2014 Central Valley Regional

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Ether

So, questions remaining:

- Any particular rationale for the 3rd match being the surrogate?

- If for some reason a team cannot play their last match, does their "surrogate" match become official?

Used to be that the LAST match was the surrogate one. However, there were complaints about teams sandbagging it, just to keep their robot in good shape for eliminations. (Or similar stuff like that.) Basically, enough teams weren't caring about it that their partners, who DID have something riding on it, were noticing a decrease in play quality. So, it was switched to 3rd match, when it could be reasonably expected that everyone still has something to play for (including scouting).

And for the other question, no.

If you take a look at the match schedule at the event (not online), there's a column of letters next to each team number. If that letter says "T", that team is a surrogate team. If it says "F", they are not. The list is generated by FMS, and FMS doesn't take to changes in schedule very well. Thus, there is no way to make the team's surrogate match into the one that counts.

[Answer42]

1323's robot is looking very effective.

[Ether]

Thanks guys. I'll link this thread if I ever see this question pop up again.

[Navid Shafa]

Anybody know why they are replaying Semi 1-1? It was recorded as a win for the #1 Alliance and they have said there's a replay, but haven't stated rationale....

[BrennanB]

That. Was. Brilliant. What an awesome finals match!

[TKM.368]

Originally Posted by Ether

Thanks guys. I'll link this thread if I ever see this question pop up again.

This is a good one...

Originally Posted by dlavery

Good observation. This was just the sort of situation that drove the new structure for the surrogate matches. There were too many teams that were not playing their surrogate matches in the same manner and with the same intensity as their other matches. This seemed to be exacerbated by having the surrogate match as the last match of the schedule, when some teams thought they could "lighten up" their style of play without any adverse effects. Having the surrogate match last in the schedule allowed a team to have full knowledge of how they and other teams were performing, and how playing at full intensity (or not) would affect the other teams in the match.

In the very worst case, having the surrogate matches as the last match in the schedule provided the opportunity to play some pretty ugly tactics. Consider the case of team that was assigned to a surrogate match with alliance partners that were ranked higher than them in the standings. Knowing that the match would not count for (or against) them, they would look instead at how the match would affect the standings of their alliance partners and opponents. They could find themselves in the position where if they intentionally "threw" the match and lost, it would cause their alliance partners to drop in the standings, but they would not. In particular cases, this could bump them up high enough to be in the top eight slots, and suddenly become a picking team during alliance selections. The potential for that sort of disingenuous play was to be avoided.

I am not saying that there are any teams that were actually observed doing this (unfortunately, I am also not saying that there were not). But just the potential for a scenario like this to happen was enough to force reconsideration of how the surrogate matches were assigned.

-dave



.

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

Anybody know why they are replaying Semi 1-1? It was recorded as a win for the #1 Alliance and they have said there's a replay, but haven't stated rationale....

Looked like the pedestal delay for blue.

[Poseidon5817]

Team 1671 did great, winning Chairman's award and nearly becoming regional champions in tiebreaker finals! Go Bird Brains!

[Poseidon5817]

I was field reset on blue pedestal, and I did notice pedestal delay multiple times. Some of the human players and drive team guys got really angry

[MrTechCenter]

Originally Posted by Navid Shafa

Anybody know why they are replaying Semi 1-1? It was recorded as a win for the #1 Alliance and they have said there's a replay, but haven't stated rationale....

Not that it matters anymore, but our score for out precious cycle was not entered into the system and, therefore, the pedestal never lit. They never signaled for us to retrieve the ball from the pedestal for the remainder of the match.

[adlasa]

Sorry to deviate from the current conversation. But rather than create a new thread, does anyone know were the Thank You Google video teams performed is posted?

Thanks, and congratulations to all teams for a great competition!

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by Cory

973 had issues all weekend. They replaced literally every component on their robot in an attempt to be able to connect to the field reliably. There was easily 100+ years of FRC experience between 973 and 254 attempting to figure out the problem last night, which was finally traced to a bad PDB.

If they were sandbagging we would have been trying to pick them with the 23rd pick, not the 1st pick.

Even more than just 254 was trying to figure out 973's issues. They had the best drive team going during the fall off-season tournaments, and I was glad to see that they finally worked out their bugs just in time.

[kghaemi96]

I don't want to seem like a sore loser, I simply want to make it evident to everyone of the situation. In the 3-3 elimination match (Match 11) our alliance as well as 1671's were having an AMAZING match. We were neck and neck the hole time. at the very end it showed us ahead by 5 but they ended up having forgot to give them a pass that they had gotten (understandable). However, according to one of our alliance teammates the refs had forgotten one of our truss passes. Obviously we thought that it may have just been a mistake on our part, but we went through the footage several times and discovered that they did make it. That would have made us continue through the elimination rounds.

Anyways at first we were hoping to get a rematch, but obviously that wasn't going to happen. I really want to see the implementation of a video replay system. Possibly an addition to elimination rounds where each match is reviewed over once if challenged by a certain team. This has probably been brought up several times. I just want to rekindle the thoughts.

Anyways I want to give my congrats to everyone that attended CVR. It was one of the best regionals I have attended and it was a great start to my senior year regionals.

Thanks,
Kevin

[steelerborn]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

1. 973 would absolutely not do this. 973 would not throw 9 matches to be the first selection of the draft, and 254 would definitely not take a gamble with someone going "trust me, we're really good, we just threw matches so you would pick us". Especially when you consider one of 973's highest scoring and closest losses was against 254. Not to mention there is almost no incentive for 973 to throw matches if they're the first pick of the draft. The number one seed picks first.

2. Do you really want judges to be able to "do anything" to a team based on an alleged fishy looking hunch? What action could possibly be appropriate for a judge to take here?

The regional was a lot of fun and was really competitive.

The match you are referring to was Qual 27. 973 was having communication problems and was only alive for part of the match, our other bot I believe was also dead for some of the match. It was essentially 3 on 1 for most of the match and we almost won it.

I know 1671 is looking forward to playing in St. Louis.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Bitbucket99

973 pick looks very fishy to me. Smells of collusion, but would the judges ever do anything? Don't think so.

This is pretty funny. You clearly don't know 973's mentors at all.

You also don't seem to understand when sandbagging is even effective (not that any happened here).

Congrats to the winners, but also to 1323's alliance as finalists What a nice bot!