Westtown MAR District Won on Eliminations Tiebreaker Rules

[AWoL]

We, along with our awesome alliance partners 1640 and 1391 (both event hosts ), won the Westtown MAR District yesterday with a tied score of 145 against 4954, 341, and 484 in the second finals match. The outcome ended up being decided by the 3rd-order tiebreaker of autonomous points (manual section 5.4.4, table 5-3). I think this makes complete sense, but I did get a lot of negative opinions from people who thought that was unfair, cheap, or just dumb, and that a tie in elims should always just be decided by another match. Of course, you can't change the manual, but do you think the manual should include tiebreaker rules, or should it always be a replay?

[simpsonboy77]

I believe it should be based off points in playoffs. It's a rare enough occurrence that realistically it won't add much time to the event. Even as a volunteer that stays for ALL of teardown, I'd rather take the extra 10 minutes to see a good closure to an event.

Quick story time: My senior year we were picked in Archimedes. Our quarterfinal matches went loss, win, tie, loss. I remember how hyped I was waiting for the official scores, and I can easily imagine how bummed I would have felt had we lost based on a tie breaker.

[Basel A]

Playoff tiebreaker matches ended after 2010 when there were many ties (due to it being a low-scoring game). There hasn't been a game since then that needed this rule, though. All the games 2011-2016 have had few enough ties in playoffs that you could probably play another match without it hurting the schedule too much.

[GKrotkov]

Firstly, I certainly don't have any complaint about the red alliance win in that match. It's in the manual, #1 earned it. If the GDC wants to prioritize something (say, auto), then I see tiebreakers as a valid way to implement that priority. Furthermore, if the reason we go to tiebreakers is so that everything happens on time then I totally understand going to tiebreakers.

All that said, if I had my druthers, we'd replay tied eliminations matches.

[Starwarsguy2]

I believe that they added this rule as a precaution for Worlds. I know that in the Archimedes finals there was a match in this situation and if it were to be replayed, then it would've set the whole of Worlds behind. In a smaller competition setting, one match wouldn't change the schedule too much. But in a huge setting such as Worlds, it would throw a large wrench into the whole schedule. All in all, this is probably more a rule for Worlds, not a district event. Congratulations on the win and thanks to Metal Moose and Sabotage for hosting it.

[Billfred]

FIRST emulates the sports model to achieve its goals. You know what the sports model has? Tiebreakers.

(As an event manager, I'm not swayed either. It's a long enough day as it is!)

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by Billfred

FIRST emulates the sports model to achieve its goals. You know what the sports model has? Tiebreakers.

(As an event manager, I'm not swayed either. It's a long enough day as it is!)

Sports have tiebreakers to determine seeding (like FRC has tiebreakers for seeding). But those tiebreakers aren't what's being discussed. No major sport has tiebreakers to determine the winner of a game. The closest thing is shootouts in hockey, and they don't have those in the playoffs.

Luckily this tiebreaker only determined 10 ranking points, but I think more people would be upset if it determined the winner of a Regional and who qualifies for Champs.


But again, I don't think any major sport entirely replays a tied game either.

[JohnFogarty]

Since most traditional sports like Basketball and Soccer have sudden death scoring tiebreakers things that aren't possible to do in FRC.

I think the auto tiebreaker is an entirely fair way of breaking a tie.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

But again, I don't think any major sport entirely replays a tied game either.

Australian-rules football had a "minor" problem a few years back when the championship game down there was tied after one overtime.

Seems they had no further tiebreakers, or provision to extend the game, or other similar items. So the "head honcho" of the league announced that the game would be replayed one week later.


Had a playoff match in OC flipped by one penalty. The alliances were 5 points apart without a penalty, red (I think) in the lead. Problem was, somebody on red committed a secret passage violation and was flagged for it. Blue got 5 points (score is now tied) and the first tiebreaker happens to be cleaner match (fewer penalty points). Blue won the match.

[MisterJ]

Speaking of "timing" at Westtown... On Saturday, the crowd was asked for their patience while the event turned into a big "dance party" for twenty minutes. No explanation given except that the event was "too far ahead of schedule." (I think I heard a collective groan from all the mentors and volunteers that had been working until 10:00 the night before and knew they had to wake up at 6:00 the next morning.)

