Championships - Qualification Only Event?

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Honestly, I don't think the system is broken, and everyone is getting worked up over nothing. There are set ways to qualify for the Championship. This isn't anything new. If good teams fail to qualify, it does not make the system flawed, it just means that individual team did not do enough to qualify.

As FIRST grows, there will be more teams and more competitions, meaning more merit-based qualifiers/less buy-ins, making this whole topic a non-issue. Although quite frankly, I like having some buy-ins. It gives smaller/less successful teams a chance to experience the big leagues every once in a while, so to say.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

As FIRST grows, there will be more teams and more competitions, meaning more merit-based qualifiers/less buy-ins, making this whole topic a non-issue.

Let's look at this statement for a minute, at face value.

Someone posted the numbers already. 366 spots are already merit-based. Let's go ahead and make that 364, due to two HoF teams also being Legacy teams.

In prior years, that's about 24 over the theoretical 340-team limit. This year, they upped the number of available spots to 400, so there are now 36 spots available for non-merit-based qualifiers (aka, buy-ins).

Now, there is already talk of two or three more regional events. Each would get 6 spots. That's 18 available spots for buy-ins next year/year after. Add three more events, and you are 100% out of spots for buy-ins with a 400-team cap. And, might I add, that's twice the size of an average regional event in each division.

Now: looking at the same math as before, 70% of the qualified spots were filled by qualifiers. Some years that's been higher, some lower.

So now, in a matter of a couple of years, you have no buy-in slots, and you have a chance that you get all of the qualifiers so no waitlist teams get in. A couple years after that, and not only do you have no buy-in slots, but you may be denying spots to teams that did qualify--there just isn't enough space.

I don't think this is a non-issue. I don't think this is a broken system right now, but I certainly don't think everyone is getting worked up over nothing. We're looking a few short years into the future and seeing that it will be broken then due to too many qualifiers, and starting the discussion now so we don't have to deal with it then. Aside from the whole "so-and-so is the best robot and won't be at Champs" discussion, which IRI so handily provides an answer for. (Don't tell FIRST, but the Championship is a qualifier for IRI.)

[Chris Fultz]

I think the move to the district system will solve this.

More events will support the team growth, but teams will have to qualify through a system like FiM or MAR to get to the CHP. So adding more teams and 'regionals' does not mean there won't be enough spots - the spots will just be allocated to each specific region.

And teams / areas should be pushing to get district style competition in their areas. From a cost / competition / competitiveness standpoint, it will 're-level' the playing field based on opportunitiies to compete, learn, improve and showcase FIRST in more areas.

[Bill_B]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

366/400 merit-based spots
257/366 filled
143/400 buy-ins

Did I miss anything?

My preliminary totals have 116 veteran registrations (presuming) and merit-based teams releasing 73 spots. I have no way to measure how many merit-based slots were released by non-attending qualifiers, except by raw count subtraction as above. Further, I don't know how to identify those merit-based from MAR and FiM except for the normal designations. That is, 6 from each I think are ID'd but that leaves 14 more? each? Also not sure how to ID non-attending even if I did know which those additional qualifiers were.

400-116+73=357 or very close to the number given for merit slots.

Refinement continues, comments invited. thanks

[MARS_James]

I know this thread has been dead awhile but something has been brought up that bugs me:

"It is called championship so only champs should be there"
"You should have to get one of the 6 slots at a comp to go"

My response to that are teams 66, 111, 125, 177(Twice), 279, 296, 469, 494, 973, 987. All of them won the FIRST Championship on a year where they bought in as in they didn't get one of the 6 slots from a regional.

So they were good enough to win the final but not good enough to meet what some people think should be the new standard

[Bob Steele]

58 regionals this year. plus 2 district championships (which in effect are the same as 3 regionals each) so 64 regionals worth of qualifiers.

so... 64 X 6 = 384 spots... plus pre-qualifiers...
HOF --- 20?
Last year's Einstein teams --- 12
Legacy teams - 10?

Approximate Number of possible qualifiers for this year = 426

With the new Wild Card system.... the only way to reduce this is to have some of the pre-qualified teams take up some of the qualification positions without gaining wild card slots... I would imagine that certainly more than half of the pre-qualifiers will do that... bringing the numbers down to around 400... which is the number we had last year.


Can someone clean these numbers up? I did a quick shot at this...
I would imagine that there is overlap on some of the Legacy/Einstein/HOF teams already...

What are the real numbers?
Is my assumption about the District qualifiers correct too?
Is my number of districts correct?

Interesting... looks like no non-qualifiers this year... or just a handful

[smistthegreat]

Remember, not all teams that qualify for champs have the resources to attend. I don't know how many teams were in this situation last year, but assuming all qualified teams go to champs might throw your calculations off a little.

