Shouldn’t the final be over if the alliance from the winners bracket wins the first match? Imo it is not fair that the team from the losers bracket gets 1 extra opportunity, for example in the south Florida Regional the winning alliance had to defeat the other finalist 3 times in a row, and the winner of the losers bracket wins by just defeating the other alliance twice and not 3 times.
The concern with adding a bracket reset is that it might take too long in a playoff format that’s already longer than the old one. In a perfect world, they would have one, but as it stands it would add at minimum 30 minutes to the schedule from the breaks alone, not counting any field delays or the actual matches.
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Krusty Krab is unfair!
Mr. Krabs is in there!
Standing at the concession!
Plotting his oppression!
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In E-sports I have seen the giants is best of 5 but the team that didn’t lose in the Double elim comes in with a Win. So for south Florida 179/695 alliance would need to only win 2 but the 180 alliance would need to win 3. This gives the team that didn’t lose a match a chance to still drop a match no worry.
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Event winner playoff wins required
Best of 3 bracket: 6 minimum, 6 maximum
Double elimination bracket : 5 minimum, 6 maximum
What is the problem, exactly?
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One team is eliminated by losing 2 matches while the other need to lose 3 to get eliminated.
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In the old system the event winner could lose 3 times in elims and still win the event.
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Top Chef’s Last Chance Kitchen would like a word with you
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Number of losses an event winner can sustain
Best of 3 bracket: 0 minimum, 3 maximum
Double elimination bracket: 0 minimum, 3 maximum
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Most teams would take a bye to finals (essentially what getting there through the win bracket is) over eliminating the loss bracket with one win, I think.
I know I would.
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A lot of tournaments do use a bracket reset for this, but I think FRC is fine without it.
You’ve already played most of the alliances in the tournament by the finals - not to mention it takes a lot of time to queue the same alliances up for a rematch - so while it does break the intuitive rules of the double elimination, I personally think it’s safe to assume both finalist alliances have proven themselves enough to be on equal footing.
It’s much more fair than the single elim format, where you only had to win a series against two different alliances to reach the finals - it’s not too uncommon to see an unlucky alliance be weaker than its seeding might suggest, so playing a larger number of alliances fewer times ends up being a much better equalizer than playing fewer teams more times.
Also, it eliminates the arbitrary edge case that, for example, alliance 1 and 4 couldn’t face each other in the playoffs. Maybe they’re the strongest alliances at the event - but since they were on the same side of the bracket in single elim, it was impossible for them to both be finalist alliances. Correct me if I’m wrong, but double elim allows ANY combination of alliances to play against each other in the finals.
Finally - and especially in high variance games like FRC - playing multiple times reduces the chance either team will win off a lucky game. If the upper bracket alliance needed only 1 win to secure the event, but the lower bracket alliance needed 2 wins, yes that was “earned” via the double elim system. But since all the rest of the games were BO1s, there’s a decent chance the lower bracket alliance has already lost a game due to factors out of the control. A bracket reset occuring at the beginning of the series (ie. just playing a straight up BO3 in finals) puts both teams on an even playing field.
TL;DR, yes it breaks double elim conventions but it’s fair. It’s more likely to be the strongest two alliances at the event in the finals with double elim than it would be with single elim, and there’s no point allowing the upper bracket alliance to win the event because of the lower bracket alliance having one unlucky game.
At the end of the day the competitions are not everything, but it is still a competition, and I think it’s way more valuable to give teams more matches than to restrict them. In fact while we’re at it, I wouldn’t mind making event finals BO5, Festival of Champions style. At least you’re not flying teams across the country for a single series 
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This post is (perhaps willfully?) missing the point that they were making. It’s not about the total quantity of wins or losses that could occur in the two formats.
Consider this scenario:
Alliance A beats Alliance B at some point during the Upper Bracket.
Alliance A progresses to the finals via the Upper Bracket.
Alliance B progresses to the finals via the Lower Bracket.
Alliance B wins the finals with a 2-1 score.
Alliance A finishes the tournament with 2 losses, both to Alliance B.
Alliance B finishes the tournament with 2 losses, both to Alliance A.
Why do you feel that Alliance B is more deserving of being crowned Champion in this scenario?
None of this is to say we should throw this playoff format out with the bathwater, but it’s shortcomings and potential ways to improve it definitely warrant discussion and exploration.
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The problem with having the alliance on winners come in to finals with a match advantage is it creates an extremely underwhelming finals. Theres all this build up just for it to all end in one match.
Double elimination still provides a ton of benefits even without a bracket reset. Your more likely to get the two best alliances in finals, and your reduce the amount of luck involved in doing well in eliminations.
Even though the team from winners doesn’t get a match advantage, they get the benefit of having to play far fewer matches and getting more time between matches to prepare. These reasons provide enough benefit that make it so a bracket reset outer match advantage aren’t necessary.
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This is my point, i’m not talking about number of wins/matches vs the previous format. Just saying as you explain in your post that the current way the final is played is not fair, you either make it so the winner of the winners bracket wins with just one match, or you give them an extra match to break the tie in case the scenario you layed out occurs.
Pretty sure the event winner can only have two loses now and still win the event? The finals needs to be a best of three to make the event winner win some more matches than just 4, I’m fine with allowing them only having to win 5 matches instead.
I believe it was the 695/179 alliance.
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If nothing else for me - it is this for Double Elimination:
From my short experience with DE in the off-season, the one thing that I would caution is when a Red Card is pulled out on an alliance. The rules need to be very clear (which they most often are) and should favor the team offensive team. We had this happen at an event (my team was red-carded) - and even though we made it back to finals, we ended up losing due to a mechanical failure.
And now watching a weeks worth of In-season events, I did not see this being the case once. So maybe it is just the ‘trial’ period shaking this out. I wasn’t a fan of DE at first, but after watching playoffs over the last few days of many events, I am starting to like this format. I really do like the different pairings each match - it keeps it exciting.
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It should have been over after 695/179/3653 beat 5472/180/7652 the second time. 5472/180/7652 lost 3 times in a double elimination tournament. That doesn’t make sense.
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More important than which alliance takes home a blue banner is that the playoffs give us all the experience of seeing the best two alliances compete against each other. If all that buildup ended with a single match, playoffs would be boring.
This is about putting a robot on the field, not about hanging a piece of cloth on the wall. More playoff matches is a Good Thing.
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I think finals are also such high pressure and such high stakes that the best of 3 helps avoid issues such as a roborio rebooting and stuff that that that is out of teams control.
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