There has to be a better way to use this extra time, right?

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by MisterJ

Speaking of "timing" at Westtown... On Saturday, the crowd was asked for their patience while the event turned into a big "dance party" for twenty minutes. No explanation given except that the event was "too far ahead of schedule." (I think I heard a collective groan from all the mentors and volunteers that had been working until 10:00 the night before and knew they had to wake up at 6:00 the next morning.)

There has to be a better way to use this extra time, right?

What would you have used it for? I agree that '20 minute dance party' might be better spent, but in the spur of the moment, what would your suggested filler be? I can't think of any quick-fix for taking up that amount of time.

If an event is running 20+ minutes ahead of schedule (which, GO WESTTOWN CREW! That's impressive), a lot of the 'little things' on the backstage end of the event get jumbled up. Teams aren't ready for their matches, and if the event is that far ahead of schedule it means the breaks between matches are even shorter due to compressed cycle times. Volunteer rotations can be confusing, and food service/venue staff's schedules get mangled.

On-time is good, 5m ahead is nice, any more than that starts to be as hectic for the event logistics as being behind.

On the actual topic of thread, I'm not the biggest fan of the tiebreakers - like others have said, I'd be happy to stay the extra ten minutes to see another play - but I can understand where the GDC's coming from in terms of time-savings and not wanting to over-complicate things.

AWoL, I'm sorry that someone said your win was 'cheap' or 'dumb' because of something that's right there in the manual. You guys have a lot to be proud of this season, and I hope that doesn't take away from the win.

[Chris is me]

Eliminations tiebreakers are the result of an overreaction to a problem unique to the 2010 FRC game. In that year, scores were very low (one point per ball, 2 points per hang) so ties were very easy to accomplish. Many events had 4 or 5 match rounds waiting for ties to resolve one way or another.

Despite this being pretty much a non issue in literally every other FRC game there has ever been, FRC's GDC has written in tiebreaker rules into the manual ever since to avoid a situation that happens only a handful of times per year. Personally I think this is among the most ridiculous rules in the manual, and that tiebreakers are poorly explained when they do happen. Not the fault of the volunteers - the scoring screen just makes this super ambiguous.

[AWoL]

Originally Posted by Libby K

What would you have used it for? I agree that '20 minute dance party' might be better spent, but in the spur of the moment, what would your suggested filler be? I can't think of any quick-fix for taking up that amount of time.

If an event is running 20+ minutes ahead of schedule (which, GO WESTTOWN CREW! That's impressive), a lot of the 'little things' on the backstage end of the event get jumbled up. Teams aren't ready for their matches, and if the event is that far ahead of schedule it means the breaks between matches are even shorter due to compressed cycle times. Volunteer rotations can be confusing, and food service/venue staff's schedules get mangled.

On-time is good, 5m ahead is nice, any more than that starts to be as hectic for the event logistics as being behind.
...
You guys have a lot to be proud of this season, and I hope that doesn't take away from the win.

Thanks for explaining why events running ahead of schedule need to get put back on schedule; I was wondering why they did that dance party.

And thanks, I'm certainly still proud of the win and how we're doing this season. I'm looking forward to competing with you guys at MAR Champs.

[Brian Sherman]

Originally Posted by MisterJ

Speaking of "timing" at Westtown... On Saturday, the crowd was asked for their patience while the event turned into a big "dance party" for twenty minutes. No explanation given except that the event was "too far ahead of schedule." (I think I heard a collective groan from all the mentors and volunteers that had been working until 10:00 the night before and knew they had to wake up at 6:00 the next morning.)

There has to be a better way to use this extra time, right?

As the field supervisor, this did not happen. We never stopped for a dance break. There were only small delays to allow for teams to properly connect their robots to the field and only one stopped match. The only delay I can think you are referring to was when a Cheval de Frise broke in consecutive matches and we had to take about 5 minutes to repair the first one as it was the audience selected defense. We started and ended on time Saturday.

[OZ_341]

Originally Posted by AWoL

..........I did get a lot of negative opinions from people who thought that was unfair, cheap, or just dumb

You deserved every bit of that victory. 225 is an awesome team and your partners were also amazing. The rules are the rules and we all get the same manual in January.