Picking from top 8 seeds

[Taylor]

The playing field is evened all it needs to be by the serpentine draft.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Taylor

The playing field is evened all it needs to be by the serpentine draft.

QFT

[Nuttyman54]

The incentive to intentionally take losses has already been mentioned several times, but I want to highlight something that has only been touched on once so far:

Whoever ranks as #1 seed has earned the right to invite whomever they want. Nobody should be punished by the fact that they played well and in doing so become unselectable. The #1 seed should not be punished for their performance by having to play with the 9th best robot at the event, thereby hurting their chances at taking home a title. Yes, the alliances may be more "even", but "even" is not the goal. The higher ranked teams are supposed have the opportunity to build the best alliance. That is, after all, the point of the qualification matches and rankings.

This of course assumes that the overall rankings are accurate, and that the #1 seed is in fact the best team, and the #2 seed is 2nd best and so on. If this is not the case, it's still not any better:

(Note: when I say "best" team I mean the team which would be the best partner. There is no good way to define "best" otherwise, due to strategic choices.)

1) The #1 seed is not the best team at the event but is better than the 10th best team at the event, and the best robot is in the top 8 (eg #2). The best team is hurt by not being able to accept an offer by the #1 seed, and has to settle for the 10th best robot, thereby hurting their chances at victory.

2) The #1 seed is not the best team at the event and is worse than the 10th best team at the event, and the best robot is in the top 8 (eg #2). There is no effect by not being able to accept an offer by the #1 seed, because they would have declined anyways. The best team at the event would be unable to accept any other offers if they were lower than #2, but without in-picking, they wouldn't be getting any other offers anyways.

3) The #1 seed is not the best team at the event, but the best team is outside the top 8. They would have to accept the offer anyways to play in the elimination tournament, so this has practically no effect. With present day rules they could still decline and hope they move into the top 8 through in-picking, whereas forcing teams to pick outside the top 8 forces them to accept the offer. In practice, this very rarely happens.

In an hypothetical world where all teams build robots to do the same thing and the only gradation is how well they do it, and assuming the rankings are perfect, the #1 seed would chose the #2 seed, The #3 seed (moved up to #2 spot) would chose the #4 seed and so on. It was on this assumption that the previously alluded to "auto-pairing" rules were used in 2001, the infamous 4v0 game.

A brief history: the 2001 game had no traditional opponents. Rather, it was a competition to see which alliance could achieve the highest score. At the higher levels of play, the perfect score of 710 points was totally doable, and so eliminations were more of a test of who didn't screw up. There were 5 teams on an alliance. Regionals had 4 alliances in the elimination round, championship divisions had 2 (divisions were therefore effectively CMP quarterfinals).

The first round of selection was automated. At the regional level, the #1 seed was assigned the #5 seed, the #2 seed given the #6 seed, and so on. At championships it was #1 with #3 and #2 with #4. After that teams got to chose. This was incredibly flawed, not only because the rankings are not necessarily accurate, but also because strategically, a variety of robot designs were necessary to achieve the highest score (unless you were one of the magical do-it-all robots like 71 that year, who fittingly won the championship because they were not only good, but it also basically didn't matter who their partners were). The result was not only sandbagging, but also trying to get a specific seeding position. The first partners were not necessarily strategically compatible, so luck played a huge role.

Case in point: 71 was pretty much the best robot around. They could do it all, and really only needed partners to drive across the field and get their 10pts for making it to the end zone. Therefore, teams would want to either by in a position to auto-pair with them, wherever they seeded, or be low enough to not be part of the auto-pairing.

Auto-pairing is obviously an extreme example, but ultimately the integrity of the competition is based on the fact that the rankings allow teams to form the best alliance they can. Even if we assume everyone in FIRST is perfect and would never throw a match for strategic reasons, it's still a dubious way to declare a winner. FIRST has already made an attempt at making alliances more "even" by implementing the serpentine draft format in 2006, and I think that's as far as it should go.

[Jonathan Norris]

Originally Posted by Racer26

Yes, there are teams with big budgets that have great success on field. 1114, 2056, 148, 118 and more come quickly to mind. However, their budget is not the reason for their success. The reason for their success is hard work.

Budge has VERY little to do with those team's success, I bet if you gave that same group of Students and Mentors 5K to build a robot they would be 80-90% as competitive.

Take for example the team I helped start 2809, this year they ended up only having 2 weeks to build their robot this year, Kit drive train, lots of wood, and a very simple shooter. They were the 6th pick at FLR, and 3rd pick at GTR East, says alot about the quality of the students and mentors running the team this year.

[jwfoss]

Originally Posted by BigJ

I don't want to get into the implications of purposely manipulating match results to become the "best team outside of top 8".

With regards to the 2nd sentence, one would assume the "best 24 teams" still play, therefore it would be the same teams either way, just in different configurations.

I would argue that it is not really the "best 24 teams" but the robots that create the best 8 alliances.
The best robots don't always make the best alliance partners.

[MrForbes]

At both of the regionals we played this year, the #1 seed picked a team ranked pretty far down, well out of the top 8, with their first pick (987 picks 254, 1726 picks 842). In both cases they got the best available robot, and won the regional.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

...sort of

What FIRST actually tried was automatic pairings among the top 8 teams, which was an even greater incentive to trying to manipulate the ranks in a game that was already very different from any other.

