Will There Ever Be Negative Scores?

[dlavery]

Everyone is getting all in a lather because they are realizing that it is theoretically possible to receive a negative score. This possibility has always been true - this is not just an effect of Update #3. But just because something CAN happen doesn't mean that it WILL happen. Why? Think this through all the way.

All the arguments seen so far are based on the fear that an opposing alliance will do something that will cause your alliance to get a negative score. But no one has provided an analysis of this potential situation from the standpoint of the opposing alliance. Look at the situation from the opposite position, and you will understand why negative scores won't happen.

Lets say you are the RED alliance. During the qualifier matches, the thing that determines your standing in the tournament is your Qualifier Points (QP, which is your score plus 2x the BLUE alliance score). You always want to have your resulting QP score as high as possible, because the higher your QP score the better - that is the thing that will cause you to advance in the seedings. During any individual match the thing that is really important is the resulting QP score, and not the raw score of the match. The thing that you have to get your mind around is the idea that during a match YOU ARE NOT PLAYING AGAINST THE OPPOSING ALLIANCE - YOU ARE PLAYING AGAINST THE ENTIRE FIELD OF TEAMS. You don't want to crush the opposing alliance in a particular match - to do well you need to focus on advancing your position relative to the entire set of teams in the competition. This is a fundamental strategic outlook on the game that you have to understand to be successful. The concept of helping your opponent get a good, but not winning, score in order to improve your own position has been a repeating aspect of the FIRST competition for the past few years, but some people still don't get it.

For any given raw score, the VERY BEST QP score your alliance can receive is when the BLUE alliance score is exactly one point less than your RED alliance score (which is why winning 50-49 is always better than winning 70-29 or 10-9). Everything that your alliance does during the match should be designed to move toward that goal. Assume that you have complete control of the game. You ALWAYS come out better off when you use that position to increase the opposing BLUE score up to your own score minus one point. If you have the opportunity to use the nuances of Rule SC8 to control the BLUE alliance score, the smartest thing you can do is INCREASE their score (see other threads for discussions on how to maximize a score for a given number of bins in the scoring area). Decreasing their score would be a very dumb move on your part - making your opponent's score go negative would border on flat out stupid. As the RED alliance, you never want to give the BLUE alliance a negative score.

What it comes down to, folks, is understanding the difference between strategy and tactics.

Some people are concerned that the potential for negative scores will affect the "viewer friendliness" of the game. I don't see this as a concern. For the reasons outlined above, I just don't see negative scores happening (at least not more than once - if by accident a team causes a negative score to the opposing alliance and thereby cause their own alliance to lose QPs, their own partner will probably pummel them with large lumps of head cheese just to make sure they never do it again! ). Since it won't be happening, there is no need to spend a lot of time explaining a tiny, esoteric nuance of the rules that is theoretically possible but highly improbable. So I am not going to sweat this one too much.

-dave