"Fixing" matches

[Arrowsmith]

Match fixing will only lead me to one thing: Justifyable sabotage. If any member of my team even thinks about match fixing, I'll hit them in the head with some pipe. Arrowsmith angry! Arrowsmith SMASH!

[Alexander McGee]

Ok, I want everyone to realize something here. Statistically, the highest averages for regional events were around 130, give or take 25 points. Now, if you look at the regional event which I recently attended (AZ) you can see a HUGE difference in qualification point averages.

Rank 1 173 Average
Rank 2 135 Average
Rank 3 133 Average
Rank 4 121 Average

That's a difference of nearly 40 points, over a span of 11 matches per team. Come on people, its obvious that certain teams used (at this regional and others) so called "gentleman agreements" to raise their scores. This is definitely not in the spirit of what F.I.R.S.T. is all about.

As stated in a previous post on this forum, F.I.R.S.T. has declared this blatant act of cheating to be exactly what it is; cheating.

Here is a scenario for everyone.

Let’s say that I am a rookie team. I have, in my opinion, a wonderful robot. I worked very hard over 6 weeks with a group of students, parents, and teachers from my school, to make it all come together. When we get to our regional event, we lose our first match. We are upset, but we try again. Sadly, our team seeds dead last. In our 5th match of the first day of real competition, as our alliance and I are discussing how we can win, our opponents show up in our meeting. They say that they know how we can get at least 200 points. They claim that this is "working together", so we agree. The match ends, and we score 250 points. A somewhat mediocre alliance gets a significant amount of points, and a cheating team continues to manipulate the qualification points of every team.

Does this concept show how strong, well built, and well run a team is? NO. It shows how far a team is willing to go to make themselves look like something that they are not.

I strongly oppose “gentlemen’s agreements”, and think that it’s time for F.I.R.S.T. to know about it. I’m sure I will receive posts, emails, and IMs telling me that I am wrong.

Sorry guys, it’s cheating, not “working together”, so just stop it.

[Eismann]

When I found out what had been done by our team I was upset. One of our junior made a bad call in one of our matches. Grant it, it didn't affect our game but still it was a mistake. I am glad we apologized for the game we did that in and I hope no one will make that call on any team in any matches.

I would also like to thank 624 and 980 for showing there support and walking around with us to get signatures. Also thanks to all the teams that signed other letter.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally posted by magnasmific

Sorry guys, it’s cheating, not “working together”, so just stop it.

Absolutely. This is totally unacceptable.

[Amanda Morrison]

I forgot - when did FIRST become a relentless competition, with winning being the only goal in mind? Honestly, what is so bad about losing? What happened to saying 'good game' and respecting someone because they played fair and ending up winning against you? Where is the challenge, the excitement, the feeling of working incredibly hard? If you win based on the way you set things up with your alliance partners and your opponents, did you really, honestly win?

That's the only reason I can see for 'fixing' matches. You're fixing them to seed higher... to get into the top eight... to get to play in the finals... to win.

There is a very big difference between talking with opponents, letting them know your game plan with your alliance partner, and playing a good match... and talking with your opponents and alliance partners and working out how to make yourselves score higher.

And that honestly saddens me. FIRST isn't about winning, it's about teaching. It took the students on my team- who only wanted to learn about the aspects of engineering through this great program- to make me realize that. I hope that every mentor has a student to teach them that a great life lesson learned means more to a kid than any hunk of metal on a ribbon that FIRST could award.

[srjjs]

The game is as much a competition of strategies as it is of robots. There is never any one "best strategy."
If teams choose to use this as their strategy, find one that will beat them.

[Alexander McGee]

[quote]Originally posted by srjjs
The game is as much a competition of strategies as it is of robots. [/QUOTE

You missed the point completelly. This is not a "strategy", this is a very unfair way to run the game. Beating the people who do this is not the concern. Having the people who do this choosing alliances is. It's totally unfair.

[stace68]

My Team 68 was approached once at the Arizona Regional. A Junior Advisor accepted, and yes it was wrong. We promise to all teams that this will not happen again from our team. I want to thank Team 624 and Team 980 for walking around with us for the petition,and would also like to thank those teams who signed our petition. Fixing of matches is cheating,and is taking away the meaning of F.I.R.S.T.

[GregT]

1) It IS working together.
2) It is not against the rules (or any that I have read)
3) The game is designed in such a way you have to work with your opponent (to some extent) as your QP's depend on their score.

I'm suprised at that Jive post, and would be very suprised to hear a Ref call it illegal as It is not against the spirit of FIRST to work together towards a common goal.

Anyone remember the 2001 game?

Greg

[David Brinza]

Opposing alliances making agreements to not attack tall (7+) human player stacks is clearly not consistent with the spirit of competition I've witnessed in other FIRST events. Within 30 seconds of the start of human play in the first match where this occurred, I felt something was very wrong. Upon seeing two immense undefended stacks on either end of the field with no attempts made to attack them throughout the game, I thought: "No way this isn't rigged!!" An outsider to FIRST would wonder whether this really was an exhibition, not a competition. Those 300+ point scores are highly tainted and the impact extends beyond the field in Phoenix.

The response by many FIRST participants to this occurrence was immediate and quite consistent: "We expected that it would take effective robots, good driving, good strategy and some luck to be winners; not some backroom, 'gentlemen's agreements' to pile up points." There were letters distributed by a couple of teams (68 and 624) expressing the inappropriate nature of these agreements between alliances. Most teams concurred with the letters and indicated that if approached, they would refuse to make such agreements.

In the interest of FIRST, teams should work with their alliance partners to developed winning strategies - it is never appropriate to hold such discussions with opponents before a match.

[GregT]

Does everyone here understand why you might not want to knock down a tall opponent's stack?

