Alliance pairing disaster at NYC

During the first pick of the alliance selection at NYC, the top seed chose team 505. After waiting around for about a half minute for a member from team 505 to show up, a student came in from the pits (i believe) and [visibly unsure of what he was supposed to be doing] declined the choice. As many of us know this automatically disallows your team to be chosen by any other team. This was clearly not a logical choice and not what 505 wanted. However, the announcer immediately escorted the student off the stage after he said they decline and did not even say something like “this will disqualify your team from being selected by other teams. are you sure?”. While technically the team should have known the rules and should had an informed student ready to make the decision, I feel in cases like this the ramifications should be explained and the decision should be confirmed. Instead, the weekend of a great team was suddenly spoiled in a matter of seconds. Other thoughts on this?

  • Patrick

Each team has the responsibility of knowing the rules for alliance pairings. At the 2 regional events I have been to, this rule was clearly discussed during the event in front of everyone and it was reiterated more than once “what it means to decline”. I feel sorry for team 505, but they should have known and if they weren’t sure they should have asked someone. This is the one thing that FIRST has been clear on from the start (much unlike entanglement).

Another thing about the 505 snafu was that it seemed like many other teams were unsure of the rules as well:

I think that 505 was trying to decline the #1 alliance in order to get picked by the #2 or #3 alliance. However, they weren’t knowledgable of the ramifications of “decline.” But the confusion went even further when I believe three other alliances chose 505 as their first choice, but the announcer reminded them each time that 505 was ineligible to be chosen.

If someone from 505 could clear up why they declined and what the plan was, that would be nice.

Nevertheless 505 did have a great robot.

-Mark
Team 41
Robo-Warriors

i think that there are alot of teams that are at a lack of knowledge for the rules. i dont think that 505 should be isolated. they made a simple mistake. they probably just read the rulng wrong. I know of other teams that have onfused much bigger parts of the game, like scoring.

team 505: its unlucky but dont feel to bad about it