Picking from top 8 seeds

FIRST General Forum
1

Hello All,

Just wanted to start a discussion and find out how other teams feel about being able to pick teams from the top 8 seed. ex. seed 1 picks seed 2, seed 2 picks seed 3, so on and so forth.

Now I know there exceptions and teams don’t always do this.

In my own opinion, I feel that teams should only be able to pick from teams outside the top 8. I feel there is often super alliances of seed 1 and 2 at comps that I’ve attended. Again, there are always some exceptions where this isn’t the case.

if they take away the option of picking top 8 seeds, you are creating a slightly more even playing field. You are also giving teams that usually don’t get picked a chance to play in the finals.

I look forward to seeing your opinions! :slight_smile:

thanks!

2

Leads to teams sandbagging to be 9th or lower instead of fighting to be 8th so they can be picked by #1.

Although… The wildcard spot now puts an emphasis on being captain over 1st pick.

3

I don’t want to get into the implications of purposely manipulating match results to become the “best team outside of top 8”.

With regards to the 2nd sentence, one would assume the “best 24 teams” still play, therefore it would be the same teams either way, just in different configurations.

4

You worked hard to rank first, why not have the chance to pick whomever you want to play with.

5

OCCRA does this (with the top 6 teams).

There was a case this past year where a team in the top 6 (I think they were 4th) attempted to throw their last qualification match to drop below 6th (they would have if they lost the match). They were playing against the team in 2nd. The team in 2nd knew the team in 4th would attempt to score for them, which would put them low enough to be picked by #1 (which #2 did not want to happen), so the 2nd ranked team then scored for the 4th ranked teams alliance in that match (so both teams were scoring for the opposing alliance). It was one of the strangest matches (and most confused audience and spectators/fans) I have ever seen in OCCRA. The fans of both teams were shouting that they were scoring for the wrong alliance, and everyone was confused (but it made sense to ~10 total people).

The resulting chaos and playing the seeding system would be worse than the 2010 week 1 6v0.

6
7

The issue that stops this argument before it even gets off the ground is that the top 8 is rarely an accurate representation of the best 8 robots at the event. Thus, you’d be favoring the good teams with worse luck or schedules by giving them the privilege of being selected by the 1 seed.

This also creates a strange incentive for many teams to throw matches on Saturday morning. If you can’t pick anyone in the top 8, and a team really wants to be picked by a top seed, they have an extremely strong incentive to just not try, or even actively sabotage, their last few matches.

if they take away the option of picking top 8 seeds, you are creating a slightly more even playing field. You are also giving teams that usually don’t get picked a chance to play in the finals.

Actually, this wouldn’t help at all. If everyone picked perfectly, then the only possible way worse teams would join the elimination rounds would be if they were an alliance captain. If teams were ranked in perfect order, then only the 24 best teams would play elims regardless of whether or not inter top 8 picking were allowed. I can write this all out if you’d like.

8

I’m not entirely sure how this levels the playing field, and I’m really not sure how it gives a team that’s not usually picked a chance for elimination play. 24 (Though could be as high as 32) teams play in eliminations. 24 teams still play even if there’s picking in the top 8. As stated before, the 24 teams might be on different alliances, but it’s still going to be the same 24 teams. The 24 teams that each alliance thinks gives them the best shot at getting a bid to Champs.

This’ll sound harsh, but why should teams that usually don’t get selected for eliminations play get a better shot at being picked? Unfortunately, they’re usually not picked for a reason - they’re simply not seen as an asset to an alliance.

9

The prize for prevailing in the Elimination Rounds is an invitation to the Championship event. The top seeded teams after the Qualification rounds have, by and large, earned the right to form an alliance which affords them what they believe to be the greatest opportunity to win their matches and claim that prize.

(I wrote “by and large” because random pairings and other circumstances don’t always even out over ten or so Qualification Matches.)

The process has already been somewhat diluted by the introduction a few years ago of the serpentine draft system. This can give lower seeded teams an advantage under certain circumstances.

