Is FIRST Encouraging Uncompetitive Winners?

FIRST General Forum
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These views are solely my own. I also realize that this has been brought up before, but I wish to see what people have to say about it now that regionals have passed and the competition is fairly established.

Is FIRST encouraging uncompetitive teams?

My answer: Most assuredly, yes.

No one likes to see a team, regardless of sport, realize they’re about to lose and then completely give up in terms of trying to get more points, and we know more points equals winning. So a team realizes they’re going to lose, and so stops all attempts at winning. In conventional sports, these teams would be booed until all the throats in the arena were hoarse, they would be shunned and they would be ridiculed.

In FIRST, those teams…win?

FIRST is of course not a conventional sport. No “real” competition has the winner’s score rely on the loser’s.

So why did FIRST implement this rule?

I believe the answer is that they wanted to encourage close matches. Their lofty sugarcoated belief was that this would result in many close matches with the fight lasting till the buzzer.

And FIRST was right, for the qualifying rounds.

However, the Elimination Rounds in FIRST have always been an ENTIRELY different world. A much more exciting world. Doing well in qualifying rounds was always nice, but elimination rounds is where the REAL competition of FIRST has always been.

Finals being an entirely different world does NOT lend itself to the same rules as qualifying rounds. There is no seeding rank to worry about. There is no average QP to fret over.

A team can now win eliminations, and the “championship,” by winning one match and then doing their best to not score a single point in the next match, of course while keeping their opponent’s win to a score lesser than their own.

Is this sportsmanship? I would say most definitely no.

Is this exciting in the sense past years have been? I would say most definitely no.

Is this strategy? I would say yes, as would most the rest of the community. This is what many teams realize will lead to winning. Although it may not be as dramatic as I just described it, many teams realize they will not win a round, and then demolish their scores so they can still “win.”

This WAS discussed before the competitions began. I was under the impression that there was faith in the FIRST community that this behavior would not appear all that much in the honorable FIRST. A quick look at regional scores will prove anyone with faith remarkably wrong.

At Great Lakes, only two alliances in the Elimination Rounds DIDN’T lower their scores intentionally when they lost.
At the Florida Regional, only two alliances in the Elimination Rounds DIDN’T lower their scores intentionally when they lost.

I realize this may be because those alliances didn’t know they were going to lose, but I’m giving the community the benefit of the doubt in assuming that there are at least SOME teams out there that wouldn’t take the “Hey, I’m going to lose, and winning is all-important, so let’s ‘win’ by bringing our score to zero.”

By all means, this COULD lead to elimination rounds where alliances end up protecting, or wishing they protected, THEIR OPPONENT’S stacks.

I do not blame the teams that are taking the “win one, shamelessly lose the next one” route. They read the rules, they understand them, and they want to win. We all want to win. It is FIRST’s fault for blatantly leaving this option wide open to the teams: To try to win decisively or to win the backhanded way.

This is ridiculous. This is a mockery of a competition in the sense of what I have come to regard as FIRST competitions, those brimming with GP. We need to bring back the games and the scoring where the winners were the ones who fought the hardest and ACTUALLY beat their opponents 2 out of 3. Not the people who win a game, and then give up the fastest and knock over their stacks the fastest, or vice versa. I would hope FIRST sees the outcome of this year’s scoring system (one that has been in development for years) and realizes the misplaced trust, and adjusts accordingly.

However, knowing FIRST, I have absolutely no hope of this happening. I pray I’m wrong.

I also don’t believe this post will aid in any type of change, I simply want to know if I am alone in thinking this.

aTm

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I started a thread at the beginning of the season as soon as I read the rules for the elimination rounds. I disliked them then and I hate them now. The game is won in the first match and the second match is rarely anything to watch. Its confusing for the spectators too. Not to mention that getting the official score for your match is also not all the time accurate. I can go on forever however I’ll leave it here please for BattleCry and all of the other post season competitions can we just do best out of three. That’s how this game should be played.

3

The finals were always competitive without encouragement from FIRST because you are in a win or go home situation.

