Disrupting Alliances

[Raul]

Originally Posted by AcesJames

The beginning of the plan to split up the top 8 on Newton that year actually stemmed from the fact that we (176) talked to many of the high ranked teams before selections, and many of them said they would not accept our invitation to form an alliance anyway. We had a relatively "easy" match schedule, and truthfully did not deserve to be ranked #1 in such a stacked division. We then went to 111 (who was outside the top 8), and colluded on the strategy to break everyone else up before selecting them, to better our chances of winning in elims.

Actually, look at the records on FIRST under the archived results. We were #8 seed and were debating whether or not to decline. The rest is history - what Glenn said is accurate. There is no doubt that had you not followed our advise, we would have declined.

We did pretty well to get to the finals against a lot of very good alliances.

When I think back about this, I often feel bad for the other teams who were so good and whose chances at winning it all were "scorched", as someone put it. I am glad to hear that most on this thread support what we did as accepted strategy, but I have lots of friends on those teams and still feel bad about it. Would I do it again - yes, and I would still feel bad while doing it. I just hope no team is put in that position at STL.

Raul