Prohibiting the top eight seeded teams from selecting among themselves will in no way increase the number of teams who have the opportunity to compete in the Elimination Rounds. It may make for closer Elimination Round matches. While it may afford two other teams the opportunity to compete in the Final Elimination matches, it may also deny a team with a more competitive robot a spot in the Championship event.

10

I feel that if FIRST were to implement that rule, it would lead to some drastic strategy changes. First, it would lead to people “sandbagging” to be in 9th, so intentionally losing their Saturday matches in the hopes that they can be picked by the number 1 seed alliance. This, in my opinion, is against what FIRST is about. I feel like intentionally losing a match is not Gracious or Professional, as you are dragging down your other two partners with you.

Having the first seed pick the second doesn’t always guarantee their victory. In the Minnesota North Star Regional, the number one picked the number two and the third seed alliance ended up beating them in the finals.

It is all about the luck of the draw. Anything can happen and the good teams will prevail. Plus this method leads to exciting alliance selections, such as the 2013 Northern Lights regional, where the first seed was rejected by everyone 2-6, thus making a very interesting…

11

I haven’t seen anybody in this thread mention it yet, but FIRST actually tried this one year, and as everyone has said, it just lead to meta-gaming by top teams, purposefully sandbagging to seed outside the top 8.

Interesting that this suggestion has come up at the same time as a thread about playing to win matches vs playing to win an event.

12

These are all good points I didn’t even think about! thanks!

13

I think to make a more competitive product, we take a something from the NHL, and also from engineering. . .

My first engineering prof. at Wayne State described engineering as, “doing for a nickel what any fool can do for a dollar.”

So here is a thought… we add budgets to the selection criteria. We have team budgets of $10k less, $10-20k, $20-$30k, and $40k and above has the luxury tax.

So the first seed, can pick from anyone, but there would be a max budget constraint for an alliance. Say you have to build the alliance and stay under a $75k total alliance budget. So your a powerhouse team, you can pick another powerhouse team, but you may have to play 2 on 3?

Or maybe a sliding scale for points based on budgets… If an alliance of 3 rookies has a combined budget of $30k, and your alliance budget is more than double, the rookies points are worth 2 times in scoring.

Getting all of this worked out boggles the mind, but isn’t that engineering?
(Although, it may not inspire anyone but the bean counters.) :slight_smile:

14

Except that there is limited correlation between team budget and team performance. Never mind the correlation != causation argument.

There are low budget teams (like my own 4343, who competed at two regionals and built their robot for around $11,000 total this year) who perform fantastically (we captained the #2 alliance all the way to the finals at GTREast).

Conversely, there are many teams with very high budgets that don’t perform well at all.

Yes, there are teams with big budgets that have great success on field. 1114, 2056, 148, 118 and more come quickly to mind. However, their budget is not the reason for their success. The reason for their success is hard work.

15

…sort of

What FIRST actually tried was automatic pairings among the top 8 teams, which was an even greater incentive to trying to manipulate the ranks in a game that was already very different from any other.

In 2001, the game was played by 4 robots working together attempting to score as many points as possible as quickly as possible (you got score multipliers for stopping a match early). Elimination alliances were comprised of 5 teams, with 4 on the field for any one match. Each round of the tournament consisted of two alliances alternating matches, each trying to score more points than the other alliance did in the match before.

Due to the size of alliances relative to the size of most events, there were only four elimination alliances formed at regionals. The 1 seed was automatically paired with the 5 seed, the 2 with 6, 3 with 7, and 4 with 8. Afterwards, alliance selection occurred with the 1/4 alliance picking first, and so forth (no “serpentine” element until 2006).

16

The playing field is evened all it needs to be by the serpentine draft.

17

QFT

18

The incentive to intentionally take losses has already been mentioned several times, but I want to highlight something that has only been touched on once so far:

Whoever ranks as #1 seed has earned the right to invite whomever they want. Nobody should be punished by the fact that they played well and in doing so become unselectable. The #1 seed should not be punished for their performance by having to play with the 9th best robot at the event, thereby hurting their chances at taking home a title. Yes, the alliances may be more “even”, but “even” is not the goal. The higher ranked teams are supposed have the opportunity to build the best alliance. That is, after all, the point of the qualification matches and rankings.

