Picking Teams in Elimination Rounds

At BAE it was the 5th seed versus the 7th: in the finals, with the 5th coming away with the win. At BAE I was rather amused when 1276 got picked after we had already picked an alliance partner. Also, at BAE the 9th and 10th seeds picked, so be sure to have a list if you are in the top 12. Without one, you’ll never amount to any sort of alliance. And put make sure you have a strategy when you make your list. We knew we wanted robots capable of certain things, and we picked robots capable of achieving those ends.

As I’m sure Grady, JVN, Karthik, Brian Beatty and other strategy greats of our FIRST world can tell you, SCOUTING IS IMPORTANT!

hello folks…at vcu it did help us i guess…which as it worked out evened out what happened to us. we were supposed to be ranked 7-1-0 and were ranked 6-2-0…a scoring mistake…but nothing we could do anything about unless we raised a lot of mess about it…so we took the mistake…
We ended up ranked 7th…then 6th after the alliance selection started.

This is where it helped us. Last year at Atlanta…we were ranked 19th in our division…so we thought we would have been picked for an alliance…but ened up being alternates and never played…no telling what might have happened if the alliance changes would have done for us if we had this last year…

One thing that stood out to me at NJ was:

**No teams picked among the top 8 seeds! **

This totally surprised me as this was very common last year. It seemed to me that it would have been advantageous for some of the top 8 to pick each other.

At first I thought that the new serpentine draft style prohibited it, but after rereading my rule book I knew that this wasn’t the case. So why didn’t they the top 8 select each other? Not that I am complaining about the results, because all the alliances were great (I don’t think there was a single bad pick). I am just curious.

As for the Serpentine Draft, there were not as many upsets as *(http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?p=368091#post368091) . I only counted one upset (#6: 223 522 75 over #3: 56 303 528) and that was really close (3 matches). Of course that is only one regional and no one was going to beat 25, they were just that good :slight_smile: .

I am wondering how this will impact Pittsburgh, which has just 25 teams. The #1 alliance is going to have 2 robots to choose between 2nd pick. The choice may become easier if one of the robots is broken. :(*

imagine if more than two robots are broken, the first alliance would get stuck with a broken robot on their alliance, and since Alliance Seed 8 is against Seed 1 in the begining of elimination the top team will be at a huge disadvantage

I guess you didn’t hear back. 1610 brought this to our attention later then they should have. We went back and quickly checked all their matches and found their alliances were 7-1-0, but in one of the wins they had been DQed, for a 6-2-0 record.

Wetzel

[quote=“The Lucas”]
One thing that stood out to me at NJ was:

**No teams picked among the top 8 seeds! **

This totally surprised me as this was very common last year. It seemed to me that it would have been advantageous for some of the top 8 to pick each other.

At first I thought that the new serpentine draft style prohibited it, but after rereading my rule book I knew that this wasn’t the case. So why didn’t they the top 8 select each other? Not that I am complaining about the results, because all the alliances were great (I don’t think there was a single bad pick). I am just curious.

As for the Serpentine Draft, there were not as many upsets as *(http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?p=368091#post368091) . I only counted one upset (#6: 223 522 75 over #3: 56 303 528) and that was really close (3 matches). Of course that is only one regional and no one was going to beat 25, they were just that good :slight_smile: .

I am wondering how this will impact Pittsburgh, which has just 25 teams. The #1 alliance is going to have 2 robots to choose between 2nd pick. The choice may become easier if one of the robots is broken. :frowning:
*

Exactly.
At smaller regionals the number 1 seed will be forced to work with a possibly “weak sister” and may be in a position to work twice as hard just to survive.
This was a huge swing and a miss on FIRST’s behalf.[/quote]

Just a couple of things that went on during the alliance selection at the PNW Regional. The first surprising thing that happened was the Cheesy Poofs graciously declining the #2 alliances invitation to join them and instead picked there own alliance partners (which was a good choice, considering they won the regional). The other thing that was pretty cool was the #8 alliance (our alliance) made it all the way to the finals without loosing a match (there was one tie) before loosing 2 games to 1 to the Poofs.

I think the reverse picking order definetly helps even out the teams and gives everyone a shot at the championship.

Mike C.

This is definitely an interesting twist to the game this year, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out next weekend. Last year, we didn’t think we’d get picked at all at Chesapeake; we were doing well, and then our last QF match brought us down about 20 spots to number 29. We wound up on the 7th ranked alliance; we were ecstatic. I’ve been thinking about how that would have been different if they had done this last year.

