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Unread 08-01-2007, 12:26
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dlavery dlavery is offline
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Re: Making pre-match deals

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cyberguy34000 View Post
What were to happen if a team made an agreement with the opposing alliance like so... "We'll let you have the middle row for 256 points, we'll take the top row for 256 points, no spoiling those rows, though you can try to block us from scoring. All competition will be on that lower row."

If both teams honored the agreement, they'd have considerably higher QP than other teams.
If both teams made this agreement, then at least one of the teams is populated by fools.

Whether it is within the spirit of FIRST or not, making an agreement like this would be a massively stupid thing to do strategically. For the team that agrees to take the top row, they have effectively given away the game before it even starts. Assume Redabot takes the top row, and Blueabot takes the middle row. After that, every Ringer that Redabot places on the bottom row will be worth 2 points for a Singleton, 4 points if there is a red Ringer adjacent, etc. But for Blueabot, every Ringer they place is worth 4 points, as it makes a vertical row of two, plus 4 points if there is a blue Ringer adjacent, etc. Effectively, each blue Ringer on the bottom row is worth twice as much as each red Ringer. Unless Blueabot is incredibly incompetent, they will win the match every time. And a check mark in Blueabot's "Win" column is worth a lot more than the increased ranking points.

What you should be talking about is what happens if two teams make the agreement "you take the top row, we will take the bottom row, and we will fight it out over the middle row." (and on that topic, I will refer you to the immediately preceeding post by BillP).

-dave
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