Best way to predict match outcomes

[DampRobot]

I just looked at OPR to project the 2013 SVR Satuday match results and rankings . (See the regional thread for more details.) I accurately predicted a lot of the rankings Friday night, and the regional winners (the captain wasn't even ranked #1 at the time). However, as others have pointed out, this usually isn't all that difficult. Conventional wisedom, as well as my projections, would have put 254 and 118 as the regional winners.

As to projecting matches/seedings to be pointless: it is and it isn't. As many have pointed out, you never know how a match will be played until its actually played. However, it's useful to have a good guess about how rankings will turn out in order to get ready for selections and matches on Saturday.

Maybe it isn't critical to know exactly how each match will turn out, but scouting as a whole is important. Projected rankings play an important role in scouting for aliance selection.