2013 Championship Curie Division

[GBK]

Originally Posted by Adam Freeman

Unless something else happened away from the ref discussion and both alliances gathered near the field, there we no 148 members that needed to be restrained during this situation.

For everyone else, in F1 1918 fell off the tower from the 30pt level. The refs ruled that someone on the red alliance hit the tower, causing 1918 to fall. That is not what happened! We actually knocked off 1918, when we hit the top of the tower trying to get our hooks latched to pull up to level 3. When the decision to red card 1678, a student from 1918 was so upset that the call was incorrect that he passionately objected to the call. We had to stop him from approaching the head ref.

No one from either alliance wanted to see 1678 red carded. I believe we won that match without it, and wanted the scores to reflect the actual events of the match.

1678, 148, and 862 proceeded to out execute us enroute to a trip to Einstein in F2 and F3. All three teams were awesome in those matches and on the big stage.

I concur with what Adam says. After review of the climb on our goPro camera We were not completely hooked at the top of the tower when 67 hit and the top of the tower. I do not think we would have fallen had the tower had not been hit. Also not sure we could have hung on with that hit if we had been hooked correctly. After the fall we all agreed that letting 67 get hooked before we went for the top rung was the best plan.
It was an honor to be picked and be able to play with 4814 and 67
Thanks to both of you for having the confidence to pick the 69th ranked team in the division.

[Adam Freeman]

Congratulations to 1678, 148, and 862 on getting a chance to play on FRC's biggest stage!

1678 - You guys went out there and earned a #1 seed in the division. We were really impressed with your teams ability to do it all. Even playing defense in certain matches, when paired with better scores. That ability to play to your alliances strengths was very inspiring for us. I was very suprised to see you declined that many times during alliance selection. It was obvious that this was a planned move (very smart/strategic), and your student representative was very calm going through it. We were hoping to get a chance to play with you. Our styles would have been a good mix for one another, since we have similar capabilities to 148. Hard to argue with the results though. We were under the impression you were selecting 1717 first, I assumed they were going to accept your invitiation. If I had known they would decline, we would have made our sales pitch much harder.

148 - Ah...our GREAT friends from Texas. What a blast it was to finally play in a division with you guys. I wish we hadn't had to play each other so many times, without ever getting to play together. I'm sure we could have made a double FCS alliance work pretty well. I think I was with at least one member of 148 about 70% of the time I was in St. Louis, either standing around watching matches or hanging out afterwards. We just had an awesome time hanging together.

I had lots of text conversations with JVN through the build season. I know he struggled a lot with how to build a climber to play this game (we shared similar pain). I'm glad that all the hard work paid off and your robot was able to pull of a climb on Einstein. It's the goal we all work towards!

862 - You guys have been awesome all season. I love the adaptation from super cycler to full-on FCS defender. If not for looking for a very specific type of machine to help our alliance, I'm sure you guys would have been very high on our list of teams to select. Awesome job this year! You guys were impossible to push out of position to get our shots off. Thanks for representing Michigan so well on Einstein.

Thanks to 4814 and 1918 for being great alliance partners.

4814 - You guys are one heck of a defender. You shut down 2056 enough to beat them in your qualification match and ranked above them. Your defensive prowess really showed when you compare the performances of 1717, 3539, and 148 with and without your defense on them. Especially to see the Curie champs go on to Einstein and put up 233 points. Incredible defenders! I can't say this was the alliance of my dreams, but we made the most of it. I honestly think we would have had a shot out there on Einstein, with your defense and our offense. I think they might of let us shoot.... I will be expecting great things from you guys in the future. You have the makings of another powerhouse Canadian team. Thanks for picking us, it was a fun while it lasted!

1918 - What a steal of a second pick. Since MSC I've wanted to do a double or triple climber alliance. We were so excited when you were available for us. I thought we could FCS + Climb our way there. You all worked so hard to keep that robot running correctly, especially after two falls off the pyramid. Just amazing how you were able to keep if shooting, driving, and climbing after all that. Unfortunately, we met our match with 862's drivetrain....at a certain point Shifter > Single speed. Not sure how you managed to get us a shooting lane in F1, but they must have learned what not to do after that. We've been trying to play together for years now. I'm glad we finally got the chance. Hopefully it will happen more in the future now.

67 - To my team....what an interesting season. Hold your heads high with your three silver medals. We gave it all we could! Thanks for working so hard on getting us a great machine to play with.

A couple of other shout outs.... 2056, we were so close I could taste it to getting a shot to play together. I guess third time is was not the charm. Fourth, maybe? You guys are awesome, #1 in Curie in our book. Keep it up, you'll get there! Congrats on an incredible season.

3539, our friends from MI. They are really bulldogs! They just keep working hard, cleaning up the floor and scoring discs. Congrats on a great machine and great season!

