What happened in Curie???

[dtengineering]

I'm pretty comfortable, overall, with how the qualifying, ranking and selection process works.

What I DID notice this year, however, is that the correlation between robot performance and ranking was lower than in other years. In other words, there was more "luck" involved in your placement after qualifying than in other years. (Note that I am NOT saying that a top placing was all luck... nor that in other years luck has not been involved... just that this year luck, or random draw, was more important.)

I attribute that to the nature of the game... in previous year's, for instance, some matches were essentially over by the time a team ran their auto mode (I mean that in a "positive" way... that a team could WIN in auto, whereas this year a team could really only "lose" the match by not moving in auto and getting a full trailer.) This year, auto really didn't account for much, but a lucky shot of a super cell by a human player did.

Nothing wrong with that, we're all playing by the same rules and the selection process is an effective process to minimize random effects, but it does result in some weird standings and dissapointment for highly ranked teams who aren't selected. Hopefully next year's game will be one where qualifying match results better reflect robot ability.

Jason

[kapolavery]

to make scouting easier, they should keep track of an individual robots score
then combine it in the end..

[Doug G]

I guess this is one reason why Atlanta is not one of my favorite competitions to go to. I see the opportunity and experience as a phenomenal one, but the odds of getting very far are stacked against most of us. For the past 5 years our team has fielded a very competitive robot, maybe not a hands down winner but good enough to finish in the top 8 most of the time. Then when we go to Atlanta, we seem to do well, but not well enough to break into the top 8. When alliance selections begin, we don't get picked and are surprised by some picks that are made (one pick last year in Arch was an inoperable robot). I know some of the alliances have made their picks by Friday and some simply go with who they are comfortable playing with (maybe from other regionals and such). The alliance selection at Championships is sketchy for most teams (lack of scouts and the shear number of teams are major contributing factors). I don't think it is wrong and don't know of any way it could change - it is what it is, but it is one reason why our experiences from Regionals are often more exciting at least in a robot performance way. However, no Regional can compete with the wrap-up party, VIPs, and Einstein matches in Atlanta. Short of a Blue Banner, our team only tries to attend Atlanta every 2-3 years and instead tries to visit out of state Regionals in the other years.

[kjohnson]

Originally Posted by Phoenix Spud

Why weren't teams seeded 10-28 picked? And how come the top 8 teams did not pick each other? I know that there were two declines, but it seems really weird!

Originally Posted by Jimmy K

Same thing happened in Archimedes except only one decline. We were stuck playing the #1 Alliance, and we got owned.

I encountered the same thing in Newton in 2005. We seeded 8th and led our own alliance, and I don't remember there being any declines. We went on to get SPANKED by the #1 alliance with 330 at the helm.

[robodude03]

Originally Posted by Paul Copioli

I thought Curie had the most "normal" alliance selection of any of the divisions. Let me share some things I observed.

First, our team agrees that 7 matches is really not eough to statistically determine who the top 8 really is. Unfortunately, teams that are clearly not top 8 caliber will get into the top 8. This is one of the reasons the FIRST in Michigan district model had 12 matches at each of the district events.

In our team's opinion, there were 4 teams in the top 8 that were not really top 8 caliber. Such is life at the Championship.

Our team scouts every match and takes the best statistical data we can for each and every team. Scouting the actual matches is the best way to definitely determine if a team will make a good partner in the elimination rounds. On Friday, we have a 3 to 4 hour strategy meeting where we make a pick list of the top 24 teams based on our scouting data and feedback from the drive team. We use feedback from the drive team to help determine if a team is hard or easy to work with. Our scouting team then focuses on the teams that are very close in performance on Friday to see how they are doing on Saturday morning matches. We really focus on teams that are performing better as the weekend moves along.

OPR and other indicators are really only needed when you can't actually watch the matches in person. We do not use OPR because OPR will not get you to Einstein. Period.

Here are some other things we do not use:

- Record in the division
- Ranking in the division
- Performance at Regional events
- Team number
- Where a team is from

I can't even tell you what 68 or 247 records or rankings were because we didn't care.

For the last 5 years, I have witnessed the strangest picks by teams in the top 8. Teams that would have been our 4th or 5th pick slipped all the way to the bottom of the draft. This year in Curie was the first time that I can remember that the teams selecting partners during the draft basically picked how we would have picked (except 68 as they should not have been around for us). With 87 teams in the division some good teams will be overlooked and there is no way aroud it.

