FRC Blogged - Doing the Right Thing

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

There are 4 alliances in FIRST that were declared winners of an event but due to a field crew mistake their win and ticket to Championship was taken away?

EDIT: 1,000th Post

I mean that the same mistake could've been made and missed at any of those events.

[Justin Montois]

Originally Posted by Basel A

I mean that the same mistake could've been made and missed at any of those events.

Yeah absolutely. But since it was made at this event, I feel "Doing the right thing" would have been to allow the losing alliance to go on to Championship.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

There are 4 alliances in FIRST that were declared winners of an event but due to a field crew mistake their win and ticket to Championship was taken away?

I think the officials caught it at an appropriate time, and handled it well. It was only a matter of minutes, and the level of certainty about the error was high. Once the error was realized, the choice was between deciding the winner on the basis of a human error, or deciding the winner on the basis of a completely legitimate match.

Given the circumstances, they rightly chose change the call and decide the winner based on gameplay.

(If they'd discovered it too late—like as the field was being packed up, after the awards—then it might be a different story.)

[yarden.saa]

The same mistake happened in Israel, they had to go back to quarter finals after the semi finals started..
Something should be changed with the tie breaker system if the field crew are doing the same mistake...

[pfreivald]

While I'm okay with the resolution, I agree with Justin that allowing the losing alliance to go to Championship would have been the best possible call.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by EricH

After the 2010 IRI eliminations, IIRC. You know, the one that had 3 or 4 ties in the elims at various points, leading to hours-long delays in ending due to the replays (I think one of the semis went to 5 or 6 matches)? I think after that is when FIRST said "You know, I think we can do this better" and implemented the tie-breakers, for the 2011 season. Of course, we were all so riled up about the minibots that year, and the coop bridges (and Einstein) the next year, that there was no lengthy CD discussion about the tiebreakers.

We were one of those teams at IRI. Our matches against 1114 were epic on a level I will never forget. 5 matches of 5 or 6 robots lifting in every match. 5 matches of insanity.

If it were you in those matches, you would want the people in the stands to stay and cheer. Gracious Professionalism means understanding that those teams playing on that field are creating a memory that they'll never lose, putting yourself in their position, and cheering like crazy.

FIRST is about inspiration, and winning through penalties is hardly inspirational.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

FIRST is about inspiration, and winning through penalties is hardly inspirational.

Alliances win through penalties all the time...

I hardly think a tie-breaking system that is clearly outlined in the rules destroys the inspirational value of a win.

[Racer26]

So all this talk of tiebreakers has me thinking:

Suppose for a minute that Central WA was being run under the pre-2011 tiebreaking system of infinite replays until a winner is found.

Based on what I've heard of the incident, it took a few minutes to discover the offending disc, likely enough time to have started the tiebreaker match. What happens then?

My guess is that 2pt disc gets counted in auto of F4, and now you have two matches whose outcomes have been affected by a sloppy count.

Do they still go back and award the red alliance based on their legitimate win of F3?

[techhelpbb]

Personally I am pro-replay/tie-breaker but there's a caveat. I am pro-replay because if the issue is possibly the result of unusual man made intentional interference it thwarts awarding the match to the person causing the interference.

On the other hand replaying a match as other's have noted carries with it the same risk of human error and the circumstances for each robot may differ. There is no reason to suspect that all the robots for any given match will be operational at the same levels from match to match. This can result in a match with a different mix of robots or different factors that directly impact the score.

Again, to me, winning the matches has an element of randomness to it and obviously strategy can impact the score as well as the robot designs and build qualities. I think making it to the competition at all with something resembling a finished robot is a major achievement for anyone that does it.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Justin Montois

I might be alone here but I think after what happened it's only fair to let both alliances go to Championship. Yes, one alliance didn't win, but to be given something, and then taking it back just seems wrong. ~400 teams will go to Championship. This is a rare mistake. What's 3 more teams?

I was looking for this happy ending to this story and was disappointed this ruling was not made. It's not like this is the first time important matches have been botched due to errors on the field.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

I was looking for this happy ending to this story and was disappointed this ruling was not made. It's not like this is the first time important matches have been botched due to errors on the field.

Einstein 2012 is completely different. That was due to problems WITH the field, interference from outside the field, and programming and wiring problems with some robots. Which added up to subpar performance from many robots. the implication being that if it weren't for the problems, the matches would have played differently and there might be a different winner.

In this case, the scoring error occurred after the match was played. The Red Alliance clearly won the match, but a scoring error gave the win to the other team. It's entirely clear who the correct winner of the tournament was. And hey, look! After the error was corrected, the Red Alliance was the winner.

