Play to win

[KenWittlief]

I think if you did throw a match it would backfire on you in the end anyway

lets say another team is doing well, and they come up to you and say "hey if you let us win this match we will pick you as our alliance partner in the elimination rounds!"

By asking you to throw a match they have proven they have no honor - so what makes you think they will keep their word when they are blantenly not playing by the rules and asking you to defraud your current alliance partner - also, if they have to win by having their opponent roll over and play dead they will not make it past the quarterfinals, where their opponents WILL be playing for real.

Or as someone suggested above, you are ranked 12 or 14 and you are thinking that maybe if you slip down a little bit further you will get picked by the #1 seed on their second round?

This would also backfire on you- teams understand that it might take a good part of the seeding rounds to get your bot up to 100%, to get your driving skills down in actual play - they are looking mostly at your last two matches to see how well you are doing at the end of the seeding matches and to see if your bot is still in one piece after a whole day of playing. Besides do you think the #1 seed got to be there by playing games with the rules and trying to be clever? There is nothing that says the #1 seed has to pick #2, or #9 they can pick any team they want on their first round, and so can the other 7.

There are many aspects of FIRST that are complicated, but this is clear as it can be, when you are on the field play to win, no matter what.