"Fixing" matches

[Shawn60]

We need to ask these questions of this competition but more importantly of LIFE... What is possible? Can we do it? How do we do it? And then most importantly SHOULD WE DO IT?

The students of my team are going to write and sign a letter stating that they will not participate in these "agreements" so please don't ask us. We will then give them out to every team in LA and to all the teams in our division in Houston.


Shawn
Team 60

[Pete Smith]

In my opinion, "fixing" matches is a difficult strategy to deal with. I would expect the issue to be addressed at nationals to provide some clarity for everyone. However, this strategy can only work in qualifying rounds, so every robot that advances to the elimination rounds will have to fend for itself. Although I would be disappointed if an honest team were to miss out on the elimination rounds or a chance to head it's own alliance due to this strategy.
There is a clear line between "fixing" matches and encouraging smart play. For example, if teams were to encourage their opponents to allow 4 robots on the ramp when there is a clear winner of the "bin war" it is fair play in my opinion. This prevents a score below 50 for the loser and an extra 100 points is awarded to the winner. Although, I would disagree completely with this technique if one of the 4 robots was designed to play King of the Hill because their strength is then removed from play.
Therefore if ALL 4 teams had NO stacking capabilities (rare occurance) I would regretfully catagorize this as smart play as well. Although chances are if you have no stacking capabilities you are good at knocking them over, so again it may still be taking a particular team's strength out of play.

Good Luck to Everyone!

-Thanks 157 and 782 for being excellent alliance partners, I had a ton of fun with you guys.

-Thanks BUZZ, Aces High and team 177 for being great opponents, you guys all have awesome robots and most importantly, great attitudes.

[joshk]

Originally posted by magnasmific
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.

Let's say FIRST decides to disqualify any team which does such things during the competition for the duration thereof.

How are you going to tell who's cheating and who's not?

Assuming no opposing alliances are working together, it can STILL happen that each alliance has both of their extremely tall stacks standing. You can't assume they have been working together just based on that. A lot of honest teams could get in trouble if FIRST tried to enforce such a rule.

Basically, my point is that you (or at least the FIRST judges) can't ever reliably figure out who's really cheating at all.

[Joel Glidden]

St. Louis taught me that leaving each other's stacks alone shouldn't take any agreements. It's just plain good strategy for Qualifying Rounds. If your opponents need to be convinced to maximize their potential score, then they haven't studied the mechanics of the game and don't deserve to get a 'stacks up'-score.

These pre-match agreements need to end. Aside from the ethics of the situation, there are so many ways for them to go wrong (intentionally or otherwise). In the best case, a team or teams get points they didn't earn. In the worst case, relationships between teams are damaged, and we all begin to lose faith in one another.

-Joel

[abeD]

Well if FIRST really wanted to have people be honest, maybe they would make some type of honor code, which would be signed, that said "I will not fix a match and abide by GP during competition" or something like that. I know that at least at my school has an honor code that we sign on every test that says that we will not give or take help from others, and it works pretty well, but every once in a while someone will cheat anyways.

[Stu Bloom]

Originally posted by Joel Glidden
St. Louis taught me that leaving each other's stacks alone shouldn't take any agreements. It's just plain good strategy for Qualifying Rounds. If your opponents need to be convinced to maximize their potential score, then they haven't studied the mechanics of the game and don't deserve to get a 'stacks up'-score.

These pre-match agreements need to end. Aside from the ethics of the situation, there are so many ways for them to go wrong (intentionally or otherwise). In the best case, a team or teams get points they didn't earn. In the worst case, relationships between teams are damaged, and we all begin to lose faith in one another.

-Joel

BRAVO JOEL ... GREAT POST - This sums up the situation perfectly.

[David Brinza]

My guess is that >95% of the teams would not choose to enter diplomacy over playing a square match.

If the stacks are negotiation pawns now, then what comes next? the ramp!!!

[Pete Smith]

Joel - I agree completely, excellent point.

[David Brinza]

OUR alliance made the decision whether an opposing alliance stack should be allowed to stand or we should attack it based on our overall game strategy and scouting info on our opponents (i.e. could they defend the stack when their robot got into their scoring zone). We understood the basics of the game and scored well (after 6 matches, our QP average was 171 pt's).

All points were earned fair and square.

[BaysianLogik]

Here are my two cents...

First off, I think there are two different arguements going on here, one on predetermining the winner of a match, and the other about stack agreements. I feel these are two completely different things.

Blatently predetermining the winner of a match eliminates all effort on behalf of one side or the other, and thus violates the spirit of FIRST.

Making an agreement about stacks is a completely different subject. In this game, stacks are extremely vulnerable. In the entire Annapolis regional, I saw a stack successfully defended about 5 times (out of over 100 matches i watched). Thus, if one side takes out the stack, almost every time the other side will be able to take out the stacks as well. Thus, the winner without the stacks would have been the winner with the stacks, because the winner in virtually every match is determined by the number of bins on the floor, or the robots on the ramp.