Think back farther. 1999 (the first year of alliances) did not allow picking within the top 8.

P6. The eight qualified teams will select their allies from the remaining (non-
qualified) teams. Selection of allies will occur starting with the highest
ranked team and proceed down the rank order until eight alliances have been
formed.

[Racer26]

Man... watching some of these old match videos from 2004+ earlier really shows how much the program has evolved. I was a student back in 2003 and 2004, and I don't remember it seeming so... different.

I think the system more or less as its been since the dawn of 3v3 is pretty good, especially when you compare to where we came from.

[Craig Roys]

Budget is not really a fair way as I would guess most teams spend about the same amount on their robot and they're all definitely under the cap of whatever it is this year - $4000? The amount we spend on our robot is a very small portion of our team budget - maybe 5-10%. The rest goes into things like registration, travel, lodging, food, uniforms, offseason events, demos, community outreach, etc.

Also, I don't believe a team should be penalized for working hard to obtain a #1 seed; or even a 1-8 for that matter. You should be able to choose the robot that you believe gives you the best chance to win. Even the so-called super alliances are beatable if a lower seed is able to pick wisely a play a sound strategy. I'm not saying it would be easy, but it is possible...if it was a foregone conclusion, we wouldn't even bother playing the matches.

[PayneTrain]

It would be unique if they wanted to do something like what I have done in fantasy football league drafts: everyone is given a set of "points" to bid on the players as they come up. Maybe this year a team could take their auto score as the points they would use to bid on teams.

However, something like that would be best saved for an offseason event as an added quirk in the system. The serpentine draft makes for very potent middle of the pack alliances almost all of the time anyway. At events I have attended the past few years, the 3, 4, and 5 seeded alliances are probably the best of all of them, and in some cases, have won the events.

[jdh042397]

Originally Posted by Bohalin

Hello All,

Just wanted to start a discussion and find out how other teams feel about being able to pick teams from the top 8 seed. ex. seed 1 picks seed 2, seed 2 picks seed 3, so on and so forth.

Now I know there exceptions and teams don't always do this.

In my own opinion, I feel that teams should only be able to pick from teams outside the top 8. I feel there is often super alliances of seed 1 and 2 at comps that I've attended. Again, there are always some exceptions where this isn't the case.

if they take away the option of picking top 8 seeds, you are creating a slightly more even playing field. You are also giving teams that usually don't get picked a chance to play in the finals.

I look forward to seeing your opinions!

thanks!

if your number one you should choose

[nicholsjj]

It might just be the area, but I have to look at the Cow Town Throwdown offseason event held by team 1730. Alliances are not allowed to pick inside the top 8. This has lead to exciting elimination finals as the final field is much more balanced. Let's take last year for instance. Team 16, team 1986, and team 3528 were by far the best 3 robots at the event.(This is not meant to slight any team that did attend, but it just shows how amazing those three robots were.) If either of those two teams had partnered up then everyone at Lee Summit would have know which alliance would win. Because teams could not pick inside the top 8 the eliminations became very close and exciting for all of the alliances. All three of the "powerhouse" robots made the semis and I feel that the teams had a more positive experience. I think it's a good idea in the offseason, but I understand why it would hurt teams at a FIRST Regional where the teams are trying to qualify for championships.

[Abhishek R]

I agree that the serpentine draft already evens out the competition enough. And if you're first seed, usually it was well earned and deserves the reward - the choice of partner who they think will give them the best chance to win the regional.

[Chris Hibner]

What I would find interesting is keeping the serpentine draft, but allowing any higher seed to pass on it's pick.

For example: the #1 seed decides to pass its pick. the #2 seed then can pick first, which it chooses to do. The #1 seed would then pick next, but it chooses to pass again. The #3 seed then gets to pick, which it does. The #1 seed gets another option to pick or pass at the 3rd position. (BTW, the #2 seed can pass on having the first pick as well, and on down the line.)

"Why would anyone want to pass on the first pick?", you ask? Let's say you're at the Championships (or MSC or any competition with a deep field), and you can pick from 1114, 2056, 1986, and 469. In this case, your #1 pick might be better than #4 on your list, but by how much? Would you rather pick first, or trade down to get a better second round pick? It would make for some interesting strategy.

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

What I would find interesting is keeping the serpentine draft, but allowing any higher seed to pass on it's pick.

For example: the #1 seed decides to pass its pick. the #2 seed then can pick first, which it chooses to do. The #1 seed would then pick next, but it chooses to pass again. The #3 seed then gets to pick, which it does. The #1 seed gets another option to pick or pass at the 3rd position. (BTW, the #2 seed can pass on having the first pick as well, and on down the line.)

"Why would anyone want to pass on the first pick?", you ask? Let's say you're at the Championships (or MSC or any competition with a deep field), and you can pick from 1114, 2056, 1986, and 469. In this case, your #1 pick might be better than #4 on your list, but by how much? Would you rather pick first, or trade down to get a better second round pick? It would make for some interesting strategy.

That is a very, very interesting idea. I'm all for increasing the level of strategy in alliance selections. To actually implement this, I say gave an extra 15 minutes to the alliance selection procedure: first you let the top 8 seeds choose when they would be picking in the draft then give a 10 minute break to meet with their scouts then back to regular picking.

Doing it in 'real time' would make it very difficult to pick with good strategy, I think. Getting a chance to know the standings and 're-calibrate' the picklist would make it perfectly practical.