Did Lunacy really level the playing field?

[IKE]

Personally I think the field/standardized wheels did less for leveling the field as the amount of Human Player participation. There is a high concentration of good machines in our area. That being said, this is one of the first years in a long time that a good human player could outscore a good robot.

When looking at a leveling of the field, I would say look more around the middle than in the top. The variation and deviation in OPR analysis shows that this year was more of a toss up match to match. There were a few standouts at the top, but the middle band had a tighter distribution of averages with a higher standard deviation than in the past.

Also, this year was a huge penalty for any duds. If you had a dud on your team, a decent human player would load up 16+ points in Auto, and usually get 20+ before the dud got moved. had we played this game in the pre-kitbot days, it would have been a whole different ball game.