[jayjaywalker3]

Originally Posted by octothorpe

GP issues aside, I doubt this would be an effective strategy. Alliance picking is simply too unpredictable to make deliberately lowering your ranking worthwhile. Teams often intra-pick within the top 8, sometimes 3 or even 4 times, so a team ranked 9th, 10th, or 11th is generally more likely to end up in the 8th alliance captain's slot than the team ranked 8th at the start. Thus this strategy could easily be self-defeating. Also, sometimes the last qualifying match for a team can still be followed by 5 or more other matches in which they do not participate, which is more than enough time for the scores to shift and rankings to change, so it's unwise to base your strategy on exactly what your ranking was an hour before alliance pickings.

Ive noticed that a match loss can drop you 10 places so i dont think it would be that ineffective.

Originally Posted by octothorpe

And even if you could reliably "escape" the 8th-seeded slot, would you always want to? It's entirely possible that you could get picked yourself in the first round by one of the top 7 teams, in which case being 8th - and visible on the field - rather than 9th, and part of the big pool, might be desirable.

A lapbot being picked first? Has that happened before?

Originally Posted by 1885.Blake

Also, (part B) if you are counting on being the second pick of a powerful alliance (and you are unable to decline other captains' invitations) then I agree that the risk of being picked by the "wrong" alliance makes the odds very tough to predict.

I think getting picked by an alliance of two hurdlers is better than having to pick two hurdlers although if there are two hurdlers still left that wont be a problem because of the wheel.

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

FIRST is FIRST for a reason. We are supposed to hold ourselves to a better standard than all the other kinds of competitions. Woodie and Dean have preached GP for years, and for good reason.

Any kind of deal striking, or conspiracies in anything are normally frowned upon. In FIRST where we are "holding ourselves to a higher standard", how would it be any different, I think it is safe to say that most people would feel worse about the whole situation. Knowing that there are teams out there who care just about winning as opposed to having fun and getting a good experience.

trying to finagle your way into a better position just seems against all the principles of FIRST doesn't it?

I really do believe in GP and everything Woodie and Dean speak about. This year being my first year playing an actual role on my team (Director of Strategy) I have learned that much of the Alliance selections is about deal striking and conspiracies. The worst part about this is that I see the mentors doing the deal striking. I have never seen or heard of this kind of deal striking being frowned upon.