paper: MARC 2011 Rule Changes

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

The serpentine draft (1-8, 8-1) tends to balance the levels of the alliances. However in some tournaments, the 8th alliance gets a big advantage, because picking two nearly-top tier partners in a row is such a benefit.

IRI has had 1-8, 1-8 draft and pick your own backup for years. We decided to give it a try at MARC this year.

I understand the rationale of it, but given the depth at MARC I think the 1v8 match up will be 2 elite robots, 1 good robot vs 2 good robots and one that can barely score. Then, after 8 loses the first match, they need to play the 32nd best team at the event. IRI has the backup bot selection go 8-1 and doesn't force teams to play the backup. I guess you just have to do anything possible to avoid the 6-8 seed.