4

Although I’m not thrilled with the elimination rules, I see this as an exercise in scouting, team-building, and playing the game.

You try to put out an offensive blitz in match number one. You go into the infamous “four corners” offense in match number two.

Granted, college basketball put a shot clock in because of the “four corners” and it was boring as all get out to watch, but there was nothing dirty about it.

5

*Originally posted by Tony *
**I do not blame the teams that are taking the “win one, shamelessly lose the next one” route. They read the rules, they understand them, and they want to win. We all want to win. It is FIRST’s fault for blatantly leaving this option wide open to the teams: To try to win decisively or to win the backhanded way. **

Ok, let’s assume lowering your score in the eliminations is winning in a backhand way. Teams which engage in this “ungrasious and unproffesional backhand” strategy are at no fault of their own, rather it is FIRST’s fault, because they leave the possibility of it helping teams? I find this difficult to believe. It is the responsibility of all teams to practice gracious proffesionalism, and to follow the spirit of the rules, it is not FIRST’s responsibility to make it impossible for teams to act ungracious and unproffesional.

That said, I do agree in that I prefer the best two out of three to the current situation. I feel a bit ambivalent about this, however, as I also opposed the elimination rounds last year, where teams could capture three goals and sit (I saw that as boring). Thus, I wanted qps to play a higher role in elimination rounds. Many people felt this way, and that is why FIRST changed the game the way they did. Now, I agree the elimination matches this year should be changed next year. People who agree can tell FIRST in the FIRST Forums politely. But, seeing how FIRST made this rule because they were listening to us in the first place, please don’t say FIRST is making a mockery of the game.

Interstingly enough, most people I’ve talked to thought the 2001 coopertition game boring to watch for the qualifying rounds. I did too. But I personally thought that was very exciting to watch in the elimination rounds. It is a challenge to come up with a game exciting to watch for both the qualifying rounds and the elimination rounds, but I trust FIRST will try their best (and they even illicited game design ideas from all teams).

Stephen

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The game is won in the first match and the second match is rarely anything to watch.

That is hardly completely true though. At the Great Lakes regional in the finals the 27,322,and 217 beat 302,67,and 226 by 67 points. We (I am from 302) all thought we were going to lose but what we said not to do was just give up. And look what happened. We came back to beat them and get a few more elimination points from them. If thats what you call unexciting then i would truely like to see exciting. But i do agree that it is a little unfair for teams to do that. At Great Lakes i saw one alliance do it in particular throughout the finals and i even admit that my alliance did it in one game. Maybe its not right but its also not right to put FIRST in a situation to say that their not making a competitive game. Its not that easy to think of a game you know.

Kelley Belenky
Driver, Team 302

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ok i have a different view then most on this… my team 250 was paired in the quarter finals with one of the alliances we picked at utc this year, (we were the 3rd seed). During the first match a few technical problems occured but through sportsmanship with both alliance partners our team and our partner, we over came them. But we lost that match. Then we comeback in the 2nd match we win it. both sides blue and red knew it would be close but we overcame the odds and went on to the semi-finals. I know this is odd and not a everytime occurance but i think this year since the losers points still count towards the winners points in the quarter, semi and full finals its still more competition in the finals then last year.

Just my view
~Mike D. from 250

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I know for a fact we were one of the teams that implemented the strategy in question. (Lowering our score if we were about to lose)

There is a great deal of chance in every single match, even a perfect autonomous robot may have a bad match, so just because you are losing one but know you have another coming up, this year it would be silly to do it any other way.

There is no way I would want to be heading into match #2 and have to make up 150 points or something to that effect because you gave the opponents a big 2X multiplier. To say that the robots were uncompetitive since they lost a match is silly. The same robots in the next match could win by 150 points. I saw it out there all day, a great robot ends up flipped (201) tangled (33) or disabled for a wheel leaving the field (494) they just had a terrible match but why not make the second match possible to win?
I would urge any team to use the strategy, this same strategy caused us to lose at buckeye, where you win the second but not by enough, the emphasis for this years game in the elimination rounds is the First Match, if you win you are in much better shape to control points scored in the second.