I want to make one more point. The serpentine draft has caused a lot more teams to decline. I can tell you that our team prefers not to decline, but will if we feel that it gives us a strategic advantage. We declined 1806 (the #2 seed) not becasue we didn't think they were a good team (they were very high on our list), but simply because of the serpentine. If the serpentine did not exist, then we would have definitely accepted their invitation. Team 1806 knew prior to alliance selections that we were going to decline as I told their team that we would decline. They used a very good strategy picking us anyway so no one else could select us. They basically forced 217 and 399 to form their own alliances (they asked 399 to be their partner too and 399 declined).

Our division had only 14 teams with a positive "plus/minus". Plus/minus (for our team) is the number of points scored by the robot minus the number of points in the robot's trailer. This year it is the biggest indicator of a team's contribution. Obviously, for pure defensive bots we only look at points scored in their trailer as +/- will, by definition, always be negative. As the #7 seed, we knew we could get two very good robots to complement our playing style. We felt we could build a better alliance from #7 than from #2. And for those of you wondering, I didn't realize we had an all Michigan alliance until about 10 minutes after selection. It is just the way things worked out.

Someone made a comment about high number teams not getting picked. We had a few high number teams on our list (I was suprised no one picked 3115), but we had the #7 and #10 picks in the draft.

I have to agree with Paul's comments here and say that on our end our team also does a fair amount of scouting. We usually have a 3 hour meeting on Friday with our scouting team and also list the top 20 robots that we should pick. Once we get the input from the scouting team, the drive team talks over the picks made by the scouting team and we order them based on information given to us by the team.

During this event we also collaborated with team 188 and greatly benefited from their data. One of the major data points that our driver Brad wanted to look at was the amount of balls in the robot's trailers. This influenced our picks to a point, but we stuck primarily with the information from our team members.

As for the decline, we also mirror Paul's thoughts on this. Although we would normally accept the invitation to join 1806 on the playing field it was a matter of strategy, alliance picking, and bracket positioning that caused the decline. We felt that we could create a better alliance being the fourth alliance. We knew that 217 would not be available by the time that it was our turn for the pick and it was an excellent move by 1806 to breakup the possibility for anyone else to build up an alliance with them. We felt we had a strong chance with 188 and 329 to take it to the finals and we nearly had it, taking the showdown to 3 matches We were very happy with our alliance and the effort we made for Einstein.

[LCLARK_175]

[QUOTE
This is my biggest complaint with the seeding system. When a non-functional robot, one that has missed all of its matches is the #1 seed, there is obviously a problem[/quote]

I don't know of which team you're speaking of or of how far into the Qualls you're speaking of, but 175 was first seeded for a good portion of Friday and Saturday until our loss against the thunder chickens and the 7-0 record of 346 which put us into third.

[Cuse]

Originally Posted by LCLARK_175

I don't know of which team you're speaking of or of how far into the Qualls you're speaking of, but 175 was first seeded for a good portion of Friday and Saturday until our loss against the thunder chickens and the 7-0 record of 346 which put us into third.

346 was 6-0-1.

I agree that there should probably be a more individualized ranking, however I don't think there is a feasible way for that to be implemented, especially with such a team-centric game such as Lunacy, perhaps something as simple as an average of the alliance score, as a very basic OPR, however whatever you do will be flawed and will receive complaints.

I do happen to believe that the Qual points should be based off the winning alliance's score, not the opposing alliance's score, however, as that is something you cannot control, assuming you don't start scoring on your own team. It doesn't encourage the teams to compete to the best of their ability. I understand the idea behind it, in that you want to have the high scoring, close matches, but it's really not a good differentiator for ranking when the actual robot the score applies to is not factored in, particularly if the robot is primarily defensive, or something of that nature.

$.02

[Bob Steele]

As a third year team, Skunkworks was proud to compete on Curie and had a great time this weekend. Being from so far away (Seattle) we got to compete with and against some great teams.. 217, 399, 68, 341, 254 gosh there are just too many to mention.. just being on the field with you was a treat for us..we hope we always helped our alliances no matter what we were asked to do on the field.

Of course we were disappointed in not being picked from the 12th position but who wouldn't be, no matter what position they ended up in?

The teams that picked earned the right to make whatever choices they wanted to make. As I was looking at our database I was just checking off them right down the line... some were missed.... most weren't. In our regionals this year we were seeded 19th and 34th and were the first pick of the #1 Alliance both times.

