2007 St. Louis Regional

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

From talking with some people here, I've been told that the scoring system is not working correctly for match generation. Teams complained about the match schedule but supposedly FIRST said there's nothing they can do about it.

Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, Dave. What FIRST actually told me is that this is the way the algorithm is supposed to generate matches, and there is no means to vary the match-ups. So the intent seems to be that low numbered teams will alternate playing each other. I was told this is not a defect in the system; matches come out that way because that is the algorithm that FIRST specified.

Several people who have been recognized as sources of inspiration to the FIRST community have told me that this match generation system seems unfair, and I concur. I understand that these feelings will be communicated in a respectful manner to the appropriate people at FIRST, probably within the next few days.

On a related note, the scoring system worked flawlessly today at St. Louis -- no crashes, no restarts, no lost data, no delays. We finished about four minutes ahead of schedule, and the only (relatively minor) problems encountered were due to human error.