Split Champs assignment

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by dag0620

Well one thing I did note, was that outside of Canada, all of the international countries with FRC Regional events got assigned to Houston. I find that an interesting im balance.

Thoughts?

Europe is assigned St.louis/Detroit

[Madison]

A nascent thought that popped in my head after seeing this announcement --

It seems that most teams from outside North America will be competing in Houston (e.g., Israel, Turkey, mainland China, Australia).

Will teams competing at that event have a more difficult time effectively scouting and understanding the competition and level of play of the teams that can expect to see given the geographic and lingual barriers than will teams competing at the other CMP event?

Teams from Europe seem to be both fewer in number and more likely to speak English, I'd guess.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Hot_Copper_Frog

As much as I love my fellow Michiganders...the Detroit championship is going to feel a whole lot like MSC.

I'm going to lobby hard for the frogs to travel to Hawaii for some fresh faces starting in 2018.

359 is always telling me Hawaii wants mainland teams to come and play.

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

I've already gone on record that I support* the move to bring more teams to champs, even if it means a championsplit. As much as we all love to see the best meet the best here, most students in FRC don't get anywhere near to the best teams from far away, so they won't care as much as we do. So shed a tear for the friends we'll miss, then welcome all of the new entrants!

That said, I am intrigued by the last paragraph of the announcement. It would be cool to have the culminating event be a televised, professionally produced TV series. You could have the Einstein finals be a best-of-7 series, with a few hours between each match to make repairs, changes, and work on strategy and be interviewed. It would be boring to watch live, but that wouldn't be the intent. Instead, the 8 hour day would be condensed into one or more 1/2 hour episodes for a mass audience, the same way they do for Battle Bots. The format works - lots more people around here know about Battle Bots than FRC, even though FRC is a vastly bigger program. Maybe FIRST could entice the same producers...

*Maybe a better way to put it is that I don't oppose the split. If there were a sane way to have 800 teams in one venue, and make things cheaper, I'd probably support that instead.

A TV special or mini series would be a great way to make it loud.

A start would be a battle of champions with a best of 7 or at least a best of 5 so they can fill an hour.

Ultimately though a series that covered all the finals of both CMPs and then culminated in that best of 7 or 5 would be better. The one problem I see with that is that the results of the two CMPS would have to be known well in advance of the Ultimate CMP, so that could dampen the interest of the public.

Another option would be to bring say all 4 teams that made it to the semi-finals from both events and have them play a new round of finals. You could have a hope of containing the results of a event that happens in a TV studio environment. Better suspense equals better ratings equals more people exposed to and learning about FIRST.

[GuyM142]

Originally Posted by Madison

A nascent thought that popped in my head after seeing this announcement --

It seems that most teams from outside North America will be competing in Houston (e.g., Israel, Turkey, mainland China, Australia).

Will teams competing at that event have a more difficult time effectively scouting and understanding the competition and level of play of the teams that can expect to see given the geographic and lingual barriers than will teams competing at the other CMP event?

Teams from Europe seem to be both fewer in number and more likely to speak English, I'd guess.

That's true about the scouting, this year we had to do our scouting at the hotel lobby and it wasn't optimal.
But the difference depends on if the divisions are going to be published for both Champs at the same time or will St.Louis/Detroit get their divisions later.

I think that because of the lack of regional competitions in Europe the chance to see a European team in champs is lower. To compare, Israel and Australia for example will definitely send at least 6 teams each.

Is there any statistical data about the international teams in each of the champs?

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by Jaci

<unpopular opinion>

2 Champs is great for teams competing internationally.

As an Australian Team, going to Houston instead of St Louis is going to make it multitudes easier for us to attend champs. Since we have a layover in Dallas Fort-Worth, it's going to take us less flight time to get to champs, and because of this cost-per-student is going to go down by multiple thousands of dollars.

I hate to say it but a lot of the opinions in this thread complaining about 2 Champs are only really from the POV of a team managed and run in the US, and to see the international teams from Australia, Israel, Brazil, China, Taiwan and more neglected in the conversation is kind of disheartening.

