San Diego: Tech Foul in Finals

[magicmike]

To me it looked like 2485 was playing defense on the Beachbots, not looking to receive a ball.

[JB987]

Let this outcome stand as a precautionary tale...it appears if your inbounders attempt to add any force to propell the ball outward toward their receiving robot anywhere away from the low goal they may incur a g32 call or even g31 should it make contact with an opposing ball or robot. Results from yesterday may continue to reinforce typical soft short toss into inbounders bots as a prevailing strategy. Unfortunately this means defenders jobs become easier as they know balls will almost always be inbounded next to the low goal. Are you willing to risk giving 50 pts to your opponent every time you in bound to a robot away from the low goal?

Keep in mind even one errant or intercepted inbound may apparently be percieved as a "strategy"...

Having said this I want to convey my congrats to our opponents. Unbelievably tough defense, great shooting and driving. Hats off to the whole alliance.

[griggsy]

I just wanted to drop my two cents in and hopefully provide some clarifying insights.

First, congratulations to the winning alliance, 330, 1266, 4583 and 4486. No matter what I (or anyone else, IMHO) may think of the final call, it can not be denied that the winning alliance earned their win. They had a remarkable and impressive rise through the eliminations. I deeply respect all the teams involved, and 1266, just FYI, you guys have a special place in my heart too. Our team would likely not even exist if not for the support provided by your team and 1538.

Lest I seem remiss, I want to thank our alliance members 987 and 3250 too for competing along side us and being so gracious even in defeat. It was an honor and a pleasure.

Following that, I want to thank the refs. They have a very hard job, and they are good people that strive to make these competitions fair and outstanding. While I may disagree with a call at times, I fully respect their calls and even often understand how in different shoes, an event can seem contrary to how I interpreted it.

I know my drive team well, and I can assure you all, that no matter how it may look in the video, it was certainly not the intent of our human player to disrupt 330 with the toss in. In fact, I think that was the first foul he has caused for the entire season. Furthermore, we always discourage our drive team from employing any kind of what we call "sweep the leg tactics" (for those of you that have not seen Karate Kid, I mean malicious or questionable intent tactics). Even so, I understand how in the heat of competition this event could have been perceived that way by the refs, and respect their ruling. Their job is exceedingly difficult this year. IMHO, in this year's game, they have been tasked with too much to do, and even so they are striving to make it all work. Truly commendable.

Finally, I have to say our team had a ton of fun at the San Diego Regional and was very fortunate at the competition. Thanks to all involved, especially all the volunteer staff and all the teams that helped make the event memorable. I look forward to seeing many of those same teams, and some I missed seeing at our regional this year, in Vegas.

[brandon.cottrell]

I know my drive team well, and I can assure you all, that no matter how it may look in the video, it was certainly not the intent of our human player to disrupt 330 with the toss in. In fact, I think that was the first foul he has caused for the entire season. Furthermore, we always discourage our drive team from employing any kind of what we call "sweep the leg tactics" (for those of you that have not seen Karate Kid, I mean malicious or questionable intent tactics).

I've met all of the drive team members of 2485 and I couldn't agree more. What I'm concerned with though is people perceiving the technical foul as an ungraciously professional act from 2485.

Also, I'm very happy with the responses that 987 and 2485 were giving. We were kind of concerned that people would say that the technical foul was a cheap win (it kind of was though) and would say that we shouldn't have won.

Also also,

and 1266, just FYI, you guys have a special place in my heart too.

Oh you guys

[CTHP]

The judges and referees should have weighed available video evidence considering the importance of the final matches. I watched the YouTube video half a dozen times (at the crucial moments - took about 90 seconds to reach a conclusion) and it was clear that the RED ball was heading toward a RED alliance robot when #330 turned into the path of the RED ball. So if it was a 'strategic' move to inbound a ball to deflect an opponent’s ball tucked safely inside an opposing team robot then isn't it equally likely that #330 turned into the path of the RED ball in order to create the foul? Sure it is.

Do I believe that? Of course not! What we had here was a spirited match and given the situation neither the HP nor 330 were intentionally attempting to cause a foul. Had the ball been clearly over-thrown past all the RED robots to an open part of the field containing only a BLUE robot and its ball, then the refs have a 'strategic' foul to deal with. From what I understand, only a single referee saw the event and video evidence presented to the refs seconds after the match ended was not given due consideration.
I also agree with the assessment from Hayes92107: “Based on my GoPro video, the ball was being inbounded to 2485 when 330 tried to pass our robot to get into scoring position and the ball bounced off the blue ball that was within the passing robot”.

[TheMadCADer]

An important thing to keep in mind when something like this comes up is the reason we have foul points. The foul points awarded should be directly related (though not necessarily equal) to the amount of harm done. Fouls exist to keep unfair play from changing match outcomes. Changing the outcome of a match is exactly the opposite of what they're intended to do!

Sure we can argue back and forth over whether the rules were violated or not, but there comes a point where you should question a rule that is causing undesired results. Rules are tools, if they aren't working, let's fix them.