This of course assumes that the overall rankings are accurate, and that the #1 seed is in fact the best team, and the #2 seed is 2nd best and so on. If this is not the case, it’s still not any better:

(Note: when I say “best” team I mean the team which would be the best partner. There is no good way to define “best” otherwise, due to strategic choices.)

  1. The #1 seed is not the best team at the event but is better than the 10th best team at the event, and the best robot is in the top 8 (eg #2). The best team is hurt by not being able to accept an offer by the #1 seed, and has to settle for the 10th best robot, thereby hurting their chances at victory.

  2. The #1 seed is not the best team at the event and is worse than the 10th best team at the event, and the best robot is in the top 8 (eg #2). There is no effect by not being able to accept an offer by the #1 seed, because they would have declined anyways. The best team at the event would be unable to accept any other offers if they were lower than #2, but without in-picking, they wouldn’t be getting any other offers anyways.

  3. The #1 seed is not the best team at the event, but the best team is outside the top 8. They would have to accept the offer anyways to play in the elimination tournament, so this has practically no effect. With present day rules they could still decline and hope they move into the top 8 through in-picking, whereas forcing teams to pick outside the top 8 forces them to accept the offer. In practice, this *very *rarely happens.

In an hypothetical world where all teams build robots to do the same thing and the only gradation is how well they do it, and assuming the rankings are perfect, the #1 seed would chose the #2 seed, The #3 seed (moved up to #2 spot) would chose the #4 seed and so on. It was on this assumption that the previously alluded to “auto-pairing” rules were used in 2001, the infamous 4v0 game.

A brief history: the 2001 game had no traditional opponents. Rather, it was a competition to see which alliance could achieve the highest score. At the higher levels of play, the perfect score of 710 points was totally doable, and so eliminations were more of a test of who didn’t screw up. There were 5 teams on an alliance. Regionals had 4 alliances in the elimination round, championship divisions had 2 (divisions were therefore effectively CMP quarterfinals).

The first round of selection was automated. At the regional level, the #1 seed was assigned the #5 seed, the #2 seed given the #6 seed, and so on. At championships it was #1 with #3 and #2 with #4. After that teams got to chose. This was incredibly flawed, not only because the rankings are not necessarily accurate, but also because strategically, a variety of robot designs were necessary to achieve the highest score (unless you were one of the magical do-it-all robots like 71 that year, who fittingly won the championship because they were not only good, but it also basically didn’t matter who their partners were). The result was not only sandbagging, but also trying to get a specific seeding position. The first partners were not necessarily strategically compatible, so luck played a huge role.

Case in point: 71 was pretty much the best robot around. They could do it all, and really only needed partners to drive across the field and get their 10pts for making it to the end zone. Therefore, teams would want to either by in a position to auto-pair with them, wherever they seeded, or be low enough to not be part of the auto-pairing.

Auto-pairing is obviously an extreme example, but ultimately the integrity of the competition is based on the fact that the rankings allow teams to form the best alliance they can. Even if we assume everyone in FIRST is perfect and would never throw a match for strategic reasons, it’s still a dubious way to declare a winner. FIRST has already made an attempt at making alliances more “even” by implementing the serpentine draft format in 2006, and I think that’s as far as it should go.

19

Budge has VERY little to do with those team’s success, I bet if you gave that same group of Students and Mentors 5K to build a robot they would be 80-90% as competitive.

Take for example the team I helped start 2809, this year they ended up only having 2 weeks to build their robot this year, Kit drive train, lots of wood, and a very simple shooter. They were the 6th pick at FLR, and 3rd pick at GTR East, says alot about the quality of the students and mentors running the team this year.

20

I would argue that it is not really the “best 24 teams” but the robots that create the best 8 alliances.
The best robots don’t always make the best alliance partners.