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*Originally posted by Tony *
**No one likes to see a team, regardless of sport, realize they’re about to lose and then completely give up in terms of trying to get more points, **

if you are reffering to our match against you in the quarter finals at GLR, we were immovable, as was our alliance. Shaking hands was the only appropriate thing to do. Why sit there trying to move, and risk damaging our robot with only 30 seconds left in the second match of the quarterfinals?

10

A simple yet elegant fix to the current rules would be to make the finals count only the score of your team.
None of this opponents score stuff, that way both teams would be struggling to get the most possible points, no matter if they had won the previous match or not. It would be possible to overcome the small deficit created in two matches…not the huge one that applies the multiplier.

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*Originally posted by Jrmc *
**A simple yet elegant fix to the current rules would be to make the finals count only the score of your team. **

I agree.

Sadly, the rule won’t be changed, more than half the regionals are done with the current system.

All you can really do is fight hard to win that first round, and bring both scores DOWN as much as possible, so that 2 robots on the ramp in round 2 might pull off a win.

That’s my strategy.

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While I do understand how if a team wins the first match, they can completely sabatoge match 2 in the eliminations and move on, this was most certainly not the case in Annapolis. My team, 365 with our robot GeroniMOE successfully came back in both the quarter and semi-finals to win the round in match 2 after a defeat in match one.

Elim QF2.1 we lost 39-78 resulting in us being down 117 qualifying points, well we came back in round two with a score of 69-68 (yea it was an awesome match) and won it with 205 qualifying points, giving us a total 20 point lead and an advancement to the semifinals where similar circumstances occured.

Now believe me, this may have been just luck, but it is possible to win it. Good luck to all teams and I hope that this issue is looked at for future competitions.

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**Ok, let’s assume lowering your score in the eliminations is winning in a backhand way. Teams which engage in this “ungrasious and unproffesional backhand” strategy are at no fault of their own, rather it is FIRST’s fault, because they leave the possibility of it helping teams? I find this difficult to believe. It is the responsibility of all teams to practice gracious proffesionalism, and to follow the spirit of the rules, it is not FIRST’s responsibility to make it impossible for teams to act ungracious and unproffesional.
**

You must not have received a copy of ‘The Memo’.

  1. Teams with numbers of 150 or less are qualified to interpret the definition of ‘Gracious Professionalism’.

  2. Teams with numbers less than 200 are qualified to interpret ‘the spirit and intent of FIRST’.

  3. Teams with numbers less than 250 are qualified to interpret what Dean really intends the goals to be.

  4. Teams with numbers less than 300 are qualified to rule on the role of engineers and mentors during the design and construction process.

  5. Teams with numbers less than 350 are qualified to define the appropriateness of massive funding versus the challenges of running a team with a minimal budget.

  6. Teams with numbers less than 400 are qualified to interpret the scoring system and define the concept of competition vs cooperation.

  7. All teams are qualified to blame Battlebots for whatever reason.

  8. People who have not yet graduated from college are allowed to construct messages without capitalization, punctuation, or spelling considerations.

  9. Adults are not allowed to post humorous messages.

  10. All messages should be taken way to seriously.

  11. Teams with numbers less than 275 are allowed to reminisce about how great it used to be before all these new teams showed up.

  12. …

There are many dichotomies that we learn about over time. Things like the interaction between ‘people who create’ and ‘people who count things’, or ‘people who make things stable’ and ‘people who change things’.

Much of this debate is the interaction between ‘people who make rules’ and ‘people who play the game’. How many of us have been involved in a competition where the game starts out with one page of rules? If it is highly competitive, and allows multiple solutions to the challenge, the rule book will grow to 50 pages within 4 years. Simply put, it is very difficult to document in extremely clear language what the intent truly is.

When you add human judges into the mix, you add the element of interpretation and personal bias. This becomes very frustrating to people who are passionate about how they believe the game should be played, or how teams should behave.

