Losing on Purpose to Gain Advantage

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

The answer is so obviously right in my view that it was hard for me to come up with a rational argument for it. Here it is: qualification matches are intended to rank robots according to their ability to play the game. Throwing a match undermines that intent. Your team is supposed to be seeded based on performance in the robot game, not on clever application of game theory.

Since ranking is going to be imperfect, this argument is likewise imperfect; the "best" robot isn't guaranteed to be ranked at the top. But I believe it's important not to try to manipulate rankings, and instead to play your best and let the rankings follow naturally from that.

See, I don't think I agree with this. And I'm going to turn to the 2011 game manual to back me up.

Originally Posted by Section 5. The Tournament

The purpose of the practice matches is to provide each TEAM a chance to run its ROBOT on the playing field prior to the start of the competition matches. The purpose of the qualification matches is to allow each TEAM to earn a seeding position that may qualify them for participation in the elimination matches. The purpose of the elimination matches is to determine the event Champions.

Note the usage of "TEAM" rather than robot. That's continued in the rest of Section 5. Why is game theory disallowed for a team to use? Game theory plays an awfully large role in strategy decisions. Should we prevent teams from strategizing with their alliance partners before each match as well, so we can simply see which robots execute the tasks the best?

More over, where is the line between acceptable and unacceptable?
Should a team be condemned if they decide to skip a match in order to fix their robot? Or should they put their semi-functional machine on the field and potentially end up hurting even more alliances later in the day when their robot still isn't 100% working? Should I give 10/10 of my alliance partners a robot working at 50% or give 5/10 of them a robot working at 100%? What if the latter case is 7/10? 9/10? And should I potentially deprive my team, and my potential elimination partners, of a chance at a 100% working machine because we kept fielding a partially functioning robot and didn't have time to fix our issues?

And interesting example happened in the elimination matches at Championship this year. Team 71 sat out Final match 2 on Curie. I don't know exactly why or what happened, but it seems like (with their alliance leading 1-0 in the series), they sat out match 2 in order to fix their robot for match 3. Presumably they, and likely both of their alliance partners, felt that 71 would do a better job once repaired than a back-up bot would do. Their alliance would eventually lose the finals, even with 71 back in match 3. 2826 and 103 (71's partners) would only lose by 6 points in match 2, which 71 sat out. Hindsight is 20/20, but did the blue alliance (or 71 specifically) do anything that you would perceive as "wrong" by not "trying their hardest" to win match 2? By not calling a back-up bot or fielding a partially functioning robot?