[Hjelstrom]

Originally Posted by griggsy

I know my drive team well, and I can assure you all, that no matter how it may look in the video, it was certainly not the intent of our human player to disrupt 330 with the toss in. In fact, I think that was the first foul he has caused for the entire season.

I remember watching one of 2485's last qualifying matches and saw their human player use the same type of pass (long pass with some backspin) when their robot was across the field from him. At the time another mentor and I even commented to each other on how good of a human player he was (very careful on the truss catches too).

The match was almost over, our robots couldn't reach the loading spot, and he was trying to quickly get the ball back in play. He shouldn't feel bad about this play in any way.

[ToddF]

There seem to be two questions being debated.
1) Was the foul called correctly? I'll pass on that question.
2) Is 50 points an excessive penalty for this penalty? No, it's not. Every year very smart people analyze the game looking for strategies of play that provide a net benefit. There are CD threads created where people debate whether the benefit of intentionally committing a foul outweigh the cost of the penalty points. If a ball has three assists on it, and a robot attempts a high goal score with that ball, it is potentially worth 40 points. If a human player throws a 2nd ball that interferes with the first, and prevents those 40 points from being scored, that's a benefit of 40 points. To dissuade this behavior, the associated penalty MUST be greater. Otherwise, the cost/benefit analysis shows that it is actually beneficial to throw balls at certain high goal shots to prevent them from being scored. Yes, there is a whole question of whether this behavior is GP. But, it has been persuasively argued by Chairman's award winning teams (the ones we are supposed to look up to) that game play other than what the game committee intended (scoring into opposite alliance's goals, for example) is smart rather than non-GP.

Add in the fact that referees are overworked and miss penalty calls all the time, and you have teams which may decide that committing this sort of foul is worth it EVEN IF the penalty is 50 points. It was against the rules in logomotion for human players to throw tubes to prevent robots from hanging. But there were teams that did it. Teams calculated that for certain situations, the risk of getting called for the foul was low enough and the benefit in points denied vs the cost in penalty points made committing the foul a beneficial strategy. Note that people in this thread are arguing that an action has to be performed TWICE before it becomes a "strategy". The flip side implication is that the first foul is "free". To discourage this type of game play, penalty point values MUST be high enough so it's just not worth it.

Just want to add my 0.014490 euros to the discussion of the call itself. Let it be known that I wasn't a ref there, or know any of the teams involved.

If this same exact thing occurred at my regional, I can honestly say I would have called the foul almost the same way. I would have called a G31 instead of a G32, that's my only change.

Watching the replay, it looks to me like the red robot is playing defense while the human player is trying to inbound the ball. Couple that with the very hard throw from the HP, and it looks even more like a strategy to inhibit the robot.

Keep in mind that referees see the actions of the robots, and don't know what the drivers' intents are. So while you may not be doing something to commit a foul on purpose, if it looks like you are, then a penalty will be called.

[mkausas]

What is hardest for me is that many other obvious fouls occurred and were not called or even considered after the match had ended.

Within the first 30 seconds of the match our belt, which drives our intake rollers, was snapped off due to 330's intake being extended. This was obviously unintentional yet it caused us to not be able to pick up off of the ground for the rest of the match. No foul was called.

Image of when 330's intake snapped our belt:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1LW...9FN3I0NXc/edit

Image of our belt dragging on the ground:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

Later in the match 1266 was heavy defense on 987; however, they drove up onto 987 for a solid 4-5 seconds making obvious contact inside their frame perimeter.

Image of 1266 on top of 987:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

Both cases were protrusions into other robot's frame perimeters and one caused major damage to our robot causing us not be able to score for the rest of the match. When we went to the question box after the match with video evidence of what had happened we were told that the match score would not be reconsidered. It just confuses me how in such an important match the refs made such a controversial call yet didn't make any calls on two such obvious fouls...

I only post this in order to provide feedback to refs and any FIRST employees that may read this response. As my teammates have already said, congrats to the winning alliance.

[TheMadCADer]

Originally Posted by mkausas

Image of when 330's intake snapped our belt:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1LW...9FN3I0NXc/edit

Image of our belt dragging on the ground:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

Image of 1266 on top of 987:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

Just as a heads up, I couldn't get any of those images to load. Maybe try either uploading them to Chief as an attachment or hosting them on something like Imgur.

[Dave McLaughlin]

All of the images loaded find for me, perhaps you're behind a firewall or something?

[David8696]

They worked for me too.

[Jacob Conway]

Originally Posted by mkausas

Image of when 330's intake snapped our belt:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1LW...9FN3I0NXc/edit

Image of our belt dragging on the ground:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

Image of 1266 on top of 987:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1L...it?usp=sharing

They aren't loading for me either.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by CTHP

The judges and referees should have weighed available video evidence considering the importance of the final matches.

The judges have nothing to do with it. And the referees are prohibited from looking at videos (section 5.5.3).