FIRST is fortunate to have many people involved that are passionate about the fundamental issue of allowing students to interact with people of technical background on a project that is so challenging. Forums are a collections of opinions. We need to respect that many of these opinions come from passionate people, all trying to shape this activity into what they believe is the correct experience.

If the FIRST officials feel that the competition has taken a bad turn, then they need to clarify and enforce the rules accordingly. As participants, we play the game according to our interpretation of the rules. We can make proposals to FIRST that may shape next years game. Seems to me the concept of qualifying points might be an appropriate discussion.

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The problem I have with the scoring is simple.

You can win 100 to 0
then loose 88 to 87

and even though you only lost by 1 point, and you wont by 100 points, I won’t advance. Chances are that the team that won the first match has the better robots, yet they do not advance. In my opinion this years ruling isn’t advancing alot of teams that deserve to be advanced. I like last year’s 2 of 3, I watched so many matches last year and not once did I think that the better team didn’t advance, and this year I’ve thought that in probably half the matches I’ve seen.

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*Originally posted by Gope *
**The problem I have with the scoring is simple.

You can win 100 to 0
then loose 88 to 87

and even though you only lost by 1 point, and you wont by 100 points, I won’t advance. Chances are that the team that won the first match has the better robots, yet they do not advance. In my opinion this years ruling isn’t advancing alot of teams that deserve to be advanced. I like last year’s 2 of 3, I watched so many matches last year and not once did I think that the better team didn’t advance, and this year I’ve thought that in probably half the matches I’ve seen. **

i don’t necessarily agree, the game is about strategy, if you can win by a smaller margin, maybe that means you planned it. if you lose by a huge margin, maybe it was strategically intelligent. i’m exercising my right not to use the shift key by the way, i’m still in college. plus, i can say for a fact that some robots lose some rounds terribly because they don’t have a partner that functions. this doesn’t reflect the ability of a bot, and a close, well-played match may be lucky, or it may be strategy. what’s wrong with ‘your score plus the losers’ with no multiplier?

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Norm, you broke two of your own rules there -

*Originally posted by Norm M. *
**8. People who have not yet graduated from college are allowed to construct messages without capitalization, punctuation, or spelling considerations.

  1. Adults are not allowed to post humorous messages.

  2. All messages should be taken way to seriously.
    **

But anyway, my take on the matter is that the rule sucks, to be sure. It’s difficult to understand, but it can be learned. Is it “underhanded” to minimize points in a round that you know you’re going to lose? Not at all. While I can see both sides of the debate on the fiery subject of collusion (please don’t consider this mention an attempt to resurrect the rightfully dead discussion), I can’t here. In an elimination round it is, simply put, really stupid for you to try to put your robots on top of the ramp when you’re losing by 51 points. Every additional point you score is another one you have to make up later.

The question is though, is this what we asked for last year when the peanut gallery was crying to “make the finals and the elims the same game”? Well, it’s a try. The fact is, as Tony said at the top, the elims are fundamentally different from the quals. This attempt to make them the same has not only failed, but exacerbated the problem, as well as making the finals less interesting to watch.

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My main comment was to counter the first match is all that matters theory. Lets remember the communitive rule A+B=B+A. There have been a few instances where a alliance loses the first and wins the second and the round. My theory the better alliance normally wins the first match. So logically they win the second match. Or because they won the first match by 100 to 10 they know they could just kill both scores and win. The better alliance still comes out on top no matter how you play the game. If it were best 2 of 3 the better alliance would win just the same.

FIRST is about strategy and most veterans know that qualifying and finals are played very differently because the focus goes from scoring high to winning. Killing your own score isn’t being uncompetitive its being strategic.

