Highest Seed Statistics?

[The Lucas]

Ok, I found a real quick way to get some data from the last 2 years. I pulled up Karthik's Championship scouting sheets from 06 & 07 (amazing how they are still useful ) I sorted by Results and Draft Pos and counted the alliance captains. It doesnt cover all the regionals, but at least the majority that go to Championship. Here are the numbers

2007
AC1	13	41.94%
AC2	7	22.58%
AC3	3	9.68%
AC4	1	3.23%
AC5	2	6.45%
AC6	4	12.90%
AC7	1	3.23%
AC8	0	0.00%
Total	31

2006 
AC1	14	48.28%
AC2	4	13.79%
AC3	6	20.69%
AC4	1	3.45%
AC5	2	6.90%
AC6	2	6.90%
AC7	0	0.00%
AC8	0	0.00%
Total	29

Alliance 8 never seems to win (or goes to champs) which is odd. I'll let someone else go searching through TBA (2007) and FIRST History (2006 *shudder* that will take a while) for the full data set.

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Originally Posted by The Lucas

Alliance 8 never seems to win (or goes to champs) which is odd. I'll let someone else go searching through TBA (2007) and FIRST History (2006 *shudder* that will take a while) for the full data set.

Alliance #8 came within inches (literally; a successful 30 pt. lift would have done it) of beating alliance #1 in the quarterfinals at Davis in 2007. Had they beaten alliance #1 they would have gone on to win the regional. The quarterfinals at Davis had the highest tie-score of the year, 92 to 92.

Still more amazing was that they created such a strong alliance. Davis is not a very competitive regional. (I'm not even sure alliance #8 had a hurdler in 2008). The fact that they created such a strong alliance is testament to the importance of scouting and strategy.

The championship is a whole different story. At least it was in the past; this year it seems the two top hurdlers will be able to dominate.

[65_Xero_Huskie]

Originally Posted by The Lucas

Ok, I found a real quick way to get some data from the last 2 years. I pulled up Karthik's Championship scouting sheets from 06 & 07 (amazing how they are still useful ) I sorted by Results and Draft Pos and counted the alliance captains. It doesnt cover all the regionals, but at least the majority that go to Championship. Here are the numbers

2007
AC1	13	41.94%
AC2	7	22.58%
AC3	3	9.68%
AC4	1	3.23%
AC5	2	6.45%
AC6	4	12.90%
AC7	1	3.23%
AC8	0	0.00%
Total	31

2006 
AC1	14	48.28%
AC2	4	13.79%
AC3	6	20.69%
AC4	1	3.45%
AC5	2	6.90%
AC6	2	6.90%
AC7	0	0.00%
AC8	0	0.00%
Total	29

Alliance 8 never seems to win (or goes to champs) which is odd. I'll let someone else go searching through TBA (2007) and FIRST History (2006 *shudder* that will take a while) for the full data set.

Is this data for going to championships meaning as in the Finals?
Or actually winning a regional/Championship Event?

[The Lucas]

Originally Posted by 65_Xero_Huskie

Is this data for going to championships meaning as in the Finals?
Or actually winning a regional/Championship Event?

The data is taken from Karthik's Championship scouting database for 06 and 07. So only teams that are going to the Championship Event are included in the spreadsheet (not all regional winners but most of them). I only looked for regional winner alliance captains and counted them.

Note: I try to post "Championships" instead of "Nationals" but here it has lead to confusion.

[Rick TYler]

The dominance of the top-ranked alliances certainly puts the hammer on the argument that the serpentine draft was taking away the benefits of being highly-ranked in qualifying, doesn't it?

Once again the Pareto principle rears its head. Eighty percentage-ish of the tournaments are won by 20%ish of the alliances. More or less, YMMV.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

The dominance of the top-ranked alliances certainly puts the hammer on the argument that the serpentine draft was taking away the benefits of being highly-ranked in qualifying, doesn't it?

Once again the Pareto principle rears its head. Eighty percentage-ish of the tournaments are won by 20%ish of the alliances. More or less, YMMV.

I don't think so. After championship sometime I'll try and collect full data sets for 2005 as well for this, the last year pre-serpentine. I think the #1 seed winners would actually be much much higher than the ~50% we're seeing during the three years of serpentine.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I don't think so. After championship sometime I'll try and collect full data sets for 2005 as well for this, the last year pre-serpentine. I think the #1 seed winners would actually be much much higher than the ~50% we're seeing during the three years of serpentine.

