Why Winners Win?

[lemiant]

Many years there appears to be a very large number of very competitive robots at the top, where any one of them could take championships. What makes some of them the best? I would love to see an analysis of each year individually.

For one specific case, in 2009 how did 254 get knocked out in Division Quarters?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk0RJ...layer_embedded
This robot, easily looks as good as any team on Einstein.

Or another example, this year 1114 was almost identical to 254.