According to rules 4,8, and 11.

mentors should be encouraging ideas from students and then incorperating them into a final design then assist the student in building said design

back in the day before all these exotic materials and hoo haa existed teams were far more creative with what they built and how they built them teams calculated torque with slide rules not ti-89s the materials available to teams was a fraction of what is allowed to be used today and yet there bots were of the utmost quality and inginuity

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*Originally posted by Jrmc *
**A simple yet elegant fix to the current rules would be to make the finals count only the score of your team.
None of this opponents score stuff, that way both teams would be struggling to get the most possible points, no matter if they had won the previous match or not. It would be possible to overcome the small deficit created in two matches…not the huge one that applies the multiplier. **

As I believe has been mentioned in previous discussions this year about this very topic, the fact that the elimination matches are based on EP and not raw scores was not something that FIRST pulled out of the air, but rather at the request of many teams(during the team forums back in August) to develop a game in which the goals(in this case, win by 1 rather than a blowout) were consistant throughout the game, rather than having one goal in qualifying, and then a completely different one in the elimination tournament(as we saw last year)…

19

I admit it. I am the biggest offender of what I call the “descoring strategy”. Ask 27, 322, 291, and 63 and they will tell you that I passionately pleaded with them to use this strategy in the elimination rounds.

Now for some facts:

  1. We (I know not all of us) asked for the elimination rounds to be more like the qualifying rounds.

  2. FIRST decided to use a 2 match total as the elimination scoring and make the loser’s score worth more to the winner than to the loser.

  3. FIRST mandated that all 3 robots must play at least one time, even if broken. Let’s remember why the 3 robot team was started in the first place … to help alleviate the disaster when one robot breaks.

Given all these rules, the descoring strategy is the smartest strategy to implement.

To Tony,

C’mon man, do you really believe it is unsportsmanlike to descore? If you do, then I apologize for being unsportsmanlike; but I just don’t see it that way. By the way, your team did it in the semis against us and I thought it was a brilliant move. That move actually kept you in the game for the second match.

I know it is against the competitive nature in us to try to lose, but when your points are worth more to the other team than you; it is a solution that needs to be considered.

Here are the reasons I like the descoring principle:

  1. If it is clear you are going to lose by a big margin, you descore (I.E. moving your robot off the ramp) in order to keep the score close enough to catch up in the second match.

  2. Something goes terribly wrong in the first match and you are playing 2 v. 1. (Have you ever heard the saying ‘Live to fight another day’?) You can descore to keep it close so you may win the second match.

  3. You win big in the first match (my rule is at least 60 points) and you try to mathematically eliminate the other teams chance to catch up. The risky thing about this strategy is that if the other team realizes that you are trying to descore, they can score for you to keep them in the game (Game 2 of our semi-final match against 111, 292, and 548). This strategy makes it so your team does not have to worry about fighting on the hill at the end.

  4. Number 3 is important, because if a robot does break and must be used in later rounds, the descoring strategy keeps you in the game. This happened to us in our Final round at Great Lakes. 322 broke its drivetrain in our tough semi-final match. Team 27 and us went in the 1st round of the finals to get a high score. We were going to use the descoring strategy in the second round in order to keep us competitive in what we knew was going to be a 2 v. 1 scenario. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t pull it off.

I did not make the rules, but I am trying to keep my team competitve within the rules given.

I would like to apologize to anyone who thinks this strategy to be against gracious professionalism and unsportsmanlike, but I simply do not agree. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I take sportsmanship and gracious professionalism very seriously. I think the descoring strategy is a legitimate strategy that should be considered by all teams competing in the elimination rounds.

-Paul

20

I pretty much agree with Paul. If I were in that situation, I would do the same thing. Why is it considered shameful to do the smart thing? As the saying goes, “I don’t make the rules, I just live by them.”

I have to comment on what Nate Smith said a few posts above. I agree that FIRST changed the rule in response to everyone’s cries of “make the eliminations and the qualifying the same game”. The only problems is that I think FIRST missed the point.

I think the point was (at least when I was saying it), is NOT to make the eliminations like the qualifying rounds, but the other way around: make the qualifying rounds be like the eliminations. In other words, forget adding the losing score to your score and all that stuff. Use win/loss record with the tie breaker being the average scoring margin, or something like that. Therefore, in the qualifying rounds, what matters is winning, just like in the elimination rounds.

-Chris