[Bob Steele]

That is a good point... I wonder how many teams last year could not go because of this. Would be hard to pull that data..

I would expect that it would be heaviest for the rookie all star teams.
I know my teams first year we qualified as Rookie All Star in the sixth week and we had a heck of a time putting together the trip. We had also won the regional that weekend so we actually double qualified.

NASA helped us out actually..

R

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

58 regionals this year. plus 2 district championships (which in effect are the same as 3 regionals each) so 64 regionals worth of qualifiers.

so... 64 X 6 = 384 spots... plus pre-qualifiers...
HOF --- 20?
Last year's Einstein teams --- 12
Legacy teams - 10?

Approximate Number of possible qualifiers for this year = 426

With the new Wild Card system.... the only way to reduce this is to have some of the pre-qualified teams take up some of the qualification positions without gaining wild card slots... I would imagine that certainly more than half of the pre-qualifiers will do that... bringing the numbers down to around 400... which is the number we had last year.


Can someone clean these numbers up? I did a quick shot at this...
I would imagine that there is overlap on some of the Legacy/Einstein/HOF teams already...

What are the real numbers?
Is my assumption about the District qualifiers correct too?
Is my number of districts correct?

Interesting... looks like no non-qualifiers this year... or just a handful

Don't forget some of the HOF and Legacy teams overlap.
51, 191 and 151 are both a HOF and Legacy team as well the other four 20, 45, 126 and 190 are not in the Hall of Fame yet.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by smistthegreat

Remember, not all teams that qualify for champs have the resources to attend. I don't know how many teams were in this situation last year, but assuming all qualified teams go to champs might throw your calculations off a little.

I believe Bill said that the acceptance percentage shot up to something around/in the 80s in 2012, from a standard of around 60%.

EDIT: Found it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uTdsIFKjdI&t=3m6s.

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by smistthegreat

Remember, not all teams that qualify for champs have the resources to attend. I don't know how many teams were in this situation last year, but assuming all qualified teams go to champs might throw your calculations off a little.

I also personally believe that FIRST will never rely on teams that qualify not going to Championship for space calculations/event planning.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

Can someone clean these numbers up? I did a quick shot at this...
I would imagine that there is overlap on some of the Legacy/Einstein/HOF teams already...

What are the real numbers?

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...ility-criteria has a chart with many of the numbers you're looking for. There are only sixteen HOF teams, and only seven "original and sustaining" teams left (two of which are also HOF teams).

[Dancin103]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Don't forget some of the HOF and Legacy teams overlap.
51, 191 and 151 are both a HOF and Legacy team as well the other four 20, 45, 126 and 190 are not in the Hall of Fame yet.

Let's not forget that a LARGE percentage of teams qualified by regional winner are also teams what won RCA, EI, or another mode of CMP qualification. The correlation there is a good amount. So, at the end of the day the number remains around ~380.

Just my 2 cents, as usual.

[Bob Steele]

I agree with that however, with the new 'WILD CARD" procedure... other teams from that regional will be chosen (from the Finalist alliance) to take up that slack.

So, unlike past years, if a team (non-prequalified) is already qualified from another regional (definition is not complete for this yet..) and is on the winning alliance... the finalist alliance captain will win a slot at championships.

The order of wild card, I believe is finalist captain, finalist 1st pick, finalist 2nd pick...not sure what happens after that (not that it would ever happen..)

the only qualification is that if a pre-qualified team (HOF-Legacy-last year's EI winner at CMP, or all of the Einstein teams from last year) wins you don't get a wild card slot unless they have already qualified from another 2013 regional.

Note: If a team wins chairman's or EI or Rookie All Star at a single event AND is on the winning alliance ...no wild card is awarded. The qualification has to be from a previous regional.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

So, unlike past years, if a team (non-prequalified) is already qualified from another regional (definition is not complete for this yet..) and is on the winning alliance... the finalist alliance captain will win a slot at championships.

The order of wild card, I believe is finalist captain, finalist 1st pick, finalist 2nd pick...not sure what happens after that (not that it would ever happen..)

Qualified: Win, RCA, EI, RAS, Wild Card Qual. The usual suspects (unless something changes).

Order: After finalist 2nd pick, it's finalist backup (if used), then no wild card awarded even if one is available. So if all three teams on the winning alliance and 1 on the finalist have already qualified, and the finalist alliance has no backup, only 2 wild cards will qualify--but if there is a backup, then 3 will qualify. If 2 teams on the finalist alliance have already qualified, then at least 1 wild card will go unused. (Frank's blog posts are the source for this.)