Impact of Playoff Structure on District Points Distribution

[Jake177]

The recent FRC Blog post got me thinking about how changes to the playoff structure might impact teams competing at events where they are also earning district points (Districts and District Championships). While things like four-team alliances and round-robin tournaments have been done everywhere from Einstein to offseason events, every event where teams have earned district points has had some version of a best of three bracket for playoffs.

So I ended up with the following spreadsheet. It looks at an idealized distribution of district points at a 40-team District. It compares the current playoff structure and three different six-alliance round robin options. (See the README tab for more details.)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z1kvJPUnyuIHPIT9Mbdvka2S9Oo8qj0fj8wsUPz42uQ/edit?usp=sharing

A: 3-Team Alliances
B: 4-Team Alliances, every team gets 5 points for a win
C: 4-Team Alliances, only the three teams on the field get points

Ranks 1-13 follow the same general trend under all four structures, but it was interesting to me how widely the distribution for ranks 14-24 varied across the different structures.

[lynca]

Thanks for sharing your playoff structure models. How does your model factor in two events ?

In the current structure (orange dots), some low rank teams do get lucky points being picked by the top alliances. However, by the 2nd event, luck usually doesn’t strike twice and those teams might not get picked at all.

[Jake177]

A single, idealized event is as far as I’ve gotten. I’m not sure the best way to expand this to capture the season-long implications like the one you mention, but if I get bored again I may play around with that at some point.