The Chokehold Strategy

[Eric Tarnowski]

How is that unFIRST-like? If those teams are playing with the best strategy they have to remain at all competitive, I say go for it. It seems rather selfish for a team on the opposing alliance to assume that it is the responsibility of the other teams to let them score points, even if they already know they are pretty much guaranteed to lose. If they are playing a competive alliance they can safetly assume that they are not going to want to accept zero points and will therefore try to score at least some points for their alliance. When they do this they leave an opening for the less-abled alliance to take advantage of their gamble and maybe pull out a win. The three-times-the-loser's-score multiplier is what adds a level of strategy to the game that makes it interesting and keeps the game from being an easy, battlebots-like game. A strategy like this would never get you to the finals on your own, and it doesn't matter, because in the finals where the best overall teams are determined, this strategy wouldn't work. Calling this unFIRST-like is just displaying arrogance and selfishness, no alliance owes any other anything, this is a competition and that is the nature of the game.