(Seemingly) Irrational alliance selection decisions?

[Brian Maher]

I was looking at alliance selection results from this season and reflected on how things played out at a few events. I noticed that there are quite a few selection decisions that I couldn't figure out the reasoning behind. I understand that teams don't always make the best decision. With a problem anywhere near as challenging as alliance selection, that's to be expected. However, occasionally teams just make strange picks. I'm sure you've all seen such selections.

In a similar vein, I've seen quite a few teams who've been declined and then advanced further than the team who declined them, especially in scorched-earth scenarios (i.e. high alliance captain picks other alliance captains who decline in order to keep them from partnering up). In those cases, it often seems like the declining team would have been better off accepting.

My questions for everyone:

• Why do teams behave (seemingly, to an outsider) irrationally during alliance selection?
• Has anyone noticed any patterns or common fallacies*?
• How frequently do teams make the "right pick" or something close to it? Is there a way to quantify/measure this?

*Aside from a lack of scouting data. I know from first-hand experience that it can cause problems for an alliance captain.

[Jay O'Donnell]

I'll address your second point first. I've seen teams decline for many different reasons. Some teams want the experience of being an alliance captain, some teams want to feel like they're being "strategic" and they overthink what they should do, and I've even seen a team decline what should have been an obvious accept because their representitive saw the 1 seed's last match where they tried high goal shooting for the first time. Most teams decline seeing who's left at that moment, not who will be left to pick when it gets to them.

As for why teams make bad selections, the usual suspect I've found is teams not having scouting or having misleading data. I've seen teams pick based on the fact that a team was consistently average through an event, and not pick teams who started off poor but got better throughout the event.

There's also the simple fact that many teams don't base their picks off of watching matches. I know many teams who pick based off of who they worked well with in a Quals match, or someone who they are friends with. It's also not uncommon for teams who don't know any better to pick the next team down in the rankings, despite them not actually being that good (trust me, I've been the not very good bot picked for that reason before).

Overall scouting is difficult for most teams to pull off effectively due to a lack of students, or just a lack of care by anyone to take data and use it effectively. The best teams have students who genuinely enjoy scouting and the alliance selection process. Personally being a picking team in alliance selections is my favorite part of a robotics competition.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by BMSOTM

In a similar vein, I've seen quite a few teams who've been declined and then advanced further than the team who declined them, especially in scorched-earth scenarios (i.e. high alliance captain picks other alliance captains who decline in order to keep them from partnering up). In those cases, it often seems like the declining team would have been better off accepting.

This is always an interesting scenario especially for the team declining. Sometimes I have heard from teams who declined that they felt the field wasn't deep enough for a strong third pick and therefore wanted to be a lower captain to hopefully secure a better third pick than what would be available for the higher alliance.

For every decline that we see on the field there are times when teams get together with the intent to discuss a possible alliance, but the discussion ends with the conclusion that they won't be better off pairing together. Sometimes teams decide to pick lower than what is expected so as to save the other team from having to decline and make things awkward for everyone else (and save some time).

[Zac]

As Jay pointed out, scouting is tough, plain and simple.

A few additional things that I have noticed which play into your three questions...

While teams may have scouting data, even good scouting data, they don't always analyze it well. What I have seen time and time again is that 3 good robots don't always equal a good alliance. Many of these games require the alliance to divide and conquer. For instance this past year, having 3 robots that all score 10 boulders in the high goal consistently then climb looks like a great alliance on paper. But if they all require using the low bar to cycle, and then need the center spot to climb... well thats just a traffic jam. A good alliance needs to be 3 robots that can work well TOGETHER, and bring out the best in one another. I have seen on many occasions an alliance of 3 good/ok robots work together very well and take down seemingly unbeatable alliances made up of awesome teams that just trip over each other the entire match.

One of my favorite alliances to be on from this past year was at the Boston regional. 1768 was with the alliance captain 1058, as well as 5563 (they actually came in as a backup robot early in the eliminations, and were an absolute jackpot). I have never felt so comfortable on an alliance. 1058 did what the were doing best and made sure to get boulders in the low goal for the guaranteed tower strength, this simultaneously gave the rest of the alliance a huge sense of relief. All of a sudden there was so much less stress to score X number of boulders, 1058 has that covered. This meant less stress for the other drivers. 5563 was absolutely awesome, and knocked down the defenses while being simultaneously invisible most of the time, they were cautious in when they crossed as to not disrupt any shots that were being taken, and they always stayed close to the defenses to allow for easy driving around for the rest of the alliance. 5563 also allowed for 1058 and 1768 to climb on the outside positions of the tower, and would then drive up the batter at the last second to avoid bumping either robot during the critical "get the hooks on" phase. It was fantastic. Each robot on the alliance allowed the others to play to their strengths.

This is also important to notice while scouting. I saw several instances this past season where a robot would cross several defenses, and get the check marks on the scouting sheets, but in doing so that robot cut off an alliance member, then crashed into the other alliance member causing them to miss a shot. Performing well while causing your alliance partners to perform poorly isn't an easy thing to quantify on a scouting sheet, and often dent make its way into the notes section.

