[Magnechu]

Originally Posted by Don Wright

How about using a new qualification match mechanism which I think has been mentioned on CD before. The matches are generated through the day based on the team's record.

All teams play in a first round. Then, it's broken into groups. 1-0-0 teams, 0-1-0 teams, 0-0-1 teams.

Next round of matches is generated from the groups. The 1-0-0 teams play 1-0-0 teams, 0-1-0 teams play 0-1-0 teams, etc...

After that round...the matches are generated again based on win-loss-tie record with the RS as the tiebreaker to get the groups.

This would produce a team ranking at the end of the qualifications where the best teams that have really beat the other best teams are at the top where they deserve to be... I also think it helps group the teams so everyone is playing robots in about equal strength so all matches should be even more exciting...

Oh...I would also like to see more than 7 qualification matches at IRI...

Not really that hard to do, it's called Swiss pairings. Only problem with swiss rounds at a Robotics competition is that, let's say we start out with 64 teams (for demonstration purposes). Best case scenario you get 4 rounds before you hit a wall (64, 32, 16, 8), then you would need to start pairing up teams that have a loss with teams that don't have a loss and then it gets kind of messy.

I've thought about the idea a bit, not sure how plausible it is for FIRST, but certainly worth someone looking into the idea a bit.