TO GET A HIGHER QP

Thats how you seed high, by getting a HIGHER QP. Thats why you don't knock down your opponents stack: TO GET A HIGHER QP.

Just because they got more points then you doesn't mean it was neccissarily fixed. It is possible the teams involved decided they wanted to get more points from a loss then they normally do from a win. This game is setup such that leaving a stack alone is good for both sides. You get 2X your opponents score for a reason - FIRST doesn't want you to crush your opponent. Common sense says stacks should remain standing EVEN IF YOUR TEAM IS LOSING. The only time I would allow my team to think about knocking down an opponents stack is after they knock down ours.

Why on earth would you purposly lower your score by knocking down an opponents stack?

Tainted points? I would call them intelligence points

Greg

edit: whats more, if FIRST did make a rule against "fixing" the match, how could you ever hope to enforce such a rule? Would not knocking stacks over be considered illegal?

[Stu Bloom]

Originally posted by Mark Pettit
... I approached the FIRST Regional Director and asked him what FIRST's position is. He said that FIRST is enjoying seeing the moral dilemna that the scenario has created. He also reminded me that it is not doing the teams that fix matches any good because fixing will not work in the finals where QPs don't matter. Those teams who are highly ranked through fixing will be the first teams to be eliminated in the finals...

I am VERY disturbed to hear that a FIRST official would condone this type of behavior, and to say that "it is not doing the teams that fix matches any good because fixing will not work in the finals ..." is ridiculous. Just getting into the finals is extremely significant. I believe it should be made very clear by FIRST that this type of match "fixing" (OR WHATEVER ELSE YOU WOULD LIKE TO CALL IT) is absolutely unacceptable.

AND any team whose members/representatives are soliciting any pre-match arrangements with their opponent alliance members should be EXCUSED from the remainder of the competition. There is NO room for this type of behavior in FIRST.

Additionally, I am very pleased to see that most of the posts in this thread are in favor of a competition the way it is meant to be - one team against another with each trying to win using their abilities and strategies. GP is all about what takes place outside the 2:10 of the match.

Just my $.02.

[Gadget470]

Consider this, you sorry pro-fixed match people..

Boxing matches.. Man R vs Man B.. Winner gets a nice some of money, people betting on it get a nice sum also.

So Mr. Cashlove goes up to the Boxer in red trunks and says, hey, if you "accidently" "stay down" for "10 seconds" you will "get" "$375,000" (Quotes being winks).

Red trunked boxer thinks hmmm.. the purse for this is about 400,000.. if I win, I get $400k and a W.. If I lose I get 375,000 and an L...

So... low and behold.. the boxer in Red falls over third round and somehow can't get up until the bell rings. So for less effort put in by the man in Red, he still gets a large sum of money. While the Blue trunked boxer walks away with an easy win and a few extra bucks.
---

Make sense in the FIRST format? Instead of a team being pummeled trying to win, they 'let' the other team win without putting up a fight. They still get better than what they would had they fought legitimately.. but the opponent doesn't have to work hard, gets an easy win, and all the glory..

Kamen said at kickoff.. this game won't be fair. It won't be fair because it involves humans. Teams will always try and weasel through loopholes and make "gentlemen's agreements."

I lost respect for a very good team because of their "unsportsmanlike agreements," as they should be called. I don't intend on this being a flame, so I won't say a number, speak with me in private if you must know.

Two veteran teams vs Two rookie teams. The veterans are in a close race with the other high rank teams for a qualifying spot. The leader of the pair is ranked in about 6th. They send a team leader over to the rookies and say "Push a goal to our side, then sit in your home zone, we'll do the rest and you will have about 50-60 points." The rookies.. having a few bad matches already and knowing they can't defeat the vet's agree and do the task.
The veterans work together nicely in a 2 v 0 battle. They toss almost all of the field's balls into the goals and poke and prod the score til they feel it's just right. The final score was something along the lines of 65 - 60 vet's winning. Being that it was last year, the rookies got 60 pts, and the vets got 180. This skyrocketed them to 1st place where they remained. Their partner sat in 3rd or 4th at the end of the day.


Tell me this now, how was that a fair match? This is not CoOpertition FIRST anymore, it's 2 v 2. not 2 v 0 or 4 v 0. By the veteran team making an offer to the rookies, they bettered themselves into an undefeatable position. (That comment is to whomever said "if they do that find a way to beat them).

[Alex1072]

[quote]Originally posted by magnasmific

Originally posted by srjjs
The game is as much a competition of strategies as it is of robots. [/QUOTE

You missed the point completelly. This is not a "strategy", this is a very unfair way to run the game. Beating the people who do this is not the concern. Having the people who do this choosing alliances is. It's totally unfair.

My argument is this:
I think this is COMPLETLY fair because
1. There is no rule against it
2. All teams are free to do it.

This means that no one team really gets any advantage. It raises EVERYONE's scores. The best robots still have the highest scores.

The debate in my mind is whether this strategy is in the spirit of FIRST. Just because something is fair, does not mean it is what we should be doing.

I think it adds a diplomatic aspect to the whole game. Also, I would encourage teams who do this to consider wheither it is actuly in their advantage (no matter how you spin it, it is a zero-sum game).

[Gadget470]

On another note (different angle, different post.. deal with it)...

My team will be attending one regional this year. One shot, one chance to do our best. We need to win or get an award to continue this season. What if we are supposed to be ranked 8th and the 10th place team says "Hey, let's fix this match so we can get into 7th seed!" and then does. We get bumped to 9th and then quite possibly not get picked for eliminations. (I've seen the 9th seed not be in elim's before).

We, a team deserving to pick alliance partners because of our performance gets rejected because another team can make an agreement with their opponents