Number of Matches at the Championship

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Let's just ignore the Dome's requirements and consider this on just the basis of running fields. Each field requires six radio channels, and runs on a six-minute match cycle. (In other words, we have six robot-matches completed every six minutes.)

The IFI radio modem has forty channels. Six of them can be accessed by teams, which leaves the possibility that someone will make a dumb mistake and run off the field on a radio and lock up a competing robot. Clearly, this prospect is unacceptable. Therefore, we have 34 channels available to us. That breaks down to five fields of 3v3, or eight if FIRST reverted to 2v2. (We'll ignore 2v2; FIRST's current-generation field barrier is made for 3v3, no matter how Mission Mayhem rigged it up, and should be used by past experience through the 2009 season.) So yes, FIRST could run a fifth FRC field in Atlanta. Now how do you incorporate that into the elimination bracket on Einstein in a manner that is both fair and easily understood by the average person on the street? I don't think you can.

Hypothetically, they could set it up like the 2001 Championship, with additional fields with limited-capacity, portable bleachers in another location. Surely there are additional exhibition halls in the GWCC complex which could accomodate that.

If you keep enough distance (and concrete/steel) between the conflicting transmitters, you might be able to get away with it.

You'd also want to make sure that every team was playing some matches on the Georgia Dome fields, as well as some in the basement.

But there's another concern here: at a lot of regionals, the transit time between pits and field is miniscule. At Waterloo, for example, it's less than a minute. At the Championship, it's often much longer. Then, there's the time spent in-queue. That means that you've got less time to work on the robot between matches, and means that it is rather more difficult to keep everything running smoothly, from a team's perspective. Some teams may actually welcome the fact that they're not quite so rushed.

[Richard Wallace]

Even if the difficulties could be overcome, I'm not convinced that more matches at the Championship would be a good thing.

Scouting is, and IMHO should be, as important as seeding. I don't think more matches will make selecting alliance partners, or promoting your team to be selected, any easier.

[Mike Starke]

Originally Posted by Richard

I don't think more matches will make selecting alliance partners, or promoting your team to be selected, any easier.

Believe me, I am in favor of having more matches... one or two bad matches can put your team out of the top 20.
Being on drive team, it seems like your always on the move. If there were more matches with the same number of fields, that would be crazy. If there was a way to both have the pits closer to the field, and a way to have more fields, then I think the idea of more matches could be plausible.

However, by the time Nats roll around, there has been plenty of time to research and scout the teams that will be there. Regional winners have been announced, and Divisions have been released.
This is when the most scouting should occur- between regionals and Nats. You have time to research robots, and see what teams are going to be good in your division. You should already be going into Nats knowing what teams you either want to pick, or teams you want to get picked by. However, this doesn't mean that you should be closed minded. There are always teams that you don't expect it to make it, but do. And those usually are the best ones. (Just because I'm on 340, and its fresh in my mind, look at 2004, with 1126, 67, and 340 in Newton. Nobody expected that to happen, with having at least one team out of the top 20.)

So, this is just my insight, and thoughts...

[Dan Richardson]

More matches would be all fine and dandy but remember if your team is not ready to perform that may say just as much as the ranking system.

If you lose one game in the NCAA tournament your out of national championshipo contention. It also very similar with the BCS in college football.

In FIRST at the Championships marketing, and scouting is all that evens the playing field. If not for these 2 then a lot of the best teams in the nation could potentially never get their chance.

If you expect it to be a championship its going to be tough, and adding more games may really not be the solution.

[Josh Murphy]

I think that more matches could be possible. Thursday is used for practice right, well you have already been to 2 or 3 regionals on your machine and some have a practice bot. Since the championships are earlier this year and there is not a big layoff, you could make it to where everyone gets one practice round which is 2 matches of practice which should be enough. you start the qualifying round around 1 on thursday and that will allow each team to get at least 2 or 3 more matches in, plus what they get on friday and saturday. This will allow for at least 10 matches and not even interfere with all of the money and extra day it would take for the venue or the teams to take out of thier pockets. It is a reasonable thought.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Josh Murphy

I think that more matches could be possible. Thursday is used for practice right, well you have already been to 2 or 3 regionals on your machine and some have a practice bot. Since the championships are earlier this year and there is not a big layoff, you could make it to where everyone gets one practice round which is 2 matches of practice which should be enough. you start the qualifying round around 1 on thursday and that will allow each team to get at least 2 or 3 more matches in, plus what they get on friday and saturday. This will allow for at least 10 matches and not even interfere with all of the money and extra day it would take for the venue or the teams to take out of thier pockets. It is a reasonable thought.

Let me just point out one of many logistical issues that would arise, if that were to be implemented. You'd need to rearrange inspections. Last year, with our crew of inspectors, we were working hard all day Thursday, and a bit on Friday morning. So you'd either need many more inspectors (roughly 2 to 2.5 times as many, I'd estimate) and a few more scales and sizing boxes, or you'd need to open the pits for inspections on Wednesday afternoon (after the uncrating) and convince teams to get their inspections done at that point.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Stud Man Dan

More matches would be all fine and dandy but remember if your team is not ready to perform that may say just as much as the ranking system.

If you lose one game in the NCAA tournament your out of national championshipo contention. It also very similar with the BCS in college football.

In FIRST at the Championships marketing, and scouting is all that evens the playing field. If not for these 2 then a lot of the best teams in the nation could potentially never get their chance.

If you expect it to be a championship its going to be tough, and adding more games may really not be the solution.

Maybe Im looking at this differently, but to me the point of adding more matches isn't to make it more fair for everyone else. It's to make sure the top 8 are as close to the best 8 robots in the division as possible.

For example, look at Archimedies in 2005. That division was absolutely loaded. Yet a bunch of powerhouse teams ended up seeded super low, and a bunch of weaker teams ended up seeding high, because there aren't enough matches to eliminate luck influencing the standings.

I think we should add more matches not to help teams that have bad luck and lose a match or two, but to push the ones that performed extremely well to the top, rather than have teams that had good partners and didnt play anyone tough end up above teams that dominated their competition, but got pitted against each other and lost a match.

[Nawaid Ladak]

a GTR Field setup would work fine, and maybe extending the times on friday would work...

for example

opening ceremonies start at 8am, events begin at 9am, and SHOULD end at about 5.

maybe extend that to 7 or 8pm, with six minute periods. that means 20-30 more matches.

start it back up at 0 on Saturday, as usual

alliance parings are at 12pm instead of 11:45am

have 12 teams in the eliminations.

and the event would end at 8, perfect time slot on ESPN or ESPN2 in mid april on a Saturday afternoon. what else could be on..... world series of poker?????

lol, but yea, this is probably the best idea.

maybe extend the radio channel availability list or natioals