are those that spend the last 40-50 seconds of a match trying to triple, and fail. Regardless of the time taken, there is a strategy to prevent the balance.

Most of us have seen the MAR championships, and in Finals match 1, the Red Alliance was prevented a triple balance, but not without the Blue Alliance racking up foul points. This discourages bridge defense. You don't want to have the match won by foul points. But there are ways to do defense with minimal foul points.

Let us take a hypothetical situation (granted, this entire strategy is hypothetical). We have a Red alliance consisted of Red1, Red2, and Red3. Red Alliance can triple within 15 seconds, and probably less. To counter this, the Blue Alliance will have to have two great offensive machines, and a machine with the best DPR possible. Blue1 and Blue2 should be able to score well, effectively, and double very quickly (Teams like 1114 and 2415 have been seen to double in 2-3 seconds).

Red1, Red2, and Red3 are lining up with the bridge. Red1 tips it down, and is about to go up, and the bots are lined up in this order:

R3 R2 R1 -bridge-

B3 is the highly defensive robot. R2 must not have made contact with the bridge yet. Since pinning is not called until 5 seconds, B3 can align in this orientation for 5 seconds:

R3 R2 R1 -bridge-
___B3

B3 will need to have a very high torque gearbox or be going with a high velocity when running into R2 (I don't think it would be pretty though if you ran into a bot at 15+ fps). B3 effectively plays defense, and more importantly wastes time for the Red Alliance. R3 will break formation to attempt to move B3 from R2. B3 will have no choice but to move away from R2, due to the pinning rule. R2 and R3 will need to rush in order to execute, and R2, being shaken by the defense, may need to cover some additional ground to align with the bridge again, wasting precious seconds off the clock. This will waste even more time, as long as B3 can hold its ground. At this point, about 7-8 seconds will be left (with the 15 second scenario up there), which is nearly impossible to allow for a triple (though HOT may beg to differ). For teams who take more time, they will need to recover and may have a chance at balancing still, but after 3 seconds, B3 can pin again to stop another robot, as long as B3 is 6 feet away.

While B3 is playing defense, B1 and B2 can continue to play offense, and as long as they can double in a few seconds, they can catch up to a deficit, and with the defense B3 is playing, Red Alliance may only be able to get a single or double balance at most.

There are other strategies like this. With Defense becoming a viable picking criteria in elims now, will we see more defense on triples, or will the triple continue to dominate elims like it has in the regionals?