(Seemingly) Irrational alliance selection decisions?

[TheBoulderite]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The craziest situation I ever witnessed for alliance selection was at the 2009 FLR where 610 was a 13th seed and turned down an invitation from 1765 who had their best weekend in their history that weekend. 610 was taking a huge gamble that the other alliances were going to pick one another and they'd settle in as an 8th seed but for that to happen they would have to hope that 340 would pick their little sister team 424 which they didn't and thus 610's day was done.

Yikes. That's crazy.

[Jay O'Donnell]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The craziest situation I ever witnessed for alliance selection was at the 2009 FLR where 610 was a 13th seed and turned down an invitation from 1765 who had their best weekend in their history that weekend. 610 was taking a huge gamble that the other alliances were going to pick one another and they'd settle in as an 8th seed but for that to happen they would have to hope that 340 would pick their little sister team 424 which they didn't and thus 610's day was done.

I believe the story goes that they thought they were ranked slightly higher than they actually were?

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

I believe the story goes that they thought they were ranked slightly higher than they actually were?

They may have been 12th.

[Maximillian]

Originally Posted by TheBoulderite

Another seemingly irrational alliance selection this year was when 1425 selected 1538 on Hopper. Don't get me wrong, 1538 is a good team, but they could have gone with a team like 971, 1323, 4334, or 4587. Anyone from 1425 want to chime in and tell me why you made the choice to go with the Cows? I'm not saying it's the wrong choice, I'm just curious.

1425 selected 971 initially and 971 declined.

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

in SF 2, all 3 teams missed in auto and performed on the lower end of our averages. This combined with a great performance from 2122, 3538 and 2052 cost us the bracket.

This sounds like an all too familiar situation.... It's a shame when all your auto's decide to miss.

[TheBoulderite]

Originally Posted by Maximillian

1425 selected 971 initially and 971 declined.

I was unaware of that. Thanks.

[BenjiSG]

On Newton at Worlds in 2015, I was leading my team's (2877) scouting. Everything went well, and we had a fairly comprehensive list for both landfill and feeder station robots for our driver to pick in alliance selection if we wound up an alliance captain. Sure enough, we did captain alliance, and while our first pick went smoothly (3467, a feeder station robot), our driver got mixed up on the second pick and chose 175, also a feeder station robot when the pick list should have had us picking 3539, a landfill robot. We also had a feeder station robot, so our final alliance wound up being three feeder station robots scrambling for two feeder stations, which quickly ended any chances for us to make it out of quarter finals.

Ever since, our scouting captain has been the one to make alliance selections.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by BenjiSG

On Newton at Worlds in 2015, I was leading my team's (2877) scouting. Everything went well, and we had a fairly comprehensive list for both landfill and feeder station robots for our driver to pick in alliance selection if we wound up an alliance captain. Sure enough, we did captain alliance, and while our first pick went smoothly (3467, a feeder station robot), our driver got mixed up on the second pick and chose 175, also a feeder station robot when the pick list should have had us picking 3539, a landfill robot. We also had a feeder station robot, so our final alliance wound up being three feeder station robots scrambling for two feeder stations, which quickly ended any chances for us to make it out of quarter finals.

Ever since, our scouting captain has been the one to make alliance selections.

This situation is what whiteboards were made for. Been using one since the beginning of 2013 and never looked back. That way your entire scouting team can discuss and determine each pick, not just one person.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

This situation is what whiteboards were made for. Been using one since the beginning of 2013 and never looked back. That way your entire scouting team can discuss and determine each pick, not just one person.

Sadly whiteboards don't always work as intended.

Looking at you 67 & 1310 at IRI in 2013 when a "3467" whiteboard turned into "3476" on the field. We still love you guys!

I agree that to prevent bad picks the best solution is to have a competent scout on the field who knows the capabilities of the robots attending, knows the strengths/weaknesses of your machine, and knows what robot types you need to pick to execute your elimination strategy(s). Like Chris said a good second option is to have a good representative on the field with some information and a "decision team" which includes a group of people who've been going over the data and watching the teams.

