3 Team Alliances

[archiver]

Posted by Peter VanWylen, Student on team #107, Team ROBOTICS, from Holland Christian High School and Metal Flow Corp..

Posted on 3/28/99 12:12 PM MST


In Reply to: 3 Team Alliances posted by Tom Vanderslice on 3/27/99 6:12 PM MST:



I like the rule because it lets more people into the finals, which means more fun. However, there are a few problems with it. It stacks one alliance badly -- I will explain shortly.

The way FIRST does it is that first the top 8 seeds pick their first partner. Then they start back at the first team and have them choose a second partner. This doesn't work, however, because teams can decline an invitation. As it happened in Ypsi, The #1 seed really got to choose its two favorite teams. The #1 seed(team A) talks with another team(team B) and promises B that A will choose them on the second round through. After team A has chosen its first round pick(say with team C), seeds 2-8 choose. Every time a 2-8 seed calls for team B, it declines. Then on the second round thru, team A follows suit and takes team B(who happily accept the invitation).

This all ends up with one very hot alliance (with the #1 seed + the top two other teams that weren't in the top 8). Even worse, a *very very good team* could intentionally do bad to stay out of the top 8, just so that it could get chosen in by another team that has already agreed to choose them.
With all these ugly ideas mixed up, we could have (speaking with Ypsi teams in mind) Baxter Bomb Squad go to the top 8. Ahead of time, however it had agreed ahead of time with Beatty and another *very very* good team, that Beatty and the other team would intentionally stay out of top 8. Then we get one awsome alliance (maybe with the very top 3 teams). Other alliances would have NO CHANCE up against such a stacked team.

SO, first of all, please don't use the nasty idea I just gave you. Second, maybe we could encourage FIRST to work around this problem. The best work around would be that a team could not decline in the first choosing round and then accept in the second choosing round.
What does everyone else think?

Peter