[Siri]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

Certainly there will not be enough available late-season slots for all the teams that would prefer them, if John's speculation is valid. Lack of availability does not refute the speculation, though. If playing late really is an advantage, then how will FIRST decide which teams get that advantage?

My own (FiM) team prefers playing one district early and another late; e.g. Week 2 and Week 5 in 2016. The early one is an advantage for teams that work hard and finish the robot(s) so they can practice. The late one is an opportunity for improvement. So, for us, John's speculation is not an issue.

For a one-and-done Regional team, I think that John's speculation is valid.

It's certainly a reasonable question, so let's examine the dissausive factors. District teams would (and are) put in a position to trade off playing late versus the amount of time they have to improve and recoup between events. They also shoulder the same tradeoff as a one-and-done Regional team, below.

A one-and-done Regional team, unless they are somehow in a regional that's all one-and-dones*, is at a disadvantage with that cohort in terms of actual competition experience. Unfortunately, we can't have any data on the exact value of this alone without dropping SBD. Nonetheless, one could speculate that a one-and-done has to choose which week to attend based on their own Performance vs. Week curve. They need to map and decide beforehand which week they're likely to be above the largest number of other teams they would play. Teams already do this, of course, though it's certainly a difficult calculation and not likely even to be undertaken by all, much less calculated correctly.

• We can surmise that N teams won't follow this impetus, either because they can't themselves logistically, the events aren't available, they don't realize it, or they don't want to.
• There will also be M teams that calculate incorrectly, wanting to go late and finding out that they're outmatched.
• P teams will calculate incorrectly the other way, thinking they should go early when everyone is still weak and realizing they'd personally do better at a late event.
• Some set of N-P are likely to adjust next year's calculus based on their experience.
• And then of course there are those that do or will calculate correctly, and we'll get Qs that routinely choose to go early when no one has competition experience and they can play others who have not yet hit their stride. Certainly this also already happens (actually all of these do).
• And we'll get Rs that successfully give themselves more time to improve, copy successful systems, etc, and can correctly sacrifice whatever actual competition does for performance curves.

Overall, I can certainly agree that the ratio of N-Rs is likely to change based on whether there's an SBD, and that an individual team's set is also likely to change. I don't see why this is a negative, however. It's possible the number of teams who don't get their preferred event may even go up, at least until long-term event planning and team densities catch up. On the other hand, it may also go down. I see no good way to set odds on this. The forces and counterbalances on all sides look robust enough, and I'd expect the league to reach an equilibrium of event distribution with or without SBD. Is there a different reason to think these forces will be overmatched?