This year we always sent our captain out with a list of 24-26 robots ranked in the order we'd pick them as well as using a whiteboard with cellphones as a backup. To have a full list prepared for our captain meant scouting ended at the close of day one qualifications. This gave us plenty of time to make our picklists without staying up late the night before and we used the final qualification rounds to observe the machines we had in our top 24 to determine final rank. Sometimes machines were taken off the list or others added on seeing them improve on the second day.

It also helps not to overthink your second pick by coming up with one or two must have items for your third pick and consider "bonus" items that would be nice to have but not necessary especially if they haven't been consistent. This year we saw that most alliances we would end up on or first round selections we would make left us needing a third robot to cross a more specialized defense if we wanted to get a full 30 point autonomous. This meant our first sort of third picks was only machines who had demonstrated they could cross the Ramparts in autonomous with moderate consistency as our data also included attempts. With that list in mind we added in if they could cross the CDF or Portcullis in teleop as it wasn't our strongest defenses to cross and typically wouldn't be the same for most of our potential partners. Then we added in balls scored in teleop in the low goals as another item to add to our list.

That was typically how we picked a third robot we felt would mesh well with our alliance and received three amazing robots: 6161, 6153, 6969, as well as our Boston backup 5563 who was high up on our third pick choices.

This is a little long but just some simple advice on how teams can make better choices while sharing some methods that I've found that help take some work out of making picklists.

[TheBoulderite]

Originally Posted by BrendanB

Looking at you 67 & 1310 at IRI in 2013 when a "3467" whiteboard turned into "3476" on the field. We still love you guys!

Close numbered teams make for confusion sometimes. I remember on Galileo last year when our team, 1619, was selected the guy from 1690 got up as well, thinking that was the number they had said.

One another note, I'd imagine at Minnesota Regionals that teams are very careful during alliance selection when they announce they're picking 2502 or 2052.

[hutchMN]

Originally Posted by TheBoulderite

Close numbered teams make for confusion sometimes. I remember on Galileo last year when our team, 1619, was selected the guy from 1690 got up as well, thinking that was the number they had said.

One another note, I'd imagine at Minnesota Regionals that teams are very careful during alliance selection when they announce they're picking 2502 or 2052.

We're pretty sure we won the team spirit award one year because the judges mixed us up.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by TheBoulderite

Close numbered teams make for confusion sometimes. I remember on Galileo last year when our team, 1619, was selected the guy from 1690 got up as well, thinking that was the number they had said.

One another note, I'd imagine at Minnesota Regionals that teams are very careful during alliance selection when they announce they're picking 2502 or 2052.

I've heard that 973 looks like 175.

[Chris is me]

Something I've been considering is a large print scoreboard (something akin to this but cheaper) to remove ambiguity and to make the print large and consistently readable.

[jajabinx124]

Originally Posted by TheBoulderite

Close numbered teams make for confusion sometimes. I remember on Galileo last year when our team, 1619, was selected the guy from 1690 got up as well, thinking that was the number they had said.

One another note, I'd imagine at Minnesota Regionals that teams are very careful during alliance selection when they announce they're picking 2502 or 2052.

Yeah alliance selection reps at the 10,000 lakes regional have to say it slowly when saying either 2502 or 2052. It's quite funny sometimes because you can notice the rep saying it slower than inviting any other team because they want to make it clear which team they are picking.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by jajabinx124

Yeah alliance selection reps at the 10,000 lakes regional have to say it slowly when saying either 2502 or 2052. It's quite funny sometimes because you can notice the rep saying it slower than inviting any other team because they want to make it clear which team they are picking.

Yeah, it's a bit tricky.
https://youtu.be/st90uThWrlM?t=9100

[frcguy]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

#SandBagFirstPick

Just glad we finally got to #SandBagFirstSeed this year for once...

http://i.imgur.com/RB2OwGt.png