Take this example, which was a typical scene at the regional:
Human Players on each side put stacks of 4 (most common strategy). After autonomous mode, Blue has 12 bins in their scoring position, while red has 15. 12*4=48, 15*4=60. In order to win, blue takes out reds stacks. In response, red takes out blues. Their scores are reduced to 16 and 19. Attacking the stacks was completely pointless, because blue still lost. All they did was lower both of their scores.

As you can see, the stacks have no weight on who wins a match most of the time, and as such, is a lose-lose strategy.

Lose-Lose situations are avoided in the real world. Companies do not sabatoge each others business (99% of the time), but make their products better so the consumer will buy their services instead of the competetors. In this case, the world as a whole wins, because one company makes better products, and forces its competitors to follow suit, and having the consumer have the best products possible. Furthermore, if the real world did not have a desire to avoid severe lose-lose situations, no one would be reading this right now, because we would have had a nuclear war between the US and USSR years ago, the ultimate lose-lose situation. Mutually Assured Distruction policy was based on this principle, and obviously it worked.

As a project that attempts to have as much of a real world flavor as possible, FIRST is all about not having lose-lose situations. Thus, "Stack Attack," is truely a strange game. The only winning move is not to play by how its name implies. (I hope everyone saw the quote from "War Games")

[Rook]

A simple fix for this would be to go back to the old way of not knowing who your opponents are until 5 minutes before the match.

[Clanat]

I agree that it is a smart thing to do to let opponent's stacks stand, but making an agreement to not knock down an opponent's stack is wrong. There are specific reasons people design their robots the way they do. Many stackers came from a desire to get more qualification points than they would get as a non-stacking robot. To make an agreement to not knock down stacks is in effect giving your robot another ability: the ability to stack and thus increase the qualifying score. Teams that do have the capability to stack are short-changed, since they don't have the benefits of being a pusher-type robot, but they lose the advantage of having a stacker.

Leaving the other team's stacks is often a smart thing to do, but if you are going to win by knocking over an opponents stack, do it! Your team will score a lot more points by winning with a few points than by losing with a lot.

In a match I was driving in, I would have Gracious Professionalism first, winning second, and maximizing score third. Keep your priorities straight!

[Amanda M]

This is what I am getting from this. People who are in favor of this particular tactic (which I am not) are saying that it is a strategy.

This is not true. Strategy and pre-match agrements are two completely different things.

An example : You make an agreement with a team to keep their boxes up, as long as they are going to lost to you, in order to raise your QPs. You get seeded frist without any REAL trouble (unless there's an awesome team that can score high without this using STRATEGY). This is not an example of strategy because it is already pre-ordained. You are simply weasling your way into the top spot

Strategy is created right on the spot. When I was in AZ watching matches (I was scouting) I took notice in the fact that some teams would give other teams boxes for points. They did it the STRATEGIC way, right on the spot WITHOUT any pre-match talks.

One other thing that i would like to comment on.

NOWHERE in the manual does it mention fixing of matches. If the game was created for this purpose, then it would have been in the manual. This was OBVIOUSLY not the intention of FIRST, otherwise, such behavior would have ben addressed sooner.

That's just my bit.

Amanda

[Alex1072]

Originally posted by Clanat
In a match I was driving in, I would have Gracious Professionalism first, winning second, and maximizing score third. Keep your priorities straight!

I agree with these priorities, but I think they should read as follows:

Professionalism first, winning Overall second , and maximizing score third.


Assuming stacking agreements are not against the spirit of FIRST (at the moment appears to be a big assumption): If you feel not knocking down a stack and taking a lose will increase your chances of doing better in the following rounds, I think it is a good strategy. If teams trust that you won't knock down their stacks, even at a lost to your self, they will have incentive not to knock down ur stacks when they are losing. If you have a competitive robot that wins more then it loses, it helps you in the long run to maintain trust.


This whole situation is similiar to a Prisoner's Dillema. It is a classic problem from game theory that goes as follows:

Two prisonner's are being held and are told:
If you don't confess, and your friend does, you get 10 years, your friend gets 2.
If you both confess you both get 5 years.
If you both don't confess you both get 3 years.

Each prisonner has an inncentive to cheat his friend and only get 2 years. This generally leads to both players confessing even though they are both better off denying the charges.

This situation I see happening with FIRST is that teams are trusting each other enough to achieve the best effect for both teams involved, even though each individual team can do better by backing out on the agreement. I think this is the definition of Gracius proffesionalism, and cooperative competition. Both of which are values of FIRST.


my ".02"

[Gary Stearns]

At the nationals 3 years ago one of our team members was being talked to another teams scout. they had a well made scouting form on the bottom was a check box with nothing next to it, when asked what the box was for they said.
"Oh thats the jerk box"

Since then one of our team goals is "Stay out of the jerk box"

Team !! 236 !! TECHNO TICKS !!!!
(doing pretty good this year)