I know the split presents some issues with "fairness" of each Championship, but I won't get into the politics of that nor reveal my position on the matter. I'm simply here to put in my own point to show that the split is actually helpful in some way, especially to teams internationally who often find it hard to gather the money and support to make it to championships.

</unpopular opinion>

I appreciate your insight here, however this mostly stems from St. Louis not being a large US hub. Even for teams in the US, coming from the west coast usually involves a layover through Las Vegas, Houston or even Atlanta. There are many ways FIRST could have improved the travel situation for international AND domestic teams without splitting championship. Atlanta was far cheaper/easier for west coast teams than St. Louis was, and Houston should be an improvement as well.

[Jaci]

Originally Posted by dag0620

Well one thing I did note, was that outside of Canada, all of the international countries with FRC Regional events got assigned to Houston. I find that an interesting im balance.

Thoughts?

In terms of travel time and distance, this seems great (after a preliminary look at how flights transfer, since DFW and LAX are the most common entrypoints to the US, at least from Oceania).

If you're talking in terms of performance-balance, sure, there will be a bias between the championships just because of the way the stats work out. But, from what I've seen after talking to many international teams and even observed from my own teams, merely going to championships is an experience that is unparalleled. This year, 0 out of the 6 Australian teams attending champs made it to their division's playoffs, but we still ended up leaving the competition happy and inspired. Seeing the looks on these kids faces showed me that it's not ALL about the competition, and maybe this whole "getting more kids to champs" is a good idea.

Now's a good time to reiterate that this is my opinion, and may not reflect that of my teams or FIRST internationally. Again, the opinion I'm presenting is purely focused on travel logistics and not the performance split between the 2 Champs.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by dag0620

Well one thing I did note, was that outside of Canada, all of the international countries with FRC Regional events got assigned to Houston. I find that an interesting im balance.

Thoughts?

North 1/2 CMP is the more impacted 1/2 CMP event. Madison posted last year that almost 1/2 of the entire FRC community is within driving distance of Detroit.

It makes sense that countries with a strong FRC presence are sent to South 1/2 CMP. There just isn't room at North 1/2 CMP. Europe, etc, are left at North 1/2 CMP just to give the event some international flair, with little substance. I would expect maybe 3 teams from outside the US/Canada at the 400 Team North 1/2 CMP. FIRST is trying to have their cake, cut it in half, and eat it too.

South 1/2 CMP will be much more well represented on an international level, percentage wise.

-Mike

[NoahTappen]

Any estimate on the amount of Michigan teams predicted to attend a Championship in 2017? I feel there will most likely be more Michigan teams at a Championship than teams at MSC, If so what is the point of having MSC as a step before the championship?

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

While maybe balanced at the top, I expect Houston to have a much weaker field that STL/Detroit. North 1/2 CMP has 5 (6?) strong districts, while South 1/2 CMP gets PNW and GA, as well as many regional qualifying teams. Additionally, I expect Houston to welcome more teams off of the waitlist than North 1/2 CMP will.

That, coupled with a later weekend, means North 1/2 CMP will likely be more competitive and harder to get in to.

Bummer

-Mike

Yay....us non-district teams in the St. Louis Championship get hosed again....

Here's some interesting numbers...*
For the St. Louis Championship:
Total Number of District CMP Slots: 166
Total Number of Regional CMP Slots: 115
Total Allocated CMP Slots (District + Regional): 281
Total Number of Waitlist Spots: 119

For the Houston Championship:
Total Number of District CMP Slots: 52
Total Number of Regional CMP Slots: 150
Total Allocated CMP Slots (District + Regional): 202
Total Waitlist Spots: 198

* - Regional numbers were computed by lumping the host city of a regional. I know it's not exact since regionals hosted in states on the border of the CMP demarcation line will generally host teams from the other CMP region.

[sdangelo]

Originally Posted by Nathan Streeter

It would be interesting to see which CMP would have more teams from the 2016 CMP elims...

