Westtown MAR District Won on Eliminations Tiebreaker Rules

[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.

[TomWx]

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?

So, I think I'm uniquely qualified to answer this. As the event MC, or an Event Manager for FIRST Mid-Atlantic, or the Senior Volunteer Coordinator for FIRST Mid-Atlantic, or a team mentor. Take your pic.

As Libby said, the goal is to keep the event on time. Not early, because that can negatively impact a team who needs every second to repair a piece of their robot (which is their right with the posted schedule). So we had the first dance break on Saturday afternoon, which brought us from nine minutes ahead of schedule to six minutes ahead of schedule. Which is why I made the reference to it during Sunday's Opening Ceremonies.

Coincidentally as we went to take more time, there were issues with the field. Brian Sherman, being one of our many world-class volunteers, led his field crew to repair the problem while we had another dance break. We were still able to pick up time on Saturday after those breaks, ending matches about 6 minutes ahead of their scheduled time that evening.

Our goal is to make sure that the students have fun at events, first and foremost. Most students, that's playing with the robots. Which is awesome, and the point. For some students, they want to get up and dance. It's hard to have people sitting or doing the same task for a repeated period of time, so I would like to think that the momentary break in action to do something fun was generally welcomed by all. (I do believe I heard more cheering than groaning when the dance songs came on.)

If you have any other thoughts or suggestions on how to make the experience better for students going forward, I'm happy to hear them. Feel free to send me an email, twexler at midatlanticrobotics.org.

Congrats to all the students and teams who attended the Westtown District. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting every team, and loved seeing all the robots perform on the field.

-Tom

[MisterJ]

Originally Posted by TomWx

So, I think I'm uniquely qualified to answer this. As the event MC, or an Event Manager for FIRST Mid-Atlantic, or the Senior Volunteer Coordinator for FIRST Mid-Atlantic, or a team mentor. Take your pic.

If you have any other thoughts or suggestions on how to make the experience better for students going forward, I'm happy to hear them. Feel free to send me an email, twexler at midatlanticrobotics.org.

-Tom

Overall, I thought the event ran amazingly smoothly. The sound system, the times between matches, very limited robot-field communication issues, etc., which put the competition ahead of schedule. Libby's comments about food service and volunteer rotations were two things I didn't think of. I was just thinking of the students, mentors, volunteers, etc. who were going to be putting in so many hours and could have enjoyed those extra 15 minutes. (Then again, 'Nova-Oklahoma didn't turn out to be much of a "game," anyway. No tiebreaker needed there.)

Really the only problem would be if an event "killed time" to try to get back on schedule, and then had a major issue that cost a lot of time... that would be frustrating.

Good job to the field staff, volunteers, etc. for getting us to that ahead-of-schedule point.

I guess I'm just anti-dancing.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Cue debate regarding whether or not soccer counts as a "major sport."

And anti-soccer.

Originally Posted by AWoL

We, along with our awesome alliance partners 1640 and 1391 (both event hosts ), won the Westtown MAR District yesterday...

And pro-225. Great win! Also the 1640 catapult is super-cool.

Originally Posted by dubiousSwain

What would you suggest?

Not a clue... but I hope that lots more competitions run ahead of schedule so we have to discuss it. Maybe watching some of the Chairman's videos?

[Foster]

I posted in the district section on Saturday, getting over here today.

I can see the reason for tie breakers. This year is a super (external) fan friendly game, but to have the final final match go to a tie breaker was super confusing to the fans.

So my recommendation would be to change the scoring display to just say "Tie Breaker points = 1" in the totals and then present the score as 146 - 145. Yay they won by one point, massive cheering, flags waving, happy knights and princesses. The scoring system presently knows, so just get it to add a point.

But with this game being hard to tie (kisses to TBA for having that data easy to prove), I think the finals should not use the tiebreakers.

Hey, I bleed Yellow and Blue for Sab-BOT-age (*) and jumped up and down on their win. But it's easier on the fans to see a direct result and not need to wait for the announcer to tell them.

Being able to see the score and do Winner! is good thing.

And just a side note: Reaching down into the basement to pull Metal Moose into your alliance was a baffle moment. Seeing them hang was an Aha! moment. Scouting at it's finest, I'm going to guess this will appear in Karthiks 2016 presentation on "Why pick the #33 ranked team to your alliance.

(*)Yes, mixing it makes green, no I'm not Vulcan.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Foster

And just a side note: Reaching down into the basement to pull Metal Moose into your alliance was a baffle moment. Seeing them hang was an Aha! moment. Scouting at it's finest, I'm going to guess this will appear in Karthiks 2016 presentation on "Why pick the #33 ranked team to your alliance.

The 31st, 32nd, and 36th ranked (out of 37) teams were also selected. The 31st ranked team was even a first round selection (6th) and reached the finals.

[Ben Martin]

Originally Posted by Foster

And just a side note: Reaching down into the basement to pull Metal Moose into your alliance was a baffle moment. Seeing them hang was an Aha! moment. Scouting at it's finest, I'm going to guess this will appear in Karthiks 2016 presentation on "Why pick the #33 ranked team to your alliance.

This was pretty easy--we'd watched them seed really high at two prior district events with great driving and low goal scoring, but they suffered from missing high goal shots and a few matches with coms loss during qualifications at Westtown. Change back to what you know works --> get the known results (ala 1671 being picked last year onto the 1678 & 118 alliance).

Believed it or not, the scaler was a non-factor during the discussions -- but it sure saved us during the finals.