~Zac

[jijiglobe]

In my experience the bulk of "irrational" alliance selection decisions occur when teams don't really talk to their potential picks before alliance selections. I think one of the clearest examples I've seen of this was this year's New York City regional.

First of all, I believe that my team (694) was the strongest robot at the New York City regional, but we only managed to seed 8th given the fact that we spend almost two entire matches not moving. It's not irrational to not want to pick a team that had these kinds of issues, however, I was surprised by how few teams asked us what actually happened.

The second strongest robot at the regional almost definitely team 3419, who seeded third. Going into alliance selections, I personally think that the most rational picks for the first seed (team 375) would be first team 3419, knowing they would most likely reject, then to pick us, who would almost be forced to accept given our low seed.

The reason I think that this would be optimal is that that I predicted that team 375 would be either eliminated by us, or by team 3419 (I admit that some of this prediction was due to my own conceit).

The key is that all of this is only optimal given the fact that our dead matches were not for repeatable reasons, and even then, it's still very much arguable that this wouldn't be optimal, as we could have more issues in eliminations.

As it turns out, our two consecutive matches of non-action were due to

1. Forgetting to revert to competition code after pit testing
2. leaving our breaker switch loose

Both issues were fixed completely, and I think if team 375 had known this, they might have picked us. Instead, however, we were picked by the fourth alliance and went on to win the regional without a single loss in eliminations.

Disclaimer: I don't know that 375 didn't have this information, only that they didn't ask me for it, or ask anyone in the pit while I was there. In fact, we may have talked to members of their team about it, but it is sometimes difficult to find the right person to talk to when negotiating about alliance selections.

Basically, I think that a lot of teams fail to make "rational" decisions are acting perfectly rational based off of the information they had at the time.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by Zac

This is also important to notice while scouting. I saw several instances this past season where a robot would cross several defenses, and get the check marks on the scouting sheets, but in doing so that robot cut off an alliance member, then crashed into the other alliance member causing them to miss a shot. Performing well while causing your alliance partners to perform poorly isn't an easy thing to quantify on a scouting sheet, and often dent make its way into the notes section.

~Zac

This is something Brendan and I have talked about before, the difference between quantitative and qualitative scouting. Quantitative data is useful for comparing teams that are far apart in ability, or when you are looking for specific skill sets. However it's important for scouts to be able to watch matches and see how each team is doing beyond the numbers and how well they'll work with an alliance. I often combine what the scouts see in terms of smart driving with how the drive team feels with each team that they got to play with.

[Liu346]

After experiencing many different alliance drafts I have found why the picks are often strange and/or out of order. For many teams their picks are all precalculated and when it comes to actually selection a team the predicted scenarios do not always pan out. This is very difficult to change on the fly and most teams just go with who they were going to select anyways. Another crucial part of teams picking either deep of out of order is compatibility. This aspect might not be seen easily from the stands but when interacting with other teams it is everything. When these scenarios occur teams will pick strange picks in order to make there alliance strong as a team instead of three separate units. Yes, teams will make incorrect choices but being behind that mic is very intimidating and puts a lot of pressure on high school students. But in most cases I always assume there is a greater plan and that no alliance is to be taken easily.

[jajabinx124]

I agree with most of the responses to the OP's question.

Most of the irrational/illogical decisions I've seen come from a team that probably didn't scout as well or pick based on bias/experience working with the team.

Scouting and Strategy is a hard system to run for teams during competition and it's harder to manage than imagined. Many teams have different systems, organization, different amounts of manpower, resources, and etc. that probably affect how well their picking is.

I'm not sure if I've seen any declining based on this reason, but I declined the 2nd seeded alliance's invite (as 2052's alliance selection representative) at the 2015 10,000 lakes regional because I wanted our team to captain the alliance to get to the finals to guarantee ourselves a wildcard. I had a few other reasons to decline because I knew I had 1/2 better options to pick after declining them, but getting the wildcard was the pushing factor since the first wildcard is awarded starting with the opposing alliance captain to the wildcard team on the winning alliance.

At the 2015 10,000 lakes regional, the 2 best teams joined together to form the no.1 seed (525 and 2502) and since 525 had won the Northern Light's regional previously, they had a wildcard. Strategically I chose to decline the 2nd seeds invite because I felt like I could built an alliance strong enough and go to the finals to meet the 1st seed and guarantee my team a spot at champs via wildcard. (which at that point it was pretty evident the 1st seed with 525 and 2502 was the powerhouse alliance that had the best shot at winning the regional)

Reason I decided to mention this is because after I declined on stage I'm pretty sure half of the people in the stands (including most of my own team members) were pretty confused as to what the heck I as doing and probably thought I was being irrational.. but I do think this is more of a unique reason that a team chose to decline another team's invite.