Spoiler for Code:

import json
import urllib2

BASE_URL = 'http://www.thebluealliance.com/api/v2/'
APP_HEADER = 'X-TBA-App-Id'
APP_ID = 'sdangelo:splitchamps:v0.1'

event_codes = ['arc', 'cars', 'carv', 'cur', 'gal', 'hop', 'new', 'tes']

def fetch_endpoint(endpoint):
    #Checks Blue Alliance for data
    full_url = BASE_URL + endpoint
    url = urllib2.Request(full_url, headers={APP_HEADER: APP_ID, 'User-agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'})
    response = urllib2.urlopen(url)
    return json.loads(response.read())

def get_teams(event_key):
    #builds list of all teams
    teams = []
    event = fetch_endpoint("event/2016"+ str(event_key))
    for alliance in event["alliances"]:
        for team in alliance["picks"]:
            teams.append(str(team))
    return teams

def get_locations(teams_list):
    stl = []
    hous = []
    allTeams = []
    for team in teams_list:
        data = fetch_endpoint("team/" + team)
        if data["country_name"] == "USA":
            s = data["region"]
            if s == "Maine" or s == "Vermont" or s == "New Hampshire" or s == "Massachusetts" or\
               s == "Connecticut" or s == "Rhode Island" or s == "New York" or s == "Pennsylvania"\
               or s == "New Jersey" or s == "Delaware" or s == "Maryland" or s == "District of Columbia"\
               or s == "Virginia" or s == "West Virginia" or s == "Kentucky" or s == "Ohio" or\
               s == "Michigan" or s == "Indiana" or s == "Illinois" or s == "Wisconsin" or\
               s == "Minnesota" or s == "Iowa" or s == "Missouri" or s == "Kansas" or\
               s == "Nebraska" or s == "South Dakota" or s == "North Dakota":
                stl.append(data["team_number"])
            else:
                hous.append(data["team_number"])
        elif data["country_name"] == "Canada":
            p = data["region"]
            if p == "Ontario" or p == "Quebec" or p == "Newfoundland and Laborador"\
               or p == "Manitoba" or p == "Nunavit":
                stl.append(data["team_number"])
            else:
                hous.append(data["team_number"])
        else:
            c = data["country_name"]
            if c == "Mexico" or c == "Haiti" or c == "Dominican Republic" or\
               c == "Ecuador" or c == "Columbia" or c == "Peru" or c == "Chile"\
               or c == "Brazil" or c == "South Africa" or c == "Israel" or\
               c == "Egypt" or c == "Jordan" or c == "Lebanon" or c == "Turkey"\
               or c == "Kuwait" or c == "United Arab Emirates" or c == "Singapore"\
               or c == "Malaysia" or c == "Australia" or c == "New Zealand" or\
               c == "Philippines" or c == "China":
                hous.append(data["team_number"])
            else:
                stl.append(data["team_number"])
    allTeams.append(stl)
    allTeams.append(hous)
    return allTeams

if __name__ == "__main__":
    stLouis = []
    houston = []
    for event in event_codes:
        teamsList = get_teams(event)
        locList = get_locations(teamsList)
        for team in locList[0]:
            stLouis.append(team)
        for team in locList[1]:
            houston.append(team)
    print "Number of elims teams in St. Louis: " + str(len(stLouis))
    print "Number of elims teams in Houston: " + str(len(houston)) + "\n"

    stLouis.sort()
    houston.sort()
    print "St. Louis teams:"
    print stLouis
    print "Houston teams:"
    print houston

Results:
Number of elims teams in St. Louis: 174
Number of elims teams in Houston: 82

Spoiler for St. Louis Teams:

11, 20, 25, 27, 33, 41, 45, 48, 67, 68, 70, 74, 85, 107, 111, 120, 125, 133, 135, 166, 172, 175, 176, 177, 188, 193, 195, 217, 225, 228, 229, 230, 236, 245, 287, 303, 319, 329, 333, 341, 346, 365, 379, 494, 503, 525, 548, 558, 610, 623, 639, 694, 708, 836, 858, 868, 869, 870, 876, 910, 999, 1023, 1024, 1058, 1086, 1089, 1114, 1124, 1153, 1241, 1250, 1257, 1305, 1306, 1310, 1405, 1418, 1501, 1511, 1519, 1625, 1640, 1675, 1676, 1712, 1718, 1730, 1731, 1732, 1736, 1747, 1756, 1768, 1775, 1796, 1806, 1885, 1918, 1923, 1986, 2013, 2052, 2054, 2056, 2064, 2067, 2137, 2168, 2194, 2337, 2338, 2363, 2451, 2474, 2481, 2502, 2590, 2614, 2648, 2767, 2771, 2823, 2834, 2883, 2987, 3015, 3042, 3044, 3098, 3130, 3314, 3352, 3357, 3419, 3452, 3534, 3538, 3539, 3546, 3604, 3618, 3620, 3641, 3683, 3688, 4001, 4003, 4009, 4028, 4039, 4085, 4103, 4329, 4362, 4391, 4525, 4536, 4564, 4607, 4678, 4920, 4967, 5050, 5114, 5150, 5172, 5254, 5401, 5406, 5448, 5460, 5813, 5895, 6175

