Westtown MAR District Won on Eliminations Tiebreaker Rules

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

No major sport has tiebreakers to determine the winner of a game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Away_goals_rule

[Lil' Lavery]

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

[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

[ScandallB225]

Originally Posted by OZ_341

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.

I thought about this Sunday knight and thought that the best way to have handled this situation (from a GDC standpoint) would have been for the rule 5.4.4 award 1 technical point to the alliance that met the tie breaking criteria. This would take away the controversy of a tie.

Thank you to Sabotage 1640 (oh Lordy) and the Mighty Moose 1391.
And thank you to all who have said such nice things about 225.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ScandallB225

I thought about this Sunday knight and thought that the best way to have handled this situation (from a GDC standpoint) would have been for the rule 5.4.4 award 1 technical point to the alliance that met the tie breaking criteria. This would take away the controversy of a tie.

They used to do that.

[dubiousSwain]

Originally Posted by MisterJ

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

What would you suggest?

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by AWoL

...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?

I hope that for every negative comment you heard, you received at least a dozen positive comments and praises. Your alliance was incredible to play against and you deserve every bit of that win - those matches were won fair and square, by the book. Nobody deserves to feel even remotely slighted for a fair and well-earned victory. Congratulations to 225, 1640, and 1391 - see you at MAR champs!

I'm okay with tiebreakers. They exist for a good reason, and prevent the event from potentially dragging on forever. Remember, when the rules are written, the GDC has no idea how close match scores will be, has no way of knowing how prevalent ties will be, and has no control over when ties will occur. They can make some educated guesses (in a game with so many different ways to score and several differing point values, I would predict a low occurrance rate for STRONGHOLD), but there has to be some provision. If a lot of replays occur in eliminations, the affected teams may also begin having match turnaround issues with battery cycling/availability, motors overheating, wear and tear, etc.

The win of the event was fair, but it sure was anticlimactic. My favorite part of every event (even when spectating) is when the final score is displayed: seeing the reactions of the winning alliance - the jumping, screaming, hugging, crying, overwhelmed reactions of teams who are celebrating taking home that blue banner, and feeling the outburst of energy from the crowd who just watched a slew of intense matches. It's a pretty standard reaction between all events, usually goes on for several minutes and the two groups just feed off each other until everyone is tired of clapping and screaming. I love it. At Westtown, we didn't get that - the winning alliance was celebrating, but the better part of the audience was stunned silent because surprisingly few people read the tournament section of the rulebook and understand that a tie match can win an event (I admittedly skipped that part of the rules too). It was an awkward, nonstandard feeling for the end of an event, and, in my opinion, no event should end that way. It also clearly does have some negative impact on the teams that just fairly won an event, as seen here. Again, no one should feel slighted for a fair win.

Imagine if this happened on Einstein - confetti is flying, teams are celebrating their win, the crowd is going crazy because the alliance they've been cheering for has just won, and someone has to try and calm down the crowd enough to explain the tiebreaker system to a crowd that also contains parents, sponsors, etc who were expecting a clear victory and will largely not understand what's going on. And because of the scale of the event, I think there would be even more "cheap win" reactions expressed. Kind of kills the mood.

Again, I understand why tiebreakers are there. But, I'd be in favor of them either not being in place or being slightly modified for finals. Maybe replay the first tie, and any ties thereafter would be determined by tiebreakers (giving a maxumum of 4 finals matches). This would give the MC/GA time in the field timeout after that first match to explain the tiebreaker rules to the crowd so they would know what the course of action is if another tie happens.

[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.

[AGPapa]

In light of recent events, I'd thought I'd give this thread a bump.

Originally Posted by Jared Russell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Away_goals_rule

Ah, I forgot about the away rules goals rule! I guess that most of the soccer I watch is the EPL or the World Cup (with some MLS, but they just added the rule recently), so I didn't remember it.

[AWoL]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

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.

Originally Posted by Karibou

Imagine if this happened on Einstein - confetti is flying, teams are celebrating their win, the crowd is going crazy because the alliance they've been cheering for has just won, and someone has to try and calm down the crowd enough to explain the tiebreaker system to a crowd that also contains parents, sponsors, etc who were expecting a clear victory and will largely not understand what's going on. And because of the scale of the event, I think there would be even more "cheap win" reactions expressed. Kind of kills the mood.

Well.

So was it ever actually explained to the audience? I quickly realized that the win was decided on foul points, but I was waiting for an announcement to be made to the audience and I don't remember there ever being one. Then again, the audio was so bad where I was sitting that there easily could have been one without me hearing.

[EricH]

I think there was an explanation, as I recall--but at that point, I'd already figured out what was going on.

As in, I'd seen the tied score on the screen, seen that both alliances had one scale and a Capture, and I'd seen the flag fly for pinning. I knew that if the score held, 330's alliance would win.


It might make more sense if they applied the rule to give one point to whoever had the tiebreaker.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by Karibou

Imagine if this happened on Einstein <snip>

Whoops. Guess I spoke too soon. I hope that this makes FIRST reconsider how tiebreakers work in eliminations for next season - they shouldn't be deciding events like this. Tiebreakers are okay sometimes (low-scoring games like breakaway might need them), but when they're not well-understood by more than 3/4 the audience and participants, that's when they become not okay.

I heard the explanation loud and clear over the webcast, but I haven't heard much on how it went over in the dome.

Originally Posted by EricH

It might make more sense if they applied the rule to give one point to whoever had the tiebreaker.

That, or otherwise designated on the screen what the tiebreaker was. Highlighting the tiebreaking aspect of the score, or putting text on the bottom of the screen saying "TIEBREAKER: FOULS" (etc) would also help tremendously.

Also, just in case I can actually predict the future with my posts, calling it now, 2056 is going to win Einstein next year (or whatever the #2Champz equivalent is), and wouldn't it be great if they were paired with 341...