Rigged partner assignments?

Originally Posted by Karthik

I've spent some time discussing match scheduling with FIRST this season. The algorithm does have a provision which tries to place older teams with younger teams. It's not always possible, but an attempt is made.

What? I thought partner and opposition assignment was completely random! This makes certain things very unfair. As you said, FIRST makes an "attempt" to put veterans w/ rookies. That means sometimes they can't, and some rookies get ripped off.

For three years I've been under the assumption that all partner and opponent assignments are random. Someone, clarify!!!

[edit]If you can, specifiy a specific rule in the manual or a quote from a official FIRST person.[/edit]

[Steve W]

I believe (note not sure) that the algorithum randomly mixes up all team numbers and then from that senerio mixes again for matches. From what I have had explained to me, there is no matching going on. I will try to clarify at the Canadian Regional this week.

Edit- another note is that it would not be unfair to rookie teams but maybe unfair to veteran teams as there are always more vets than rookies. After seeing the rookies at Philadelphia , I think I would have wanted them as my alliance partner. Great job by rookie teams this year.

Karthik, can you give any specifics on what you were talking about?

[srjjs]

Having it completely random would not be a good thing. That would lead to situations such as having to play two consecutive matches occuring, which would be very difficult for most teams. Match assignment is done as fairly as possible, but there are just so many things to take into account that it will never be oerfect.

[Jay H 237]

Originally Posted by srjjs

Having it completely random would not be a good thing. That would lead to situations such as having to play two consecutive matches occuring, which would be very difficult for most teams. Match assignment is done as fairly as possible, but there are just so many things to take into account that it will never be oerfect.

Absolutely.

Is there anyone in CD land that works/volunteers for FIRST who can shed some light or give us some insight on exactly how they set up the matches and what, if anything, is taken into account when the matches are set up.

[dez250]

Originally Posted by Jay H 237

Absolutely.

Is there anyone in CD land that works/volunteers for FIRST who can shed some light or give us some insight on exactly how they set up the matches and what, if anything, is taken into account when the matches are set up.

Ill shed some light on this situation. There is no place in the algorithim which places any team with another team depending on number, age or sponsor or anything! The algorithim has dependencies on time between matches, 4 teams/match, even # of matches/team, 2 red bots and 2 blue / match, who you have all ready been with/against and a few other items but none are matching teams with other teams due to their age or team status. Also it does not look at what competitions you have all ready been to or what awards you have won.

Originally Posted by dez250

Ill shed some light on this situation. There is no place in the algorithim which places any team with another team depending on number, age or sponsor or anything! The algorithim has dependencies on time between matches, 4 teams/match, even # of matches/team, 2 red bots and 2 blue / match, who you have all ready been with/against and a few other items but none are matching teams with other teams due to their age or team status. Also it does not look at what competitions you have all ready been to or what awards you have won.

What are the "few other items"?

[dez250]

Originally Posted by SilverStar

What are the "few other items"?

I dont exactly remember every line in the algoritm but there are many spots in it which are there to prevent bugs... These are more or less copies of prior statements in there to work as a fall back so it checks 2 times to make sure you have the time between matches and you have only 2 blue bots and 2 red bots per match and such like that.

Are these algorithms public? If they are can you give us a link. The information you already gave was very useful.

[Kevin Kolodziej]

The title of the thread asks if matches are rigged. I do not believe this to be the case at all.

I can say for sure (at least from experience) that there are groups that are supposedly random that play together. In 2002 at the Midwest Regional, we (Team 71, at the time) always played right before Wildstang. Thats not very random. This year we (1064) would play with a team in one match, then against them in the next match - it happened three times.

As far as time goes, I like the idea, but I don't like what it does to the matches. And still, 71 ended up playing two matche spaced 5 rounds apart at the Midwest this year.

Back in 99 and 2000 at least, it did happen that we would play a few matches close together and have a long break...but with only 35 teams at the regional, a long break was never more than an hour...and we had 13 matches. Only rarely did a team see another team more than once on the field. I miss those days....

Kev

[Joe Ross]

Looking at the top 5 seeds at the chesapeake regional, it doesn't look like the parter assignments are rigged. Since the team number is a pretty good indication of the amount of time a team has been in FIRST, I simply averaged the team numbers of each of the top 5 seeds parters and opponents

Rank	Team #	Average Partner	Average Opponent
1.	222		488		694
2.	1405		868		749
3.	1083		708		733
4.	25		645		777
5.	303		486		760

If anything, the two newest teams had worse partners and better opponents then the 3 teams that had been around for more the 5 years.

Obviously, this is a very small sample. It would be better to do it on a smaller regional, where there are more matches to average out the differences.

[piotrm]

I'm not sure of the constraints of the base algorithm other than the obvious attempt to put some time between a team's matches.

Anyway, it doesnt matter much since that algorithm's output is not specific to any team. It generates matches with teams numbered 1 though N, the number of teams. These are pregenerated for various numbers of teams. During the actual events the teams that are present at an event are randomly assigned to those N numbers and thats that.

I do remember people said that at one event they played some practice matches and then the next day the qualification matches paired them with and against the same exact teams. This would happen if the seed wasn't changed between generation of practice matches and qualification matches. Since the pregenerated list of matches was the same (same number of teams present), the same seed made the teams be assigned to the same numbers as they were in the practice matches.

Hope this explains some things and if anyone has a really good and fast algorithm that you think would be good, suggest it to FIRST (and I would also like to hear about it).

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by piotrm

Hope this explains some things and if anyone has a really good and fast algorithm that you think would be good, suggest it to FIRST (and I would also like to hear about it).

This whole issue was discussed at length last year at length. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=19012 The most interesting posts are Nate Smith's at the very end.

Originally Posted by srjjs

Having it completely random would not be a good thing. That would lead to situations such as having to play two consecutive matches occuring, which would be very difficult for most teams. Match assignment is done as fairly as possible, but there are just so many things to take into account that it will never be oerfect.

I don't agree with this, but anyway.

Can anyone cite a specific rule from the manual that says how matches are created?

[KenWittlief]

it seemed to me that almost all of the teams we were allied with, we were also opposted to in later matches

was that only a cooincidence for our team? it sure seemed odd, out of 60 teams present