As a fan of the leveling effects of the serpentine draft, I would be a hypocrite to not agree with you. It's just that if we want the top alliance to win every single time, why bother even having eliminations? I would much rather watch an event where the outcome was at least slightly in doubt, and the serpentine draft enhances that. My point was that the serpentine draft has not eliminated the advantage of the top-rated teams, it has just slightly reduced that advantage. In sports terms, I like salary caps, giving the first draft pick to the worst team, and making all Yankee pitchers wear ten-pound weights on their pitching hand.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

As a fan of the leveling effects of the serpentine draft, I would be a hypocrite to not agree with you. It's just that if we want the top alliance to win every single time, why bother even having eliminations? I would much rather watch an event where the outcome was at least slightly in doubt, and the serpentine draft enhances that. My point was that the serpentine draft has not eliminated the advantage of the top-rated teams, it has just slightly reduced that advantage. In sports terms, I like salary caps, giving the first draft pick to the worst team, and making all Yankee pitchers wear ten-pound weights on their pitching hand.

i think it depends on the game also. At championships this year, the leveling affect would be much greater, if there were 3 track balls. Why? The 8th seeded team could pick the "best" 3rd alliance partner who would hurdle also. BUT, since the game only has two track balls, the #1 seed could take who they want (assuming they are a great bot themselves) and meet the needs of offensive potential of the game. The disadvantage they would have in the 3rd alliance pick would be diminished. Plus, at CMP, with better robots in general, the pool wont be so thin because its not pivotal that they get a robot that can hurdle. Nice, but not necessary.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by waialua359

i think it depends on the game also. At championships this year, the leveling affect would be much greater, if there were 3 track balls. Why? The 8th seeded team could pick the "best" 3rd alliance partner who would hurdle also. BUT, since the game only has two track balls, the #1 seed could take who they want (assuming they are a great bot themselves) and meet the needs of offensive potential of the game. The disadvantage they would have in the 3rd alliance pick would be diminished. Plus, at CMP, with better robots in general, the pool wont be so thin because its not pivotal that they get a robot that can hurdle. Nice, but not necessary.

Totally agree. Like you said, the first pick would fulfill all of the offensive scoring potential and ipso-facto the third robot can either be another hurdler or a lapbot (but let's not get into that argument again We have other threads for that).

[commodoredl]

It would be interesting if FIRST were to use a reverse serpentine draft, giving the first pick to the 8th seeded alliance and the 8th and 9th picks to the 1st seed, etc. Would that balance the problems with so many top seeds winning?

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by commodoredl

It would be interesting if FIRST were to use a reverse serpentine draft, giving the first pick to the 8th seeded alliance and the 8th and 9th picks to the 1st seed, etc. Would that balance the problems with so many top seeds winning?

That would defeat the purpose of being #1 seed now wouldn't it?

[commodoredl]

You could say the same in other sports, like Rick was saying. All the drafts in sports have the worst team get the first pick, although I suppose with only 2 rounds to draft that probably would make a bigger difference
And technically, this allows the number 8 team to either get a shot picking another top 8 team to work with, or force the team to deny and not get to team up with another top 8 team later. I suppose it does cause a little too much tipping of the scales

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by commodoredl

It would be interesting if FIRST were to use a reverse serpentine draft, giving the first pick to the 8th seeded alliance and the 8th and 9th picks to the 1st seed, etc. Would that balance the problems with so many top seeds winning?

Did you see the thread about throwing matches?

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by commodoredl

Would that balance the problems with so many top seeds winning?

What "problems"? Top seeds are expected to win! That's how they got to be ranked high in the first place.

An upside-down draft could cause problems, as teams might be tempted to scheme to lower their ranking for a better picking position.

[commodoredl]

Well obviously the best seeded teams are expected to do very well, but we saw a lot of dominating performances by the top seeds. That was what Kim was trying to figure out, if it was just the game favoring the top seeds, or whatever it could be.
I was just speculating there, I wasn't trying to suggest that FIRST switch the way the drafts work. As it has been pointed out, there are several problems with that that could cause teams to try and drop a match to get a better draft pick.

So anyways, I would like to see the data from pre-serpentine and find out if it's the draft or the game that causes domination by the top seeds.