I hope you’re all having a great time this offseason! I wanted to share a thought about Double Eliminations and how we might be able to make them even more exciting and engaging.
As you know, Double Eliminations allow us to name the top four alliances in a tournament. However, I’ve always felt that there’s something missing when it comes to recognizing the alliances that place 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th. Right now, we can only combine their rankings like 5th/6th or 7th/8th, which doesn’t truly do justice to their performance.
To address this, I came up with a simple modification to the bracket. By adding just two extra matches to the double eliminations, we can now specifically name the alliances that finish in 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th place. This way, every alliance’s performance will be acknowledged and celebrated, which I believe is crucial for encouraging more intense competition and celebrating the efforts of all teams.
I’ve shared a Google sheet with a slightly modified bracket that includes the additional matches and potential timings for them. I couldn’t figure out how FIRST calculates the gap minutes so that part is left blank. I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on this idea. Let’s discuss and see if we can collectively enhance the FRC experience for everyone involved!
This happens in most double elimination formats. Not saying that FIRST shouldn’t strive to do better, but it’s not uncommon across other sports.
The main tradeoff here is time. Each of those matches adds 10-15 minutes to the schedule. The other obvious complaint is that teams “have nothing to play for”, since they can no longer win the event, and may not play their best in those matches, or even want to play those matches.
Do 4 teams to an alliance with 6 alliances round robin (At smaller events you cut this down to 3 teams per alliance). This keeps the 24 teams who make elims the same at most events.
With 6 alliances everyone is guaranteed 5 matches (The same amount only the team heading into the 3rd place match from the lower bracket currently gets) with only 2 more matches overall compared to the current system and the same amount that the proposed system has.
1 and 2 move on to a best of 3 finals.
To avoid matches that “don’t matter” district points are determined by number of matches won over the entire elims tournament. In a tournament where everyone only loses to the team ranked above them and each win is 5 points :
Winner: 35 pts
Finalist 20
3rd: 15
4th: 10
5th: 5
6th: 0
This could result in a situation where Finalist and 3rd walk away with the same points (Top 3 teams beat each other for a record of 4-1 and then finals is a 2-0)
In the regional system it is slightly more complicated with the only way of rewarding teams being to continue the Wildcards down the line of all the teams in elims not just Finalists.
We can always just say the two alliances tied for 5th, or tied for 7th.
Watching the world surf league events, they do this all the time, and the points awarded to all the “tied for 7th” competitors is equal.
I see those breaks as there to give the field crew and refs a chance to rest a bit. Not sure adding more work for them to allow 5th and lower placed teams have a title is worth it.
Agreed. I think trying to devise a way to determine “who was really 7th, and who was really 8th” is a waste of time. Why is that important? I would argue it’s actually hurtful to get knocked out in the first two rounds, and then have to fight a third match to determine “who’s worse”.
It seems like the alliance going from “We finished tied for 7th” to “We finished 7th” is a fairly negligible emotional improvement compared to the other team possibly feeling worse for going from “We finished tied for 7th” to “We finished 8th”. Unless there was actually some benefit to running the match, like district points or higher wildcard order, I don’t really see how it enhances the experience.
Particularly when there are so many other options. If it’s that important to sort a non-podium finish, get together and play rock-paper-scissors to settle it. Or flip a coin. Or take head-to-head record if the alliances played each other.
This is pretty much what’s done in every sport. None of this “7th/8th” stuff, they just say T-7th and move on. It sounds better and doesn’t cost you any time or effort.
I don’t have super strong feelings about this. I suppose I lean towards what Karthik said.
But, I don’t think this:
…is such a legitimate reason. Any match that is played is expected to take X minutes. Sometimes, delays cause the cycle to be 2X-10X. We don’t build the maximum possible delay into every match, though. If there are 100 matches at an event, we allow something like 110X to have some buffer and account for those delays. If we assumed the worst with these two additional matches, we’d be scheduling every match as a worst case scenario, which seems silly.
Tl;Dr any match runs the risk of running long but we don’t need to assume it’llLimelight, an integrated vision coprocessor be an hour to play two matches.
To me, a biggest issue is that we found a new place to slot awards in. If we add these matches during existing slots, we’re further condensing the awards, or prolonging the event be readding a dedicated ceremony.
While I appreciate the thought, I really think this is a solution in search of a problem. I just don’t see that teams in the 5-8 spots will want to play again in a match that cannot advance them.
So I don’t think I have a strong opinion on this topic in general, but I will say that personally my team would love 1 additional match even if it doesn’t advance us. It’s 1 more match of experience that can help you at your next competition, it’s potentially 1 last match for your official season, and we just loving playing official games, its fun regardless of the out come.