Spoiler for Houston Teams:

16, 57, 118, 148, 179, 180, 207, 231, 233, 254, 294, 330, 359, 360, 364, 842, 971, 973, 987, 1011, 1065, 1197, 1261, 1296, 1318, 1323, 1369, 1425, 1477, 1538, 1540, 1619, 1662, 1671, 1678, 1690, 1746, 1983, 2046, 2122, 2383, 2415, 2468, 2471, 2557, 2637, 2642, 2848, 2907, 2990, 3005, 3166, 3211, 3238, 3309, 3310, 3339, 3360, 3476, 3478, 3481, 3663, 3824, 3937, 3990, 4061, 4264, 4334, 4451, 4468, 4469, 4488, 4587, 4740, 4828, 4911, 5572, 5803, 5842, 5854, 5924, 5940

If anyone sees any teams in the wrong list or code errors, let me know and I'll try to fix it. Québec may not be working correctly as my Python editor couldn't handle the 'é'.

[ATannahill]

Originally Posted by NoahTappen

Any estimate on the amount of Michigan teams predicted to attend a Championship in 2017? I feel there will most likely be more Michigan teams at a Championship than teams at MSC, If so what is the point of having MSC as a step before the championship?

...

Originally Posted by rtfgnow

Michigan gets a percent of the spots at the championship equivalent to the percent of FRC teams that Michigan has, rounded up to the next whole spot, at whatever time the district allotment size is calculated.

Michigan received 76 slots this year, which is 12.67% of the 600 spots. If they get the same percentage next year, that is 101.33 spots of the anticipated 800, since we do not know exactly where between 75.01 and 76.00 Michigan fell, this means that it will be 101 or 102 spots if Michigan keeps the same percent of the number of FRC teams. How these 100+ spots are divided between the two championships (each of which are anticipated to have 400 spots) is, as of yet, unknown.

As I understand it, at least one reason that MSC became larger was so that not all teams at MSC would qualify for the Championship. It is possible the folks at FIM will grow MSC again, but currently that is speculative.

[Michael Hill]

Actually, I forgot about that...increasing from 600 to 800 teams....is this really right?

New Numbers
St Louis:

District Slots: 220
Regional Slots: 115
Total Allocated: 335
Total Waitlist: 65

Houston:

District Slots: 69
Regional Slots: 150
Total Allocated: 219
Total Waitlist: 181

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

Actually, I forgot about that...increasing from 600 to 800 teams....is this really right?

New Numbers
St Louis:

District Slots: 220
Regional Slots: 115
Total Allocated: 335
Total Waitlist: 65

Houston:

District Slots: 69
Regional Slots: 150
Total Allocated: 219
Total Waitlist: 181

This looks about right?

Can you break down district allocation? I imagine almost 100 of the slots at St. Louis are going to Michigan. Essentially everyone who qualifies for their DCMP!

-Mike

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Michael Corsetto

This looks about right?

Can you break down district allocation? I imagine almost 100 of the slots at St. Louis are going to Michigan. Essentially everyone who qualifies for their DCMP!

-Mike

St. Louis
Chesapeake: 33
Indiana: 12
Michigan: 101
Mid-Atlantic: 29
New England: 45
Total: 220

Houston:
North Carolina: 13
Pacific Northwest: 40
Peachtree: 16
Total: 69

So yes, pretty much everyone in Michigan DCMP is going.