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

I think it's really hard to define what the "best" picks are. Especially since the goals for every team that picks is pretty different. One team might pick overall solid robots and just try to get as far as they can in eliminations whereas others might pick robots that are flaky but have the potential to take down whoever the strongest alliance is. Both of these approaches can backfire with either not having enough firepower or having bad matches early and getting knocked out in the quarters. Especially in games like Stronghold too, it may not be wise to pick the best scoring robot if there isn't enough synergy between the robots. For example, having 3 offensive robots scoring in the center of the outerworks is not ideal and are likely to get in the way. Conversely, the coordination might be good enough that this isn't even a problem. Overall, I think it's hard to really judge how strong picks actually are until the matches are actually played.

[TheBoulderite]

Everyone thought it was irrational at Central Valley 2014 when 254 picked 973, two places away from last place in qualifications. It really depends on what strategy you think is best.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by TheBoulderite

Everyone thought it was irrational at Central Valley 2014 when 254 picked 973, two places away from last place in qualifications. It really depends on what strategy you think is best.

#SandBagFirstPick

Just glad we finally got to #SandBagFirstSeed this year for once...

[frcguy]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

#SandBagFirstPick

Just glad we finally got to #SandBagFirstSeed this year for once...

http://i.imgur.com/RB2OwGt.png

[wajirock]

One of the more irrational picks this year was when 973 picked 610 in the Carson Division. Don't get me wrong here. Scorpion is one of my favorite robots of all time, but when teams like 2590, 225, 1024, 1619, 5895, and 2122 are available picking 610 is seemingly irrational. Scorpion was pretty much shut down by 3538's killer defense, and in turn knocked 973, one of the best teams of 2016, out of the competition in the semifinals.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by wajirock

One of the more irrational picks this year was when 973 picked 610 in the Carson Division. Don't get me wrong here. Scorpion is one of my favorite robots of all time, but when teams like 2590, 225, 1024, 1619, 5895, and 2122 are available picking 610 is seemingly irrational. Scorpion was pretty much shut down by 3538's killer defense, and in turn knocked 973, one of the best teams of 2016, out of the competition in the semifinals.

All solid teams you listed, for sure.

However, 610 had the highest scoring average in our division by 7 points per our scouting data(greater than us, and all the teams in our division).

They were a great group to play with, and we'd definitely pick them again given the information available to us at the time.

in SF 2, all 3 teams missed in auto and performed on the lower end of our averages. This combined with a great performance from 2122, 3538 and 2052 cost us the bracket.

[SoftwareBug2.0]

Originally Posted by jajabinx124

I'm not sure if I've seen any declining based on this reason, but I declined the 2nd seeded alliance's invite (as 2052's alliance selection representative) at the 2015 10,000 lakes regional because I wanted our team to captain the alliance to get to the finals to guarantee ourselves a wildcard. I had a few other reasons to decline because I knew I had 1/2 better options to pick after declining them, but getting the wildcard was the pushing factor since the first wildcard is awarded starting with the opposing alliance captain to the wildcard team on the winning alliance.

At the 2015 10,000 lakes regional, the 2 best teams joined together to form the no.1 seed (525 and 2502) and since 525 had won the Northern Light's regional previously, they had a wildcard. Strategically I chose to decline the 2nd seeds invite because I felt like I could built an alliance strong enough and go to the finals to meet the 1st seed and guarantee my team a spot at champs via wildcard. (which at that point it was pretty evident the 1st seed with 525 and 2502 was the powerhouse alliance that had the best shot at winning the regional)

Reason I decided to mention this is because after I declined on stage I'm pretty sure half of the people in the stands (including most of my own team members) were pretty confused as to what the heck I as doing and probably thought I was being irrational.. but I do think this is more of a unique reason that a team chose to decline another team's invite.

I also took a whack at reviewing alliance selection results from this year. The way I did it was to say that a pick made sense if there was some way in which to rank teams in which the one that they chose was in the top five of those still available. I found a ton of picks that I just could not account for.

I thought I'd see a couple alliances per event that was just doing pure OPR based picking or pure rank, but it turned out that for the events that I was looking at those weren't the case at all. And a lot of them didn't make any more sense after looking at scouting data. But I did find that there was a positive correlation between alliances that made picks that I could figure out and advancing further in the tournament.

It seemed that many captains picked so badly that they would have increased their odds of winning the tournament if they had just been picking based on rank. I can only conclude that are large number of picks are often made for reasons other than maximizing the odds of winning the tournament.

And I think there are sometimes good reasons for trying to do something other maximize odds of winning, like the one that jajabinx124 cited with the wildcard system. And similarly to the wildcard system, in the district system how far you advance in the tournament matters, not just winning or losing the event.

I'm not sure how common this sort of strategy is however. For example, during the PNW championship I knew exactly how many points my team had to get to give us a 100% chance of making worlds, but talking with some other teams in attendance it seemed like a lot of folks didn't really grasp the point system well enough to figure out how well they had to do to get invited to worlds, let alone what that would imply strategically.

One extra note I will give is that it was easier to predict selections as the level of play increased. For example, while some in the audience and even the MC found the alliance selection on Hopper surprising it really shouldn't have been a surprise to any of those involved.