FRC Blogged - What Do You Think? The ‘Invite to Decline’ Strategy

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Though not close to being the same type of situation, similar thought processes can be applied to game theory. Off the top of my head, similar styles of thinking are involved in the "Prisoner's dilemma" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

I guess that's sort of "real world"

I just find it funny how many people think that this happens on purpose. Half the time "scorched Earth" happens is when an unexpected team ranks high and doesn't really know what to do so they pick down the rankings.

People have also blown this out of proportion both on Chief and in response to Frank's blog post. You'd think this is happening at every event and it's the only thing anyone is talking about-not true. There have only been two notable occurrences in FIRST history (at least that I can think of).

This rarely goes down as a true "pick from 3-8 and make them all say no". The only instance I can even recall something close to that happening was Curie this year. Far more often it means strategically picking 1-2 teams (that you would still like to play with!), causing them not to be ably to ally with the best robots when they deem you unworthy and decline, and then picking the best team that you know will say yes to you. It would be irresponsible not to do this if you knew you could not form a strong alliance as the number one seed.

I hope that Frank/FIRST largely ignore the specific advice given in the blog comments, because frankly most suggestions are horrible and will open the floodgates for teams to engage in legitimately nefarious behavior.