1717 - I always enjoy seeing you guys at Champs! Congrats on an incredible season.

-Adam

[Chris Fultz]

Congratulations to 1678, 148, and 862 for a great run on Curie.
Awesome alliance.

Thanks to 1717 for the selection and to 135 for joing the alliance.

We all tried two approaches to shut down 67's FCS option, but the offensive-defense from 4814 was too much to overcome. Well executed plan.

Great weekend on Curie and congratulations to everyone on the field for the competition and to everyone working the field for keeping it moving so well.

[Thad House]

Does anyone have video or audio of the award ceremony on Curie? If anyone does we would like to get a copy of it so we can show it to our sponsors because of RAS.

[fsgond]

Thanks to 234 from our home state of Indiana and 1717 for making us apart of finals. It was great fun! We hope to work with both of you again, you are both great teams! We also can't wait to see 234 again in a few weeks at the Indiana State Champs, maybe we can play on the same alliance again

[SoccerTaco]

A few Curie shout outs from Team 3824....

Team 67 - I was coach of a FLL team years ago that qualified for the "World Festival" in Atlanta. Staying in the same hotel was this huge team of HOT high school kids. My kids and I talked to a number of the students and mentors at the hotel. It was our first exposure to FRC. We were all extremely impressed and I've been a fan of Team HOT ever since. So, I was excited when I saw that we were in the same division this year.
Your robot was extremely impressive and it was great to be able to meet some of your team in the pits.

Team 359 - Very exciting match against your team, with your alliance winning 152-141. After the match, one of your mentors came up to members of our drive team and complimented them on their play. Very cool, very classy.
We got banged pretty good that match, and unfortunately did not realize that our gyro came unplugged until our next match Saturday morning, where in autonomous mode we spun in circles for a while and then launched three frisbees up into the crowd. Oops!

Team 1310 and 1684 - It was great playing with you in the elimination rounds. Thanks so much to Team 1310 for the invite - I believe that the 231 points we put up together in the qualifications remained the high score on Curie.

Team 16 - Your ground pickup was fantastic. We loved having the chance to play a match together.

Teams 2056, 967 and 3990 - You guys were dominating. I was rooting for you after you took us out, and was disappointed how things ended for you.

Team 4814 - You were an amazing defensive force. The match we played together with you in qualification was awesome. Great strategy, well executed. You went undefeated and took home too many awards for your alliance captain to hold onto - what an incredible display you put on!

And finally, major congrats to the Curie champs of 1678, 862, 148!! We were of course all rooting for you on Einstein.

[themccannman]

Originally Posted by Adam Freeman

Congratulations to 1678, 148, and 862 on getting a chance to play on FRC's biggest stage!

1678 - You guys went out there and earned a #1 seed in the division. We were really impressed with your teams ability to do it all. Even playing defense in certain matches, when paired with better scores. That ability to play to your alliances strengths was very inspiring for us. I was very surprised to see you declined that many times during alliance selection. It was obvious that this was a planned move (very smart/strategic), and your student representative was very calm going through it. We were hoping to get a chance to play with you. Our styles would have been a good mix for one another, since we have similar capabilities to 148. Hard to argue with the results though. We were under the impression you were selecting 1717 first, I assumed they were going to accept your invitation. If I had known they would decline, we would have made our sales pitch much harder.

Thank you for the compliments! You are correct that we had planned for those teams to decline us in order to break up the power team alliances that would have otherwise been formed.

I actually really wish that you had come and talked to our other head-strategist (I am the other) because you were actually the first team on our list that we expected to accept, which essentially made you our first actual pick. However, after you lost your last qualification match our other head-strategist switched you and 148 at the top of our list which I disagreed with since I thought your performance was just a fluke mistake. I agree that we would have made a great alliance which is why I was extremely nervous facing you in the finals, however I'm extremely proud of 148's performance and I don't regret picking them one bit, they played killer offense and carried our alliance further than I could ever hope for.

I was also incredibly impressed by 4814, coming out of Curie in 3rd seed as a rookie team is unheard of, I really thought you guys were going to take the Curie curse to it's grave with your phenomenal teamwork with 67 and 1918. A rookie team captaining an alliance to win Einstein and break the Curie curse would have gone down as a legendary moment in history, and the best part is that it actually almost happened, I really thought you guys were going to take home the gold.

[msaunders]

http://youtu.be/5_khdRfl11w

Curie Finals Match 1-3 of the 2013 FIRST World Championship
Red - FRC1678 FRC148 FRC862
Blue - FRC4814 FRC67 FRC1918
Score: Red 0 - DQ Blue 186
@1:23 862 runs over the collector of 1918 while they are setting up to climb
@1:43 67 and 1918 Tower Climbing and 1918 falls

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by iVanDuzer

G27 does not state the exact method used to interfere with the pyramid. The use of the word "interfere" suggests that a robot can affect the opposing pyramid in other ways besides direct contact. I would say pushing another robot into the pyramid is one such way of initiating contact with the pyramid.

