A New Concept for the Tournament Structure in 2004

[Andrew]

One of the problems that has occured with the 2v2, random pairings in Qualifying Matches is that some teams get tough pairings and other teams get advantageous pairings. This affects the overall tournement outcome, even for teams that are not directly affected by these particular pairings.

In other words, if you get paired with tough pairings and advantageous pairings equally, but someone else gets only advantageous pairings, you have to perform at a higher level in order to maintain the same ranking.

What if the tournament structure continued as is (2v2, 4 random teams selected for each match, what teams are in a match are announced in advance) however the alliance pairings were determined at match time based on current rankings.

The highest seed is allied with the lowest seed (call this the blue alliance) and the middle seeds are paired with each other (call this the red alliance).

This concept would guarantee that the eight best teams floated to the top.

[Ryan Foley]

thats a really good idea. It would keep things a lot more equal and fair. I like it.

[MrB]

I agree.. did you get a chance to present this to FIRST at the discussion forums a couple weeks ago?

did they give any feedback?

In 2000 I believe (yes I was around) FIRST used to do something similar to that. It gave you the match list with 4 teams in a match, but you didnt know who your partner was until you got to staging. Once all 4 teams were there (or as many that showed up) they told who was partnered with who, based on an automated selection. Even that would also work. In 2001, you really couldn't use that system. In 2002 and 2003 they flat out told you your partner before hand.

[Andrew]

did you get a chance to present this to FIRST at the discussion forums a couple weeks ago?

We almost sent someone to the Forum this year. But, we were all recovering from the season.

[Ryan Foley]

Also, like DJ said, with Andrew's method you wont know your partner until match time. This makes things more interesting, and in my opinion, more exciting. How you know your partner for evey match at the start of the competition makes coming up with strategies way to easy. With the older method, it required teams to come up with quick strategies in less than 2 min. It required more skill at being able to think quickly.

[Ryan Dognaux]

This pairing sounds interesting... I'd like to see it make a comeback for next season's competitions. Matches would be very unpredictible... can anyone say.. scouting nightmare?

[Yan Wang]

I like the idea very much. It'd be pratical and would spread out the competition a lot better.

[pauluffel]

I agree that it sounds fun and I would like to see this come into play in the future. It probably wouldn"t be that difficult to scout because if there was a simple rule that would always be used to determine what the pairings would be out of the 3 you could be paired with, you could guess fairly easily which team you would be with. This vagueness would also make it much more fun for scouts as well, because they would have to think up 3 strategies for each match. If you think about it, the 6 week build is a nightmare too, but that"s what makes it fun
I love challenges, eh?

[apk]

Originally posted by Ryan Dognaux
Matches would be very unpredictible... can anyone say.. scouting nightmare?

If this were the case, we (fsn) are going to be put to the test.

[patrickrd]

Sounds like a good idea to me. The rankings would have to be locked maybe 3 matches beforehand in order to give the teams a chance to get to the proper side of the staging area and collaborate with ally, etc.

At nationals in 2002, we were ranked #1 for our division for most of qualifications. This was in part because we had one great ally after another, all who could score enormous amounts of balls quickly. With this new system, we wouldn't have had the good allies time after time, while other teams were never fortunate enough to get any good ally.

Well, g2g
Patrick, NY

[Ken Leung]

What if the highest seed in the 4 teams keep getting paired with the lowest seeded teams with non-functional robot?

Then most of their matches they will be stuck to fight against 2 functional robots.

That's what happened to my team at 2000, and every match we were paired with really bad partners a lot of times.

[Rob Colatutto]

That becomes a problem at smaller regionals. I know from the SBPLI regional, of about 35 teams....there are sometimes up to 10 robots that don't really work. So thats how a lot of really good robots end up seedling low, because of bad partners and facing 2 working robots.

[Joe Matt]

Oh yeah, not to be blunt, but I hate the idea.

Yeah, I might be a trouble maker, but look at it this way: FIRST isn't about making everything even for everyone since it would remove the fun and competitiveness of it (as Dean said.) This 'new' system would take away the real life aspects of the game such as that you won't be able to win every time and there won't be a god like figure that would automatically pair you with alliance partner that is the same using formulas. FIRST is about replicating situations that you might face in real life, if your an engineer or not.

I vote no...


Why am I always the one who disagrees?

[Mike o.]

I must agree and disagree with the situation

I agree in the sense that it seems fair and all and that its a little logical in the sense of the phrase "crunchtime thinking"

I disagree in the respect that it takes away the funn of being able to plan ahead and just process your battle plan(strategy).

truthfully i am very mixed up, i would althogh probably like to see stay the same

Mike