Wild Card 2013

[Akash Rastogi]

Wildcards at play in Vegas too!

IIRC, 2403 qualifies for Champs either way, very cool since they only recently registered for Vegas after some hard fundraising about a week ago! Very happy for their team.

[Gregor]

Silicon Vally just had an unused wildcard.

254 and 118 both created wildcards. 1868 won Chairman's at Sacramento, and 973 won LA, so one wildcard went to 4159, and the other got lost in the abyss.

[Chris Fultz]

All 6 finalist teams at Crossroads qualified.

Winners 868 and 234 had previously qualified.
That passed two slots to the finalist alliance.

Finalist 447 (Captain) had previously qualified.
1288 and 1756 got the slots.

very cool that all 6 teams playing qualified for CHP.

[kennethdharmon2]

Yes that is verrrrry cool! Says Team 1288.

[Basel A]

I attached a file that includes all teams that have qualified for the Championship during this season (and therefore all teams that can open wild card spots in their later events). It also shows those teams' Week 7 events (excluding MSC & MARCMP; will update later this week). Finally, how each team qualified, in a separate worksheet.

10 wild card spots were opened in Week 6; only 7 were used. Teams that earned wild card spots were listed in a previous post. Congratulations to Congratulations to all those teams. 3 wild card spots were wasted this week: one at the Silicon Valley Regional because the entire finalist alliance had qualified before using the second wild card spot. The others were teams that qualified via award at the same event as they earned a wild card spot: 2996 (RCA at the Colorado Regional) and 2403 (EI at the Las Vegas Regional).

There have been 51 "extra" qualifications, 28 wild card spots generated, and 23 wild card spots used. The following teams are listed with (# of qualifications, # of wild card spots opened):
118 (4, 2)
1983 (4, 2)
2056 (4, 2)
1114 (3, 2)
1986 (3, 2)
525 (3, 1)
701 (3, 1)
1334 (3, 1)
79 (2, 1)
148 (2, 1)
234 (2, 1)
254 (2, 1)
359 (2, 1)
379 (2, 1)
868 (2, 1)
1538 (2, 1)
1717 (2, 1)
1806 (2, 1)
2052 (2, 1)
2169 (2, 1)
2468 (2, 1)
2471 (2, 1)
2789 (2, 1)
116 (2, 0)
126 (2, 0)
128 (2, 0)
358 (2, 0)
948 (2, 0)
987 (2, 0)
1208 (2, 0)
1732 (2, 0)
1902 (2, 0)
2046 (2, 0)
2341 (2, 0)
2403 (2, 0)
2648 (2, 0)
2996 (2, 0)
3880 (2, 0)
3990 (2, 0)
4451 (2, 0)
4499 (2, 0)
4543 (2, 0)
4607 (2, 0)
4814 (2, 0)

With only the Chesapeake Regional this week, only a few teams can open wild card slots in Week 7. I'll list them here:
Chesapeake: 128, 1086, 1111, 1559, 1885, 4122, 4464 & 4505

If any of these teams are Regional Champions at the Chesapeake Regional, they will open a wild card spot for a team from the Finalist Alliance.

We also have the Michigan State Championship and Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship this week. Teams attending these events that have already qualified and/or registered for the FRC Championship and win an award may "take up" a Championship spot that won't be passed down. I'll post a list of these teams later this week once all teams are registered, but here's on example. Team 27 qualified for the FRC CMP by winning EI at Northern Lights. They're a contender for a Chairman's Award at MSC. If 27 wins a CA, their spot won't be given to the next ranked team; it'll go the way of wasted wild card spots and Michigan will have 26 Championship slots instead of 27.

[Basel A]

With no wild card spots generated or used in week 7, the previous stats remain pretty much unchanged. The situation with Team 27 did occur and 26 teams have earned CMP qualification at the Michigan State Championship. Nothing similar happened at the MAR Championship; they qualified their normal 14 teams.


That leaves us at 51 "extra" qualifications, 28 wild card spots generated, and 23 wild card spots used.

~55% of extra qualifications generated a wild card spot
~45% of extra qualifications generated a wild card spot that was used

1114 and 1986 were "wild card heroes," creating as many wild card spots as any other team in the world while maintaining a 1:1 extra qualification to wild card spot generation ratio.

[PVCpirate]

Now that Wild Cards have run their course for the season, what do people think?

