Most Competitive Events 2017

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

Originally Posted by Thayer McCollum

Am I the only one who judges the "difficulty" of an event by how many teams from IRI are playing there? I realize that not every high caliber team competes at IRI but isn't it a fairly good measurement?

Going by just IRI probably isn't going to be very accurate since quite a fair bit of good teams don't attend. For us, if a team won a regional as a captain or first pick, they are on the "watch out" list. We don't know how they will necessarily perform but teams on the "watch out" list are more likely to be a very capable robot. Generally, any team that can score well enough to win an event has a shot of defeating any team in my opinion(there are exceptions).

That being said, competitiveness doesn't necessarily mean "hardest" or "easiest" depending on who you are asking. If I am part of a team that generally performs really well, a high number of teams on the "watch out" list means a very tough event.

Now, if I was part of a newer team that maybe isn't the top scorer but is fairly consistent, I would say an event with a lot of top tier teams is easier than others. Why? Well if an event only has one or two really top tier teams, odds are if my average team is not going to win the event unless we get to be the 24th pick and be with the top teams. In an event where multiple alliances have a solid shot at winning, the odds for an average team to win go up since your fate is less likely to be sealed in alliance selection.