For the record, I'm also against the "Everybody wins" solution. I understand the argument that the Blue Alliance was hurt and disappointed to discover that they didn't win after all, I just don't think it's valid. It's only slightly different from the more common scenario where they Blue Alliance thinks they've scored enough points to pull off the win, only to lose by 2 points because something. The only difference is a few more minutes of the Blue Alliance thinking it's won. Are you people really arguing that we should give people passes to Champs because they're disappointed and totally thought they should have won the competition?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Racer26

So all this talk of tiebreakers has me thinking:

Suppose for a minute that Central WA was being run under the pre-2011 tiebreaking system of infinite replays until a winner is found.

Based on what I've heard of the incident, it took a few minutes to discover the offending disc, likely enough time to have started the tiebreaker match. What happens then?

My guess is that 2pt disc gets counted in auto of F4, and now you have two matches whose outcomes have been affected by a sloppy count.

Do they still go back and award the red alliance based on their legitimate win of F3?

No. You see, there are a specified number of red discs on the field. When only 5 turn up, none in the robots, there's going to be a hunt for the 6th. When they find it, they try to figure out how it got there. Eventually, the replay is called off due to improper scoring of F3 and the red alliance is crowned the winners.

[Kpchem]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

It's only slightly different from the more common scenario where they Blue Alliance thinks they've scored enough points to pull off the win, only to lose by 2 points because something. The only difference is a few more minutes of the Blue Alliance thinking it's won. Are you people really arguing that we should give people passes to Champs because they're disappointed and totally thought they should have won the competition?

Full disclosure: I am an alumnus of one teams involved, FRC 360. My opinion is my own, and in no way associated with my former team. I watched the webcast on Saturday and saw only what was shown there. Finally, I understand that as someone with an association with these teams I cannot be totally unbiased in this situation.

I believe the point being made here is not that the blue alliance "thought they had scored enough points" or thought that they should have won. It was the fact that it was announced to everyone in attendance that the blue alliance had won the regional, and the correction to the score did not come until 15 minutes later. While some alliances may think that they'd won a match, and therefore the regional, this was not just an assumption the teams had made - they were told that they had won. I believe that is why people are arguing that the alliance should be given a pass to Championship, because they were officially told that they had earned one and later had it taken away.

I also want to echo Frank in saying thank you to the volunteers at this event for coming forward and revealing what happened. I know how hard it must have been given the circumstances, but it was definitely the right thing to do. Thank you, and I hope that you continue to work with FIRST in the future.

Please know that I am not trying to argue in favor of anything, given my association with the situation. I just wanted to attempt to clarify what is being said in this thread.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Kpchem

Full disclosure: I am an alumnus of one teams involved, FRC 360. My opinion is my own, and in no way associated with my former team. I watched the webcast on Saturday and saw only what was shown there. Finally, I understand that as someone with an association with these teams I cannot be totally unbiased in this situation.

I believe the point being made here is not that the blue alliance "thought they had scored enough points" or thought that they should have won. It was the fact that it was announced to everyone in attendance that the blue alliance had won the regional, and the correction to the score did not come until 15 minutes later. While some alliances may think that they'd won a match, and therefore the regional, this was not just an assumption the teams had made - they were told that they had won. I believe that is why people are arguing that the alliance should be given a pass to Championship, because they were officially told that they had earned one and later had it taken away.

I also want to echo Frank in saying thank you to the volunteers at this event for coming forward and revealing what happened. I know how hard it must have been given the circumstances, but it was definitely the right thing to do. Thank you, and I hope that you continue to work with FIRST in the future.

Please know that I am not trying to argue in favor of anything, given my association with the situation. I just wanted to attempt to clarify what is being said in this thread.

I understand the argument, I just think we're talking about a difference in degree more than in type. There have been a large number of teams who have felt similar to the Blue Alliance did here, it's just that the Blue Alliance had it worse because they thought they'd won for 15 minutes instead of 2-3. Basically, I'm disagreeing that officially announcing it makes this a completely different situation that requires a completely different response. I really do feel very bad that the teams on both alliances had to go through this, but it's not as if awards had been handed out and travel plans had been made already. It's not like their robots were handicapped by field problems and couldn't perform to spec. The only reason for qualifying those teams for Champs in this case is that we feel really bad about how disappointed and upset those teams are. Which, it seems to me, opens up a lot of other circumstances for giving teams free passes to Champs.

[Navid Shafa]

Originally Posted by Kpchem

While some alliances may think that they'd won a match, and therefore the regional, this was not just an assumption the teams had made - they were told that they had won. I believe that is why people are arguing that the alliance should be given a pass to Championship, because they were officially told that they had earned one and later had it taken away.

This is the most valid argument for sending them to champs. No one who watched them play will argue that they are of less caliber than teams who are already going to champs or may be sitting on the wait-list either.