2011 Championship Alliances

[mwtidd]

I figured some people may want to see all of the alliances in one place, so here you are:









what are your predictions??

[mwtidd]

my predictions:

1718 1918 and 2512

1717 67 2751

254 111 973

148 234 2481

[gunsanbob]

o
o

[CalTran]

I predict Galileo is going to be one heck of a place to be for eliminations. Newton should be great to watch too. I'm surprised about some of the captains and how low they are!

[dodar]

Archimedes: 1477/33/191 (5th seed)
vs
Curie: 1717/67/2751 (2nd seed)

Newton: 217/1503/25 (7th seed)
vs
Galileo: 254/111/973 (2nd seed)

Finals: 1717/67/2751 vs 254/111/973

World Champs: 1717/67/2751

Curie Curse is lifted!!!

[Frenchie461]

Archimedes 2016/177/781 (because 177 has made Einstein every year since 2005)

Curie 1717/67/2751 (really, HOT and 1717, no explication needed)

Galileo 254/111/973 ( I think that 1114 will give them a run for their money, but 254 is better than 1771)

Newton 148/234/2481 (We got dominated by 234 at BMR, and 148 has been doing well all season so they seem like a shoo-in)


final 1717's alliance vs 254's alliance with 254 winning

[Chris is me]

148 and 234 falls to one of the biggest upsets I've ever seen. Congratulations 11, 1730, 2122. All solid teams who finally had a chance to shine.

[Andrew Schuetze]

I am working on a take home final due @ 5:00 PM today and keeping an eye on scores and it appears that a lot of the division quarter final matches are very close games. This would seem to validate that the game design folks created scoring options that didn't have a choke hold strategy as well as provided a greater number of teams the ability to design and build effective scroing machines

[gunsanbob]

why did 2337 choose 578 who only won 3 matchs

[MagiChau]

Originally Posted by gunsanbob

why did 2337 choose 578 who only won 3 matchs

From watching 548, The Robostangs at Michigan State Championship, they had a fast minibot and solid arm. After all they were on the alliance that beated the Thunder Chickens, the Las Guerillas, and The Feds.

Qualification schedule matches have to work in your favor really to have a decent rank at times.

In 2009 BOB was first pick by 2nd seed of 1918 when our record was 3-4.

This year really showed how rankings does not determine who was the best. Simbotics, 1114, wasn't even in the top 8 after being #1 seed every regional competition and winning all of them.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by gunsanbob

why did 2337 choose 578 who only won 3 matchs

Strategy.

I don't care if someone wins all their matches or none of their matches. If there is something that they do well, and that complements my team's strategy, if they're around when my team is picking, they won't be around much longer. If there's a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none robot around that does everything but does not do it well, they're probably going to be available a while longer.

Rankings are kind of tough anyway--the "algorithm of death" a few years back proved that by putting teams against each other multiple times (and I do mean multiple--sometimes as many as half of their matches were against each other). Teams that pick solely based on rankings are at a distinct disadvantage against teams that pick based on strategy and team ability. And sometimes, a team thinks another team will be a good strategy fit, but the other team is looking for something completely different.

[J_Miles]

Originally Posted by EricH

Strategy.

I don't care if someone wins all their matches or none of their matches. If there is something that they do well, and that complements my team's strategy, if they're around when my team is picking, they won't be around much longer. If there's a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none robot around that does everything but does not do it well, they're probably going to be available a while longer.

Absolutely. Our picks were based off of our data and our empirical evaluations of teams at our scouting meeting. 548 had an auton that had succeeded 100% of their matches during qualifications, and had a good minibot, as well as a good roller claw to deliver tubes to us. They also had a track record, this year, of really coming to play after not-always-spectacular qualifications showings. Unfortunately, the unthinkable happened: That 100% autonomous failed twice in a row. In the grand scheme of things, even success in their autonomous would not have won the second match of the quarterfinals for us, but the first match could have been won with the extra ubertube.

A bit of a tangent: Strategy dictates EVERYTHING on our team. Strategy runs the team, from robot design to match play. That is our team's mantra. The way that we performed at Championship, at Troy, at Ann Arbor, and at Kettering was due to our strategy. And you're absolutely right: we make our picks based not solely off of data, but also based on what parts of the robot are strong. We've said at every competition this year that we want our third pick to be "Our Juggernauts," (For those of you who don't know, Team 1 was almost at the very bottom of the rankings at Kettering in Week One, got picked by the #1 alliance captained by the Killer Bees, and then were so fantastic at "throwing" tubes into the Bees'/TORCs' scoring zone that they might have decided the competition). It doesn't matter about how many points you score in a match, what your seed is, or anything like that: what matters to us is what a robot's capabilities are and whether or not they will complement our strategy.

I can say with great confidence that winning Troy and Ann Arbor was the direct result of our strategy. Unfortunately, we got slightly unlucky at Championship, but I feel slightly less bad about being eliminated in the quarterfinals considering we were in a division that yielded the World Champions.

[Bjenks548]

Originally Posted by gunsanbob

why did 2337 choose 578 who only won 3 matchs

*548. Also our schedule was unbelievably difficult this year with a matches against 254, 469, 1114, 399, 1771, ect. Also as a side note we had the highest ranking score in all four divisions (according to a few members on our team) with more then 73 points. Thanks again to 2337 for selecting us and 70 for accepting to make an all Michigan alliance!

[Mike Soukup]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schuetze

I am working on a take home final due @ 5:00 PM today and keeping an eye on scores and it appears that a lot of the division quarter final matches are very close games. This would seem to validate that the game design folks created scoring options that didn't have a choke hold strategy as well as provided a greater number of teams the ability to design and build effective scroing machines

Either that or they designed a game with tremendous diminishing returns on the tube rack. If your alliance could score 12 tubes and your opponent could only score 6, you got 96 points while your opponent got 72 (assuming 3 top row ubertubes). If you could score all 18, you got 108 points. That's a 33% higher score for 2x the number of tubes and a 50% higher score for 3x more tubes. That's the main reason for the close scores, not because the alliances were more evenly matched than in past years.

Originally Posted by martin417

254, 111 and 1114 were all awesome, but with 111 and 1114 both outside the top 8 we could do nothing to break up an eventual killer alliance that we felt would probably end up going all the way (as they did).

Luck sure did play into our win this year. At the beginning of matches on Saturday, we had a chance to be anywhere between 1st and 10th seed depending on how a few key matches went. If we won and a few teams lost or had low RP matches, we would be 1st. If we lost and a few other teams won and had high RP matches, we would be 10th or maybe even lower. We ended up losing our match (partly because one of the motor leads snapped off on our minibot) and finishing 0.40 points out of 8th place. Another possibly lucky break for us is that 1771 finished 1st and chose 1114. If 254 was 1st they may have chosen 1114 instead of us and they certainly would have plowed through the divisional bracket regardless of the other alliance pairings.

As a side note, this scenario reminds me of 2001 when we were less than a ranking point away from being 8th seed and getting auto-paired with the 4th seed for eliminations. Being 9th allowed us to get selected by 33 & 254 where we won Archimedes and were runners-up on Einstein.

[pandamonium]

Newton alliance selection surprised me. 148 was not selected by the #1 seed? Was I the only one watching and scratching my head the entire time? Were people making mistakes this far in the competition or was it just very very strategic super secret mind boggling strategy that I can not understand?