I congratulate all of the great teams on Curie for picking great alliances and going out and playing exciting matches. You earned it and we had a great representative on Einstein...

Paul's comments about the serpentine draft should be noted by everyone. With the kind of quality exhibited at CMP, one has to think of the alliance picking more like a "Draft" Do you want the #1 and the #16 pick ? Or do you want the #7 and #10 picks?? This is an excellent bit of knowledge that we all should pay heed to.

Last year we seeded 5th on Galileo and picked our own alliance. We were one of those teams that got lucky and had matches that put us in that position. We didn't fool ourselves into thinking we were the 5th best team that year.

This year we were much better and much more competitive. Next year we will even be better. You will too!!

Thank you everyone for making this a great CMP for us.



hmmm now back to work... the 2010 season has already begun..

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

What I DID notice this year, however, is that the correlation between robot performance and ranking was lower than in other years. In other words, there was more "luck" involved in your placement after qualifying than in other years. (Note that I am NOT saying that a top placing was all luck... nor that in other years luck has not been involved... just that this year luck, or random draw, was more important.)

It's ironic that I, to a certain degree, noticed the exact opposite. While the specific order of the top 8 was not always correct, a majority of the better robots seeded highly at the regional events I paid attention to. The correlation decreased at Championship (especially in one division in particular), but that's to be expected with 87 teams and only 7 matches per.
Granted, they were not as ordered as Championship 2008, but that's because 2008's game was particularly isolated in terms of the performance of single robots. Not that 2008 was perfect in any regard, but at Championship it seeded very well.

[Diana Gee]

Paul Copioli from 217 Thunder Chickens.....

THANKS for your post and explaination of how your Team scouted for the selection of the elimination rounds.

As a mentor for 1983 SKUNKWORKS I would be curious to understand where our Team stood in your findings or other Teams findings, and as a whole where you saw our Teams weaknesses.

THANKS!
Darin (husband of Diana)

[Jonathan Norris]

Thats how it goes, 2 points Saturday morning we would have seeded 3rd, instead we seeded 10th. As a rookie team we knew that it was going to be difficult to be selected as a second round team, and having a communication error in our last match on Friday hurt our stats for Friday night. Without that match where we were dead it put us right in with the teams selected in the second round, but we know that with the quality of teams in the hunt as second picks it was going to be tough to get picked.

We were praying that two teams would pick within the top 8 so that we could move up into the 8th seed, and I can tell you we put quite an effort into scouting and would have made a tough 8th alliance. But i've been around long enough to know that this alliance selection went as normally as it could have, and if teams picked and declined properly we shouldn't have moved up. So if anything I applaud the teams in the top 8 for making some solid alliances.

[Chief Pride]

I would have to agree with Paul. The ONLY fair way to make the ranking system more reliable is to complete more matches.

[martin417]

Originally Posted by LCLARK_175

I don't know of which team you're speaking of or of how far into the Qualls you're speaking of, but 175 was first seeded for a good portion of Friday and Saturday until our loss against the thunder chickens and the 7-0 record of 346 which put us into third.

Perhaps you didn't read my post completely. I wasn't talking about championships. The incident in question was at a regional this year.

[DerDer247]

Well being on the Curie Division Winning Alliance and a scouter for team 247 I have some information on the Alliances.

As i see it our team had been communicating with what teams we wanted, we had managed to make a deal with 217. and got into the 7th seed alliance.

All the teams that made it to Nationals were exellent teams, Lunacy delt 90% skill, and 9% Persperation and 1% luck, as i see it, the amount of matches each team was given means that if a team makes a mistake or does extremelly well doesn't mean its an accurate depiction of the Winning Alliance, Finals at nationals was could not be predicted, it could have turned on a dime, and it did.
With respect to all finalist teams anyone could have won, all teams make mistakes, sometimes the alliance partners compensate for those mistakes sometimes they don't.

It did seem to be an upset with selection and with the final matches of Curie, but alot of teams had their alliance plans set up.

Proof that things can turn on a dime in Nationals is what happend to the ThunderChickens, a great team with a great bot. but with qualifications they unfotunatly lost a few matches, this ranked them really low, and when they rebounded they got to 7th Seed. But in all District Events in Michigan they went to they ended up in 1st or 2nd. Numbers can seem to bring powerhouse teams down, and sometimes the numbers fools the teams.

[Zack247]

Can't do it by OPR. Im from 247 and we were the finalists on Einstein this year and played a pure defensive game. High scoring only does not equal a good robot.