The above comment was absolutely true at yesterday’s BAE GSR – the real strength of the 1276 alliance was not that any one robot on the alliance was way above the rest of the field, but that the three allied teams (1276, 133, and 1519) had complementary abilities. From the very first quarterfinal match in which we played, it was evident that 1276 did a great job choosing the eventual winning alliance. We were thankful to be part of it, and were glad to be teamed with 1276 and 133, each of which we had been teamed with at tournaments in “Triple Play.”

I wondered about that too and reviewed the tape as it was throwing off our ranking calculation.

It seems your team received a DQ in match 75 for going into the 1pt zone, which I would deem un-fair. What I saw was your robot being pushed into the goal by the blue robot (540). See 1:55 into this video clip.
http://www.soap.circuitrunners.com/2006/movies/virginia/va_075.wmv

…unless your robot went into the score zone at some other point in the match, you have a right to be upset.

It’s actually better to be ~ 5th seed anyway this year as that gold medal you have proves!

KA-108 :cool:

being pushed into a goal is actually fair game for DQing, according to FIRST. I would argue that the pushing team should get the DQ, but FIRSTs reasoning is this (to my knowledge):

Passing more than 3 inches into the lower goal could trigger the ball-counter, thus throwing off the scores entirely. Thus, rather than trying to determine the original score, the referees simply DQ the robot.

Wetzel, is this correct? if not, could you post the correct version?

I think that the serpintine draft will be good in the larger regionals that have a lot of talent, and where some of the middle of the pack teams are ranked there due to some bad breaks.

However in the smaller regionals (like NYC that only has 28 or so teams) the 1st ranked allaince will only have like 2 or 3 teams to make their final selection from. It should definately be a new twist on the elimination matches this year.

Another interesting note about the BAE regional…

Team 319 was ranked 9th, but treated as #10 when alliances were bumped up due to 3 “inter top 8” picks.

It was kind of interesting, although I do feel bad for team 319.

Sounds strange, can you clarify what you think happened?
When top 8 teams picked each other, didn’t the # 9 team at the time move up to the # 8 spot? Just trying to understand how they were 9th, but treated as 10th.

Yeah, I’m not getting that either. Tom, would you like to clarify?

They possibly messed up?

What I’ve heard is that 1073 picked before 319, even though 319 seeded higher.

Yes - 1073 was asked up before 319, but 319 was ranked higher then 1073. Then 1073 picked, and 319 was called up…

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The announcer was given an older copy of the rankings since it had changed after we ensured that all the scores had been entered correctly into the system. We noticed it at the scoring table that mistake but unfortunately 1073 had already been called up by that time.

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Yeah, that was pretty agrivating. It confused me so much that I had no idea who to pick when I went up. Luckily I picked a pretty good alliance and we made it to the finals. Good luck nexyear everyone! Only 10 months till kickoff!

While I can certainly see the disadvantage at smaller regionals, I don’t necessarily think of it as a swing and a miss. Traditionally, the first seed had the pick of the litter, and in most cases put together a very strong alliance (assuming they did proper scouting). The 8th seed was only able to pick from the leftovers from the top 7 for both rounds of the draft. The end result was typically stacked in the 1st seed’s favor, when you put the theoretical best alliance against some lower ranked teams. As far as I know, there’s only been a handful of 8th seed upsets when pitted against the 1st seed alliance.

Under the new system, there is the very real possibility of a tough match between the 1st and 8th seed alliances. I’d argue an alliance of two strong robots with a relatively weak partner would have approximately the same effectiveness as 3 middle of the road robots. With a balance of power like that, the elimination matches are no longer a stacked alliance vs. a weak alliance, and for all intents and purposes no longer a sure win.

It also greatly increases the burden on scouts, who now need to come up with a list of 24 potential alliance partners (for a 1st seed team), rather than 8 or 9. Strategically, it’s brilliant. Statistically, it’s a nightmare. In the end, it led to some of the most exciting elimination matches I’ve ever seen in FIRST. I had the opportunity to see team 25’s scouting team in action in New Jersey this year, and all I can say is wow. They know their stuff, and know what needs to be done. This year, more than ever, if you are a top 8 team, make sure you have all the scouting data necessary to make confident alliance choices, because in the end, it will make or break your shot at the gold.