967 purposely (in the ref's eyes, hence the G30 violation) used 148 as means to contact the pyramid to create a momentary pin (otherwise that would have been a 3pt foul). That's both indirect (but not inconsequential) contact and interference with the pyramid (use of the pyramid in a way it was not supposed to be used: the "safe zone" rules surrounding the pyramid clearly shows that the pyramid is not meant to be used to pin robots). Again, the climb points awarded to 148 show that the refs felt that 148's climb was affected: under G27, 967 should have been given a red card as well for interference with the pyramid and affecting a climb.

When it comes to climbing, there's a lot of overlap between G27 and G30. If the refs were going to call one of these fouls, they should have called both. Since G27 was not called, I am left thinking that the climb bonus should not have been added for an affected climb.

I will point out that we had this exact situation happen to us in a semifinal at Central Valley with our alliance contacting a robot about to climb from behind and driving them into the pyramid. At first the referee DQd our alliance, but then corrected the call to the 20 pt penalty plus 30 pt climb. We lost the match then. The interpretation in this semi was consistent with the interpretation in that regional in every way.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by themccannman

Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam Freeman
Congratulations to 1678, 148, and 862 on getting a chance to play on FRC's biggest stage!

1678 - You guys went out there and earned a #1 seed in the division. We were really impressed with your teams ability to do it all. Even playing defense in certain matches, when paired with better scores. That ability to play to your alliances strengths was very inspiring for us. I was very surprised to see you declined that many times during alliance selection. It was obvious that this was a planned move (very smart/strategic), and your student representative was very calm going through it. We were hoping to get a chance to play with you. Our styles would have been a good mix for one another, since we have similar capabilities to 148. Hard to argue with the results though. We were under the impression you were selecting 1717 first, I assumed they were going to accept your invitation. If I had known they would decline, we would have made our sales pitch much harder.
Thank you for the compliments! You are correct that we had planned for those teams to decline us in order to break up the power team alliances that would have otherwise been formed.

themccannman:
I actually really wish that you had come and talked to our other head-strategist (I am the other) because you were actually the first team on our list that we expected to accept, which essentially made you our first actual pick. However, after you lost your last qualification match our other head-strategist switched you and 148 at the top of our list which I disagreed with since I thought your performance was just a fluke mistake. I agree that we would have made a great alliance which is why I was extremely nervous facing you in the finals, however I'm extremely proud of 148's performance and I don't regret picking them one bit, they played killer offense and carried our alliance further than I could ever hope for.

Just a humorous side note: we actually gave 4814 our scouting data to help them pick since they were a rookie team so the reason they picked you was actually because you were at the top of the list we gave them.

I was also incredibly impressed by 4814, coming out of Curie in 3rd seed as a rookie team is unheard of, I really thought you guys were going to take the Curie curse to it's grave with your phenomenal teamwork with 67 and 1918. A rookie team captaining an alliance to win Einstein and break the Curie curse would have gone down as a legendary moment in history, and the best part is that it actually almost happened, I really thought you guys were going to take home the gold.

To reiterate on Jake's comment, the choice between 67 and 148 was very difficult, and we could have been swayed. On the other hand, 148 was amazing.

Truly more amazing to us was that 862 was still available. I believe they were literally our top pick (I don't have our list here) for our 2nd robot because of their driving skills combined with offensive output. We had our ground pickup, 862's cycling and 148's FCS. Hard to beat.

We gamed out the draft with the "power" teams declining, and we expected that 1983 (later confirmed--my nephew was on their team 2 years ago) would do the same thing. Given that the "punishment game" seemed fairly likely, we thought that one of those teams would recognize the situation and accept our offer instead--the optimal solution to the punishment game is to cooperate.

The whole experience was very exciting and rewarding. We got functioning an electronic scouting system that communicates using cell phone lines to a server and then to an iPhone app used by our drive team. The entire system was built by the students with no real technical assistance from mentors. I only gave them what data should be collected at the front end, and what the data summary should look like at the back end. We're interested in a shareware development process to further enhance its functionality.

But there was one additional "superpower" that we had--Mike Corsetto. His insights and analysis during the strategy session was key to our selection rankings. Jake also was a huge contributor. The quantitative data helped tremendously, but it still took the human factor.

Also, having my brother in law's team, 1983 Skunkworks finish right behind us in qualifying could not be more exciting. My sister was able to watch both of us succeed beyond anything before. Thanks to the Skunks for adding to our meager team at Einstein!

