[FRC Blog] Wild Cards 2013 and the Harlem Shake

[MagiChau]

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...e-harlem-shake

Hello Teams,

I hope everyone caught up on some sleep over the weekend. Only a few more days until our first official events of the season, and as we say up here, I am ‘wicked’ excited!

Hey, remember Wild Cards? I talked about them in the FRC Blog way back in September. Teams can earn Wild Card Slots as described on the Championship Eligibility page.

Here are the criteria:

If a team who wins a Regional in 2013 – in other words, if a team who is a member of the Winning Alliance – has already qualified for Championship at an earlier Regional in 2013, a Wild Card slot is created at the Regional which they just won.

Wild Card slots are filled in the order of:

1. Finalist Alliance Captain

2. Finalist First Pick

3. Finalist Second Pick

4. Finalist Backup Team

Wild Card slots are passed to the next team in the order specified above only if the team occupying that Wild Card slot has already qualified for Championship at an earlier 2013 Regional. The number of potential Wild Card slots created at each Regional is equal to the number of teams on the Winning Alliance who had already qualified for Championship at an earlier Regional in 2013.

Only teams on the Finalist Alliance are eligible for Wild Card slots. It’s possible for a Wild Card slot to go unused. Unused Wild Card slots cannot be replaced or backfilled.

The rules seem pretty straightforward, but it could be easy to lose track of where you are in the process of determining Wild Card status, so we’ve created a step-by-step worksheet to help you ‘play at home’ – or more likely, play at an event. We’ve made this as simple as possible. It looks involved, but if you follow it step by step, I promise you’ll get to the right answer regarding Wild Cards at any particular event. You can find the worksheet here.

Harlem Shake

You may have heard that our friends at AndyMark are hosting a Harlem Shake contest. We don’t know if the FRC Staff is technically eligible to win, but we decided to participate anyway, just for fun. Look closely – you may recognize someone you know very well. (Hint: He’s wearing the flippers!)

http://youtu.be/Ks0c4DzhF5c

I’ll blog again soon.

Frank