Car Nack Predicts 16-1

[JABot67]

Hmm, I do wonder how Car Nack has reached this conclusion.

There are a couple ways the #1 alliance can end up not dominating an event:

1.) The #1 seeded team cannot carry a large share of the alliance's weight in the playoffs, and either that team chooses the "best" robot as its #1 pick but the alliance is still not the best, or a "scorched earth" alliance selection happens and the "best" robots end up on other alliances.

This usually happens when there is some difference between what is required of a robot/strategy to seed high in qualifications, and what is necessary to win the playoffs. We saw this in 2012 with teams whose main goal was to balance the Coopertition bridge. However, even though there are ways of getting ranking points this year besides winning, it seems to me that these extra goals of breaching and capturing are still very valuable in the playoffs.

Another way this happens is if a team gets really lucky and seeds high. However, I cannot imagine this happening in 75% of all regional and district competitions.

2.) The #1 seeded alliance cannot compete with the others even though it has the best 2 robots at the event, because 3 okay robots are better than 2 good ones plus the last pick of the draft.

I'm not sure this one is true for this game. It seems likely that the 2 best robots at the event plus the last pick would be a very, very strong alliance. I would predict these two robots would be able to breach easily (can't defend breaching well) and perhaps weaken the tower and scale. That is a lot of points, and the third bot just needs to challenge for even more points.

Perhaps this game will have a lot of defense, especially in playoffs. That would make this game a lot like 2007, when many #1 alliances didn't win. For example, the three Michigan events that year had the #2, #5, and #5 alliances win. However, the defense in this game seems pretty limited since only one robot can defend its alliance's courtyard and crossing defenses is protected.

3.) The #1 seeded team makes imperfect alliance selection picks.

This one could happen, but probably not at the majority of events. A team that seeds first is likely to have good scouting and strategy.

4.) There are a lot of robots playing at the same level, and therefore the first pick advantage isn't huge.

This usually happens at high-level competitions. In 2011 MSC and 2012 Galileo, the #8 alliance beat the #1 alliance because there wasn't a significant enough difference in the playing ability of the robots on both alliances. This is something that can happen in every game, but it is more likely to occur at district champs, worlds, or at strong regionals or districts. A "weak" district or regional usually has 1 or 2 strong teams, even if they had to go out of their way to attend.