We are kind of similar.
The pick list that is being reordered during the competition the morning after the strategy meeting doesn’t include us.
During the strategy meeting, however, we will include us specifically to look at how we stack up to the competition and how certain alliances could do versus others.
Because of this, we do scout ourselves every year.
We do like to include ourselves on our pick list. As others have stated, we want to see where we stand among the competition and it can tell us what we need to work on at future events.
Scouting your own team certainly makes sense - as Sun Tzu said, know your enemy, know yourself, and know the terrain. As noted above, this is also highly useful for selling yourself as a pick. Ranking yourself on your own pick list doesn’t make a lot of sense to me - a significant factor of the pick list should be how well a team complements yours. If you’ve done well (but maybe not team 1 selecting team 2 to freeze out competition), for most games you’ll likely be looking for teams which made different design/strategy decisions.
I can’t speak as to what 1712 does now, but when I was part of making the lists occasionally we’d put ourselves on our list to help the alliance selection rep put picks in context.
The best reason to put yourself on your picklist is to avoid flowcharts while still having some flexibility in who you pick.
Example: it’s 2014 and you’re picking in an event that’s pretty low on trussers. You got to your rank by finishing cycles in the high goal but there are better high goalers than you available. You expect to pick on an inbounder on the way back up the serpentine. It’s perfectly reasonable to put yourself on your list of trussers; if the pick is to you and no one higher than you on the trusser list is available, maybe hop over to your list of finishers instead of going further down on the trusser list.
Yes, we tend to put ourselves on the list, often to make guesses at what the other alliances might look like. For example, at district champs we were 5th on our field, and we needed to have an idea about what the other alliances ahead of us might look like.
On 157, we generally didn’t scout ourselves because we wanted our team to have the option to cheer us on during our matches but I can see the benefits of it
As far as including ourselves on our picklist, no, we never did that. I can see the benefits of this as well if it’s something a team chooses to do
Up until worlds this year yes. Now there is a toggle in our picklist program for excluding our team number from the pick list.
Yes, our team does. It helps us judge around where we are on/our expected alliances. In addition, it lets me know if I’m overestimating or underestimating my team’s abilities.
We also do scout ourselves, also to know how we compare quantitatively.
-AJ
We scout our self, but not part of the pick list. Having our own data means we can compare our performance to others. Also it helps in tracking performance over the course of the season
Yep. You always put yourself on the list. As long as you are using the same criteria as everyone else. Besides the reasons given in this thread such as knowing other teams which may be better than you (in certain categories), it also lets you suspect if other teams may be picking you before you get a chance to pick yourself.
On the other hand our kids also do their “pick lists” dynamically using game data in tableau, so we actually choose our second pick based on the potential combined capabilities that they could add to what we already have with the first two teams.