Are 8 play regional reasonable?

[Christopher149]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

How can a regional determine the number of matches they'll play when they don't know the game or the time required for field reset? As an example, North Star has 8 matches this year, 10 in 2015 and 2014, 8 in 2013, 9 in 2012 and 2011... It's all highly dependent on the game and what has to happen between the matches.

Well, district events (at least MI) play 12 matches regardless of turnaround time or field faults.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

How can a regional determine the number of matches they'll play when they don't know the game or the time required for field reset? As an example, North Star has 8 matches this year, 10 in 2015 and 2014, 8 in 2013, 9 in 2012 and 2011... It's all highly dependent on the game and what has to happen between the matches.

Simple solution.
Run the event until you play required number of matches per event i.e. Friday and/or Saturday.
And before anyone mentions about volunteer limitations and scheduling, then I say follow the suggestions above and adjust price accordingly.

This can become a very sensitive subject whenever price is involved, especially when other programs pay less AND play less vs. others.
We played a sanctioned regional last year in a high school gym for $5000.00 with no practice field in the building.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

How can a regional determine the number of matches they'll play when they don't know the game or the time required for field reset? As an example, North Star has 8 matches this year, 10 in 2015 and 2014, 8 in 2013, 9 in 2012 and 2011... It's all highly dependent on the game and what has to happen between the matches.

So far districts haven't had an issue sticking to the schedules they need to follow to give teams their 12 qualification matches.

Recruit more volunteers?

[Jon Stratis]

Throwing more people at it is not a solution, asking everyone present to put in more hours also isn't a really viable solution either - to go from 8 to 12 qualification matches would require an additional 5.5 hours of matches (given the public schedule for North Star, which has 11 hours for quals listed, if I counted right). You can't just squeeze that in to what already amounts to 12+ hour days for the volunteers, and there's no way adding additional people could save you that much time.

[EricH]

Jon is right. The biggest difference between an 8-play event like MN and L.A. run and a 12-play event in the district systems is NOT number of people.

Well... it is. Just not the people you were asking about.

How is it that Los Angeles runs a 8-play event, San Diego runs something like 8-9 plays, but Ventura and O.C. run 12-play events with the same teams in the area and similar staffs? Simple, really. L.A. and S.D. are 66 and 56 teams, respectively (or give-or-take that many), while the other two are 40-42 team events. 10-20 fewer teams results in more plays per team in the same time.

So, the best way to get more plays is to convince all the other teams in your area to NOT go to your event, because then you get more plays. The problem then becomes that they've got no events to go to, so they try to convince you to do the same thing... Or you could just push for more small events (or just plain more events, period, which would probably be better in the long haul).

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by EricH

Or you could just push for more small events (or just plain more events, period, which would probably be better in the long haul).

Sounds a lot like districts.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Knufire

Sounds a lot like districts.

Yeah, no disrespect to the people of FIRST California, but I wonder if they could point out the differences between the Orange County Regional and literally almost any random district event. There is one obvious difference (price tag) that can't be used as an answer.

Outside of the price tag... not a bad thing either

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Yeah, no disrespect to the people of FIRST California, but I wonder if they could point out the differences between the Orange County Regional and literally almost any random district event. There is one obvious difference (price tag) that can't be used as an answer.

Outside of the price tag... not a bad thing either

4 of 7 California events are essentially districts.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

How can a regional determine the number of matches they'll play when they don't know the game or the time required for field reset? As an example, North Star has 8 matches this year, 10 in 2015 and 2014, 8 in 2013, 9 in 2012 and 2011... It's all highly dependent on the game and what has to happen between the matches.

Then only commit to 8. At least teams know what they are getting when they come to your event. But if UMD can run 12 matches for 40 teams in a single day I don't have a ton of understanding why your guys can't run more than 8 matches. Work volunteers in shifts to lighten the load.

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

How can a regional determine the number of matches they'll play when they don't know the game or the time required for field reset? As an example, North Star has 8 matches this year, 10 in 2015 and 2014, 8 in 2013, 9 in 2012 and 2011... It's all highly dependent on the game and what has to happen between the matches.

While the organizers may not know the game, FIRST does tell the people running the events the expected cycle time for a given year.

[LFrisk]

Originally Posted by Christopher149

Well, district events (at least MI) play 12 matches regardless of turnaround time or field faults.

Fairly certain that's because there are less teams in district events.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

But if UMD can run 12 matches for 40 teams in a single day I don't have a ton of understanding why your guys can't run more than 8 matches. Work volunteers in shifts to lighten the load.

Andrew, the part you're not getting is that this is a 60-team event, PER EVENT, for 120 teams total (on two fields). And if it wasn't that many, there'd be a bunch of annoyed MN teams.

Understand this: the key part to getting more matches is smaller events. I'd suspect that some folks might consider a 50-team event optimal (10 matches/team, and time to fix issues), but 40 gives more plays. If you want more matches, the easy way to do that is to go to a smaller regional, or a district system.

[Lil' Lavery]

If you really want to increase the number of matches teams play, the solution isn't districts or cycle times or longer hours. The solution it to put more teams on the field at once.

In the 2v2 alliance era, 6-8 play regionals were the standard. Yes, your $5000 could buy you as few as 6 matches. When 3v3 was introduced in 2005, we instantly saw plays per event increase.

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Then only commit to 8. At least teams know what they are getting when they come to your event. But if UMD can run 12 matches for 40 teams in a single day I don't have a ton of understanding why your guys can't run more than 8 matches. Work volunteers in shifts to lighten the load.

Multiply 40 teams times 12 matches, then multiply 60 teams by 8 matches.

Understand now?

[plnyyanks]

When we generate qual schedules, there are three input parameters to the "algorithm": number of teams, matches per team, and cycle time. Additionally, the event needs to fit within the public agenda posted.

As an example, the Regional Planning Guide, section 2 suggests the following agenda (districts are different, but they get 12 matches/team anyway):

The guide suggests 9:30 - 4:30 (less 1 hours for lunch) and 9:30 - 12:00 over two days. That's a total of 9 hours for qual matches. If we use 6 minute cycle times (which is about as fast as it will ever be, this year the goal was 7 minutes), that's 10 matches per hour, for 90 matches (540 plays) total.

So for an event with 40 teams, you can do floor(540/40) = 13 matches per team. A 65 team event can do floor(540/65) = 8 matches per team.

So if you want to increase matches per team, you'll have to do one of the following:

• Reduce the number of teams attending each event
• Reduce the match cycle time
• Increase the time spent playing matches