Denying an Alliance Selection

[GaryVoshol]

Check the responses in the Great Lakes thread. It also happened at Midwest this year, and at Detroit a year or two ago. There are a variety of reasons for declining to participate in an alliance, and most of them are GP.

[kborer22]

i believe it happened in jersey a few years ago, and 25 and 103 ended up together (correct me if im wrong, i know i have seen it once), but this is not unGP at all. If your team is lucky/good enough to be in the top 8 then you have earned the opportunity to pick who ever you want. The team that declines would only do so if they thought that the teams they had in mind to pick would be a better fit. While scouting i encourage looking for the bot that flys under the radar, that sleeper pick that tends to take your alliance from good to great.

[AdamC]

As said above, it's largely GP. If your robot fails, you can deny to prevent yourself from hampering the alliance. That's the only reason I've ever though of, although I'm sure there are more.
I'm sure you understand that denying does prevent you from joining any alliances afterwards though. I think it's largely used as a formal withdrawal from competition, since it is necessary for teams to send representatives to the field.

[Alex Cormier]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Check the responses in the Great Lakes thread. It also happened at Midwest this year, and at Detroit a year or two ago. There are a variety of reasons for declining to participate in an alliance, and most of them are GP.

Yeah, it has happened in FLR and GTR this past year. If you are a low seeded team and not picked by the top 2/3 teams, there is a real good plan to deny teams 4-6 to make your own alliance. It's not always the case of being non GP, it's still all about survival in the elimination rounds. If you feel the other team doesn't fit in a plan you have or compliment your robot more then others out there, then go right ahead and deny the pick. Also something happened at GTR, that I have never witnessed before. Team 03 knew coming into the later half of the day that their drive system was on the verge of breaking. They had announced before the alliance pickings that they might be fully operational and requested not to be picked. I felt that was a really professional announcement from a professional team. I can only wish other teams take that and do it as well instead of being selected and then announce to the alliance that they are not full functional.

[rees2001]

I once saw a team, not in the top 8, deny an alliance selection because they didn't understand the rules. They wanted to partner up with a different team not the #1 seed. They were told that denying this selection would forfeit them from the elimination rounds & they still denied. Then when the team they wanted to pair up with called their number they were happy & came running out to accept. They were told again that they could not accept. Lets saw the behavior I witnessed after that announcement was not GP, for that matter it wasn't even PG.

[Corey Balint]

In 2006 at Nationals (Newton Field), 176 was denied twice. It was part of a strategy by the #1 seed to break up any "super alliances". 176 was not one of the best robots on the field, but had been doing fairly well and had a nice match schedule. They ended up being the only undefeated team in the division and ultimately took the 1 seed.
The seeding was...
1. 176
2. 987
3. 25
4. 254...
176 knew that 987 was likely to select 25, due to their success together at Las Vegas that year and they also knew that 25 would deny a selection. They knew 25 would deny because there were a decent amount of teams that were considered better than 176. They also chose 254 for the same reason. 987 could then not select 25 or 254. 25 also could not select 254 as well.
Ultimately they chose 111 and got to the Division Finals. You could argue that if they hadn't played that strategy, they wouldn't have made it past semis.


So to answer the question...a good amount of times denying a team/blocking a team has a lot to do with strategy. However there are a decent amount of times where the seeded team is just not up to snuff for some teams to pair with.