Intentionally Losing Matches

[JamesBrown]

I much like nearly every one else am against throwing a match.

In support of all of the FIRST is way to unpredictable quotes let me share a story.

In Boston in 2006 233 and 121 were far and away the dominant robots, with one match left to play 121 was ranked first followed by 233, they had to face each other in their final matches. My team, ranked in the 30's had a broken hopper and an unreliable shooter however we knew that by playing defense we could shut down nearly any one, we were paired with 233. The team had joked the night before that throwing the last game may be good for us, it would seed 121, our mentor team 1st. When it came game time and the alliances matched up our scouting told us that 233's alliance should easily win, if we played defense on 121 they couldn't beat us. We all went out and played hard, in the end our wheel snapped in the first 30 seconds, and 233's drive chain fell off, we had 2 inoperable robots and 121 won what was still a fairly close match. I don't know if you can call 2 robots breaking good luck but 121 picked 233 then us, inpressed atleast in part by our last round of disabled defense, for the finals and we won the regional.

Long story short playing hard and impressing teams is way more valuable that trying to play god with the rankings.