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

Now that Wild Cards have run their course for the season, what do people think?

300% support them. The greats can continue to win, and it is getting much harder for people to complain about it.

[Jeffy]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

Now that Wild Cards have run their course for the season, what do people think?

So far, awesome!

Lets hope it increases the competitiveness at the Championship.

[hiyou102]

Originally Posted by PVCpirate

Now that Wild Cards have run their course for the season, what do people think?

I think they've really changed some of the dynamics of the later regionals with elite teams attending. Instead of teams expecting that they won't qualify for worlds, they still have hope that they can. This really opens doors for good-but-not-great teams.

[Racer26]

As a Canadian who has competed alongside 1114 for 11 years and 2056 for 7, I LOVE the wildcard system.

As far as I'm concerned its one of the best changes HQ has made in a long time.

The only way it could be better is if ANY team pre-qualified for ANY reason (HOF, Original, Previous Year CMP Winners, Previous Year EI Winner), OR earning >1 seat at the SAME event should generate a wildcard. Meaning ANY time a team earns a second seat, regardless of when/how the 2 seats were earned should generate a wildcard at the event that generated the 2nd seat.

Additionally, have a few more teams eligible to earn wildcard seats after the finalist alliance, like say ID winner, or EE winner, or IiC winner, or Highest seed not on the winner or finalist alliance.

My goal with such changes is to have each event qualifying 6 teams not otherwise qualified. Yes I realize this quickly means a bigger Championship. I'm OK with that. It's easy to solve, by having 2 side-by-side fields for each CMP division. Basically doubles match throughput, allowing for more matches/team with more teams, without the sound pollution and additional volunteers needed to run an 8 division CMP.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Racer26

As a Canadian who has competed alongside 1114 for 11 years and 2056 for 7, I LOVE the wildcard system.

As far as I'm concerned its one of the best changes HQ has made in a long time.

The only way it could be better is if ANY team pre-qualified for ANY reason (HOF, Original, Previous Year CMP Winners, Previous Year EI Winner), OR earning >1 seat at the SAME event should generate a wildcard. Meaning ANY time a team earns a second seat, regardless of when/how the 2 seats were earned should generate a wildcard at the event that generated the 2nd seat.

Additionally, have a few more teams eligible to earn wildcard seats after the finalist alliance, like say ID winner, or EE winner, or IiC winner, or Highest seed not on the winner or finalist alliance.

My goal with such changes is to have each event qualifying 6 teams not otherwise qualified. Yes I realize this quickly means a bigger Championship. I'm OK with that. It's easy to solve, by having 2 side-by-side fields for each CMP division. Basically doubles match throughput, allowing for more matches/team with more teams, without the sound pollution and additional volunteers needed to run an 8 division CMP.

This same sentiment has been brought up before but the same question still remains, who do you then give that next spot to? What are the criteria for the next spot? If your RCA doubles up, do you give it to the ticket to the 2nd place Chairman's team? But then they are going to CMP for something they didnt get and wont compete for. The same thing could be said for REI too. I think how it is now is how it should stay.

[Chris is me]

It's a start, but there's gotta be a way to get deserving teams from earlier events or different positions in the tournament to Champs as well. Sometimes the second best alliance plays the first best in the quarterfinals.

I'm quite glad it exists as is, but it could always be better.

[Travis Hoffman]

I think at least the Finalist Alliance Captains of events without Wild Card generators should be given first position in the Championship waitlist. This would throw a cookie out to finalists at early season events who may be equally as "worthy" as later season finalist wild cards, but who didn't have the good fortune of earning their finalist award at a wild card qualifying event.

If there are more finalist waitlist teams than available waitlist CMP spots, FIRST can hold a quick lottery to determine which ones to invite.

I agree that we should be doing anything we can to maximize the number of teams at the CMP who are competitive on the playing field. This is another way to accomplish that goal.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

I think at least the Finalist Alliance Captains of events without Wild Card generators should be given first position in the Championship waitlist. This would throw a cookie out to finalists at early season events who may be equally as "worthy" as later season finalist wild cards, but who didn't have the good fortune of earning their finalist award at a wild card qualifying event.

If there are more finalist waitlist teams than available waitlist CMP spots, FIRST can hold a quick lottery to determine which ones to invite.

I agree that we should be doing anything we can to maximize the number of teams at the CMP who are competitive on the playing field. This is another way to accomplish that goal.

+1