Proposal for Wildcard Reform

[bdaroz]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

At the 2016 Tech Valley Regional, the entire finalist alliance, including a backup robot made it to the championship event via the wildcard system.

I updated my wildcard spreadsheet to add info about "Burned" wildcards. These are Wildcards generated that could not be given out because the finalist alliance had already received a bid to CMP. (Either by earlier event, other award, or getting a WC)

Only 4 events generated burned WCs under the '16 rules, not surprisingly mostly later events. There were, however, two events that generated 4 wildcards, and at Lone Star two of those were burned.

All in all under the '16 rules, we used 57 WCs and burned 5.

Under the '17 rules (thus far) we would have used 88 wildcards and burned at least* 22.

(* - If a team would have gotten a WC under the 2017 rules in an earlier event that is not reflected in the burned total. Thus, this is a minimum number without going through and recalculating WC generation regional-by-regional for the 2017 rules. The spreadsheet calculates the 2017 WC generation as a simple +1.)

What's clear is that the 2016 rules did not have a material effect on the number of teams that "lost" out due to burned wildcards (92% of WCs used), but if we used the 2017 rules that would change with only about 80% of WCs being used.

Put another way, ~41% of the newly generated WC slots would be burned under the 2017 rules as they are.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by SoftwareBug2.0

How often do you estimate this will generate results that are different than the current system? It seems like the finalist captain and first pick would still usually be the first two teams.

Do you know of any cases where the altered order would have made a difference? What's the largest number of wildcards that's ever been given out at an event?

If you want to look into this more, you can use the MN State Championship rankings, which are based on district points (for the teams first event): http://mnfirst.org/docs/2016/States_2016.pdf

Combine that with the wild card slots, and you'll at least have something to look at. The only thing it doesn't give you is the points for a team's second event, which may throw things off a little.

Originally Posted by bdaroz

Including here as it's relevant... Here's the breakdown of wildcard slots at each regional from 2016 (excl Ontario):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10P...hkP4sZFtrV zg

[MasterMentor]

Originally Posted by bdaroz

I updated my wildcard spreadsheet to add info about "Burned" wildcards. These are Wildcards generated that could not be given out because the finalist alliance had already received a bid to CMP. (Either by earlier event, other award, or getting a WC)

I think looking at "Burned" wildcards is contrary to the point of the exercise. As Frank pointed out, the goal of adding an additional wildcard to each regional is to increase the participation of Regional teams at the Championship event. As shown in your awesome spreadsheet, 31 more Regional teams will be able to move forward that previously would not have. So what if the wildcards are burned - maybe that's factored into the reasons why FIRST added it (maybe they wanted ~30 more Regional teams and not ~50 more Regional teams). It also, in my opinion, increases the "fairness" of the wildcard system for early Regionals that would not have otherwise benefitted from wildcard-generating teams from previous performance in attendance - at least, in the circles I run in we typically scoff at the Wildcard system because the later Regionals in the season are the ones that benefit from it mostly. #WildcardBlues #EarlyRegionalsMatter

-George

[bdaroz]

Originally Posted by MasterMentor

I think looking at "Burned" wildcards is contrary to the point of the exercise.

Not directly, no, but an interesting view of what will happen under the 2017 rules as listed at this point.... It's also something that came up at NYTVR when all 4 members of the finalist alliance were announced as eligible for CMP. (It wasn't clear until we did some digging as to why, and initial thoughts questioned if there should have been more.)

It's somewhat more relivant under the proposal here because this would ensure a distribution of all wildcards under the points model and not artificially cap the number of potential wildcard recipients at three.

If the rest of your argument truly reflects FIRST's intentions, they want more representation, but not that much more, than they could tweak the proposal here to cap at x wildcards per regional.