4814 assembled an "optimal" alliance. I'm sure that they supplemented what we shared to get 1918, which turned out to be a perfect partner in a defense/climb oriented alliance.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

It's pretty liked that 1678 had already talked with all four teams and was told they'd be declined. Knowing that, they clearly wanted to breakup any potential powerhouse alliances to make sure they still had a chance at winning the division. Given their eventual pick, I wouldn't be surprised if 148 suggested the strategy to begin with, really. So you shouldn't feel bad for the rep, they almost certainly expected that and were executing the relatively standard scorched earth strategy that non-powerhouse 1st seeds often end up with.

We thought they might decline us the night before in our strategy session. We got some confirmation just before the draft. We didn't talk to 148--we were trying to decide between them and 67 right up to the end--tough choice! We knew that 1983 would finish the job if one of other teams accepted us. (We had talked with them--I sat with the Skunks much of the weekend.) Our team captain was in no way disturbed by the outcome.

But as an economist, I'll say that the correct response to a "punishment game" generally is cooperation. John Nash didn't win the Nobel for nothing.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Adam Freeman

No one from either alliance wanted to see 1678 red carded. I believe we won that match without it, and wanted the scores to reflect the actual events of the match.

1678 knew we had lost that match before the penalty was awarded. That alliance was amazing and fit together almost perfectly.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by SoccerTaco

A few Curie shout outs from Team 3824....

Team 359 - Very exciting match against your team, with your alliance winning 152-141. After the match, one of your mentors came up to members of our drive team and complimented them on their play. Very cool, very classy.
We got banged pretty good that match, and unfortunately did not realize that our gyro came unplugged until our next match Saturday morning, where in autonomous mode we spun in circles for a while and then launched three frisbees up into the crowd. Oops! .

It was me who came to talk to you folks.
I personally raved about how awesome you were to members of 67, 148, 3539, 987, 33, and many many others.
I can't believe I never heard of your team before, because your machine was up there like the other great shooting machines.
The fact that you were a 3D printed bot made it more impressive!
I just got 2 new machines and look forward to incorporating more if the technology into components of our future robots.

Thanks again for inspiring us.

-Glenn

[Joe J.]

Wow without a doubt this has been the most exciting competition I have been a part of. Our expectations for the weekend were blown away by what happened!

Thank you to our truly amazing alliance partners 1678 Citrus Circuits and 148 Robowranglers!

1678 you guys earned a well deserved #1 seed and your alliance selection strategy was brilliant! You assembled a very well balanced alliance between your floor pick up 148's FCS and our cycling and defense. Thank you for having faith in our abilities and selecting us (we were getting very nervous that we would go un-selected). And thank you for sticking by us after two technical problems in QF1-1 and QF1-2, I feel terrible were were unable to help in those matches.

148 you guys were an amazing full court shooter, not to mention that climb (scary but effective)! Getting to work with you guys was a true honor your level of preparation, strategy, gracious professionalism are truly inspiring! We learned a lot from you guys on what it takes to make it through a Championship elimination tournament.

A huge thank you to all the individuals who came to help try to diagnose and fix our control problems in the quarterfinals, I didn't catch names but I know there were several guys from California teams as well as from 148.

To all of our opponents in the eliminations 103, 4564, 2168, 2056, 967, 3990, 4814, 1918, and 67 you were all extremely strong alliances it was an honor to play against you all.

As for Finals 1 I really don't know what to say. Watching the video posted above we did clearly drive over 1918's collector. I say this with all my heart that we are truly sorry about that, this was NOT an intentional move, we honestly couldn't see their collector there. It was an error on our part and as coach I take full responsibility for it. Thank you to 1918, 67 and 4814 for being so gracious after the indecent I hope you will accept my deepest apologies for this happening.

1918 you guys are an amazing team, twice this year you have given us a run for our money in the finals, first at West Michigan then on Curie.

67 as always you produced an absolutely amazing machine! You guys are a team I been in awe of my entire time in FRC. Adam thanks for your kind words above, it was truly a pleasure to play against you in the divisional finals!

4814 an amazing job by an amazing rookie team congratulations on all your success and good luck next season!

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Joe J.

1678 you guys earned a well deserved #1 seed and your alliance selection strategy was brilliant! You assembled a very well balanced alliance between your floor pick up 148's FCS and our cycling and defense. Thank you for having faith in our abilities and selecting us (we were getting very nervous that we would go un-selected). And thank you for sticking by us after two technical problems in QF1-1 and QF1-2, I feel terrible were were unable to help in those matches.

That your team was still available for us was truly amazing--you should have gone much higher in the draft! We were overjoyed to have you on our team. The roles you played were tremendous. I've watched our first semi final in Einstein several times and how we dominated was amazing. If we hadn't had shut down in the second match, who know what would have happened! Thanks so much.

BTW, if 862 did drive over 1918's collector, the correct penalty should be the same as 2056's alliance incurred in the semifinal--a 20 point technical and a 30 point climb rather than a DQ. Either way however, it would not have changed the outcome.