[C^3] Playing twice in CA: 2018 vs 2017

FIRST General Forum
1

Inspired by recent threads where people have noted the number of teams unable to get into a second event, especially in California, I thought I’d take a closer look at those numbers, and bring back C^3 in the process.

The first thing that I noticed was the number of teams I expected to have made it in second round only registered for one regional. Fun (or not fun) fact: of all the CA teams who have won champs/half-champs since 2009, only 2 (330, 5012) are in a second regional. The other 7 (254, 294, 971, 973, 1671, 1678, 5499) I assume are on various waitlists.

The other major difference was how many more out of state teams are registered: 39 vs 29. Beyond that, it’s hard for me to say how exactly the new lottery process affects teams registering without knowing how many waitlist spots there are, but I look forward to hearing how others more familiar with this process interpret the data.

First, some stats on the number of teams (total and split by number of regionals they signed up for) and event slots (total and those taken by CA teams). Note that 2017 numbers include released waitlist spots, while 2018 ones do not.

http://i.imgur.com/3NqIHwf.png](https://imgur.com/3NqIHwf.png)

Some interesting numbers:
In 2017, non-CA teams had 29 spots.
In 2018, non-CA teams have 39 spots so far.

In 2017, on average, CA teams went to 1.42 in-state events.
In 2018, to keep that percentage, there need to be 455 total spots or 79 spots held in the waitlist for CA teams.

We can also compare how many CA teams who played/will play at multiple regionals played them in-state:
http://i.imgur.com/xt2gbV9.png](https://imgur.com/xt2gbV9.png)

And for those teams that played/will play at multiple regionals in-state, what the overlap between events is like:
(click on it for a less blurry image)
http://i.imgur.com/a8UzPGrh.png](https://imgur.com/a8UzPGr.png)
(The order in the 2018 chart isn’t alphabetical because I tried to match rough geographical locations to the 2017 chart)

Notes:
Total number of regional spots, was taken from FIRST’s website this morning. All other data was taken from TBA’s API this morning. “Events” refers to regionals only (any events a team is registered for that does not have an event type of 0 was not counted).

2

Thank you for taking the time to crunch these numbers!

This new process needs restrictions… like first round you can only pick a regional from the three closest to you geographically. (let’s face it, sometimes your closest regional isn’t your first pick)

Question: in the old system (and I may be remembering this wrong) it seemed that the regional directors opened a few spots for events that were “full” after round one. Did this actually happen in the past? Or am I crazy?

Example: after round 1, Orange County was “full” at 44. On second event registration day, the capacity was at 48, or something like that.

That definitely didn’t happen this year. But did it happen like that in the past?

3

Thanks Rachel for sharing new ways to look at the data. We are also one of the many CA teams waiting to see if we get into our local event (Ventura). We have high hopes of getting in as we think we are one of two teams where CAVE is “home” regional and are not already registered for the event. But no guarantees, and that make us a little nervous.

I just wanted to share some interesting extremes: Of the 39 OOS teams already registered in one of the nine CA events, almost a quarter of them are at Ventura! The 9 teams fill 28% of the current capacity. And 6 are all from China. This is going to be a very international event! I just hope we can play with them.

On the other side of the coin is Central Valley CAFR with 1 of 38 (Hawaii) and Orange County CAIR with 1 of 44 (Chile). Additionally Los Angeles (CAPO) and Sacramento (CADA) both have only 3 each.

Well, I guess we now know where the REAL FRC tourist destination is in California!

4

After 2nd event registration: 39 OOS teams registered in CA events vs 45 CA teams registered in OOS events…

5

My understanding of the system last year is there were the general pool of spots, plus a few waitlist spots for teams RDs might be concerned about getting registered (rookies, teams returning after a break, etc). An RD would free up waitlist spots for open registration if:

  • There are no teams on that event’s waitlist (otherwise, they’d let these teams on in registration sequence)
  • The number of teams they’re worried about are fewer than the number of waitlist spots in their regionals

If I had to guess, it’s not a system change, but that even with the information RDs had, there was enough uncertainty they wanted to hold those waitlist spots more tightly. Particularly if their information was imperfect (namely, if lotto numbers were unknown to them also) I can imagine why they might be more cautious here.