**FIRST EMAIL**/Special Message from the GDC

[Jon Stratis]

Kims, I think we can all draw a line between a team (or even alliance) deciding its in their best interest not to do the coop bridge in any given match. Up in Duluth, my team opted to go for the coop bridge almost every time. our drivers were good at it, and sometimes it worked. Other times it didn't - the other robot wouldn't show up in time, the other robot would flip off the bridge, etc. If we had chosen instead to go for the win and balance our own bridge, we would have ended up ranked a lot better - we lost a lot of matches that could have been won with a single robot balance, and our driver can do that in under 10 seconds.

So as far as choosing to go for the coop bridge or not... I think that's fair game. Each team should work towards the best results for the alliance for that match. Actively working against your alliance members and the other alliance to stop a coop balance, or actively racking up fouls to ensure the other alliance wins, or encouraging other teams to act against their own interests in a match "for the good of the competition" is just plain wrong.

It's bad sportsmanship and un-GP. They have rules against it in professional sports - it's called throwing a game, and people have been kicked out for it in just about every professional sport out there. I'm not suggesting we go that far, but we shouldn't be supporting teams who act like that.


All that said, How could we set up a rule to go against this? Racking up fouls... teams do that all the time, mostly accidentally. Someone playing aggressive defense could get a lot of fouls, but I don't want to red card them for it. Some sort of rule in touching the coop bridge? I've red of strategies that assist balancing on here - a robot with a top a little less than a foot high drives under the bridge while two robots are getting on from the other side. The bridge tips onto the first robot, helping to hold it steady as the two robots get set, then the first robot drives away. Successful bridge balance that is exactly what FIRST wants to support. How does a ref decided if a team is trying to help or hinder the balance, unless it's blatantly obvious?

How do you adjust the points to provide a team an incentive to not throw the match? It's already in their best interest to balance the coop bridge and try to win - that's how they get the most seeding points. I don't think there's much the GDC can do other than tell us their intent and state that those actions are not cool. From there, it's going to be up to the volunteers and those on site to make the call, and find an existing rule they can wave at teams - such as T15, T16, and T17, which gives the head ref the ability to yellow/red card a team for their behavior.