[Karthik]

There are a couple of factors that caused the lessened success of the number one seeds.

As Matt pointed our earlier, in three on three matches, it's very hard for a single team to control their own destiny in a match. There are five other robots out there who affect things. In the long run, this will average out, as you'll have matches with good partners/opponents, and matches with bad ones. But with only 7 qualifying matches, in a division with 85 teams, teams were victims or benefactors of their schedules. So, many of the "best" teams did not fair very well during qualifying at the championship.

On Friday afternoon, I predicted that each division would be won by the highest ranked "elite" team. If one of the really strong teams had a good schedule, and seeded high, and was able to pick another "elite" team and in the second round get a "very strong" team, this alliance would be hard to beat.

Take Archimedes for example. After Friday, there was a general consensus that there were about 9 dominant robots. But when it came to alliance selection time, only 3 of them ended up picking. The other 6, were the first 6 teams selected. So who's going to have the best chance to win? Clearly the alliance with two dominant robots.

So after writing all that, I was about to hypothesize that the #1 seeds did extremely well during the regionals. I believed this because, I figured with the immense number of seeding matches this year at the regional level, a dominant robot would always end up rising to the top. I was wrong, here are the stats:

Of the 2005 Regional Champions
- 15 were #1 seeds
- 12 were #2 seeds
- 2 were #3 seeds
- 1 was a #4 seed

That's a good success rate for the #1 seeds, but not as high as I thought it would be. Further study is required. Alex's point about the importance of the 3rd partner is very true. This game could be won or lost on that final selection.