Thread: Picking Teams
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Unread 14-04-2008, 07:58
Shankar M Shankar M is offline
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AKA: Shankar Manoharan
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Re: Picking Teams

I think the solution to this "dilemma" is to simply have a good pick list.

I know the way we pick works around our pick list (makes sense, eh?). All the deliberations and discussions of whether or not we can win with a team, or whether or not we can work with a team happens long before Saturday afternoon when the alliance selections occur.

On Friday night we have an extensive meeting to determine our list, and after watching a significant portion of matches on Saturday, we update the list appropriately and get it down to 24 teams in the order we want to pick them. Each team going down the list is the next best (best defined to be whatever we feel is important to helping us win the regional) team available. Whether we are ranked first or fifth, we go down our list.

If the list is structured properly there is no concern about which alliance to break up. The team that we feel has the best shot at helping us win gets picked first. Therefore, we are not worried about whether the next alliance down is going to pair up with a superpower and defeat us, because if we felt we were able to have a better shot with any other team, then we would have chosen that other team. If we are declined, we simply move down the list.

The list also answers the question of when to decline (although there is a little bit more guesswork involved at times). If the team that picks us sits lower on the list than other teams available, and we feel that we have the opportunity to pair up with a higher team on the list, it becomes an easy decision to decline. Obviously, there lies some guesswork in the process the lower we fall in the selection process, but there is no one to fault for this uncertainty than ourselves - if we had finished higher, we would have had a better chance of ending up with the teams we wanted to work with.

I think the important thing to note when picking teams is that it shouldn't be about making snap judgments. There is plenty of time prior to the alliance selection process to make decisions on the teams with whom you can win, whom you regard as the best. Taking advantage of this time greatly simplifies this "debate" at hand.


On a bit of a side note, I generally don't like this whole business of applying an "un-GP" tag to anything in the alliance selection process. In terms of what happens on the field (booing occurs off the field), I don't think anything in the process is "un-GP," just strategic maneuvers that people don't like very much - often because they are very good ideas.

Last edited by Shankar M : 14-04-2008 at 08:02. Reason: Grammar.