[waialua359]

Lots of good points about alliance picking the last several posts.
A good example of breaking up alliances was in 2006 in the Newton division.
Forgive me if you dont agree, but CLEARLY, Newton was the best division with the most top tier robots.
Aces High, a fairly consistent winner year in and year out, broke up a deep division as stated earlier on how to do it.
Examples: 111, 25, 254, 987, 968, 71, etc. etc. 25 was arguably the best robot in the world that year.

I just wanted to add since it wasn't mentioned that breaking up alliances weakens the other seeds, which indirectly makes your own alliance a better one on a more equal playing field of alliances.

VCU '08 this year is a prime example.
#1 picks 4, 4 denies, picks 2, 2 denies, then picks 11 (arguably the best robot at VCU, team 1731). They wanted 11 from the very beginning, but would have loved to have either 2 or 4 (sparky twins).
So 1 picked 11, 2 picked outside the top eight, then we picked 10 since we couldnt take sparky, team 4.