Playing the most matches in 2024

FIRST General Forum
1

With event preferencing open for Crescendo, I’ve taken a look at the current schedule to answer the question: How many qualification matches could a team play in 2024 (ignoring district borders, registration constraints, cost, and the mental toll of travelling and competing for 28 days in a row). Credit to @YukiKabuki for inspiring me with this post, and to @jtrv for inspiring that post here

1. Compete at ISR #1 - Feb 26-27

2. Compete at ISR #2 - Feb 28-29

  • Flight UA91, TLV (Tel Aviv) → EWR (Newark) - Thu Feb 29, 11:10pm → Fri Mar 1, 4:20am

  • Flight DL2079, EWR → DTW (Detroit) - Fri Mar 1, 6:05am → Fri Mar 1, 7:55am

  • Drive DTW → Brooklyn, MI - 1hr 45min

3. Compete at FIM Jackson at Colombia - Mar 1-3

  • Flight DL2126, DTW → BNA (Nashville) - Sun Mar 3, 8:35pm → Sun Mar 3, 9:25pm (Extremely tight connection from event to flight)

  • Drive BNA → Knoxville, TN - 3hrs

OR

  • Drive Brooklyn, MI → Knoxville, TN - 8hrs

4. Compete at Smoky Mountains Regional - Mar 3-7 (6am load-in Mar 4)

  • Drive Knoxville, TN → Dalton, GA - 2hrs (Must arrive before 8pm for loadin)

5. Compete at PCH Dalton - Mar 7-9

  • Drive Dalton, GA → Atlanta, GA - 2hrs

  • Flights TK32 / TK788, ATL → IST (Istanbul) → TLV - Sat Mar 9, 9:40pm → Sun Mar 10, 7:25pm

6. Compete at ISR #3 - Mar 11-12

7. Compete at ISR #4 - Mar 13-14

  • Flight DL2079, EWR → DTW - Fri Mar 1, 6:05am → Fri Mar 1, 7:55am

  • Drive DTW → Ann Arbor, MI - 45min

8. Compete at FIM Ann Arbor - Mar 15-17

  • Flights AF377 / AF1390, DTW → CDG (Paris Charles de Gaulle) → IST - Sun Mar 17, 9:05pm → Mon Mar 18, 5:10pm

9. Compete at Halic Regional - Mar 19-21

10. Compete at Marmara Regional - Mar 22-24

  • Fly IST → SFO (San Francisco)

11. Compete at Monterey Bay Regional - Mar 27-30

  • Fly SFO → Saginaw

12. Compete at FIM Championship - Apr 3-6

  • Finally, unless your robot or students have self-destructed by this point (both likely) or you havent qualified despite having 5 chances to do so,

13. Compete at FIRST Championship - Apr 17-20


This would include 8 district events (including fim champs) and 4 regionals. Assuming 12 matches per district event, 8 matches for each Türkiye event, and 10 for MBR, Smoky, and CMP, we have a whopping 142 qualification matches. When including a theoretical max of 8 playoff matches for each event, we can have up to 104 additional matches, bringing us to 246 total. Finally, there is the potential for two additional events - FIMstein and Einstein, with a max of 6 and 8 matches respectively.

This means a team could theoretically attend 13-15 events and play anywhere between 142 and 260 matches in 2024.

42 Likes
2

You would need 2 FIM events to qualify for the FIM DCMP unfortunately. Mayhaps replace the FMA events with FIM events.

edit: you only need 1 if you’re good enough, and the original post had 0 FIM qualifying events, should be valid now

14 Likes
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You need to leave room for the mentors’ first and second hospital stays… possibly a funeral or two.

12 Likes
4

Haha beat me to it, I was about to make this post over the weekend :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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Done - replaced FMA Mt. Olive with FIM Jackson at Columbia, and FMA Springside Chestnut Hill with FIM Ann Arbor.

The main reason why I didn’t do this at first was the tight connection between Jackson ending at ~6:30pm, the 1hr 45min drive to DTW, and the flight to Nashville at 8:35pm - the team would likely need to be out of the event at 6pm to catch the flight. Alternatively, it is an 8 hour drive directly to Knoxville, but I wanted to avoid having to drive overnight after flying from Israel 3 days earlier.

7 Likes
6

I’ve got to say this wild and a very fun thing to read about. This is something I could see 1622 or 359 doing if, as you said, district borders, registration constraints, cost, and the mental toll were not a thing

3 Likes
7

Love this.

To make this happen I think you would either have to build a robot that can be carried on to a flight (or checked) with practically no effort. Or you could build 2 robots and ship one early in build season so you have a machine in the USA and a machine in Israel to support the fast turn arounds without having to constantly ship the machine back and forth.

Also, to save your mentors and students from becoming piles of mush you could create a team substitution network so that you pickup new mentors and students along the way to help you to compete in all these events.

9 Likes
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Also got me wondering which team has achieved the most amount of matches played in a single season? Maybe 118 this year (They did 104 matches)?

2 Likes
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Charter your own plane to handle the logistics, that’s why celebrities, elite business people etc use these things for in the first place; makes logistics way easier on tight timelines.

11 Likes
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3538 RoboJackets has tried for this title, and maybe has it if you include off-seasons. If I recall, last year they had about 200 matches.

4 Likes
11

On that vein. Are there technically any rules that prevent a team from competing at 2 events with 2 robots and 2 teams simultaneously? That or it also might be possible to fit in a couple more events if you don’t actually need to travel between events and the teams and robots can leapfrog each other.

4 Likes
12

Why not replace the Halic regional with the ISR DCMP? Happens in the same dates and that way you actually compete in all of the district’s events :slight_smile:

1 Like
13

I did consider this but decided against it, mostly for ease of access to Marmara - I’d prefer not to need to travel between back to back events.

1 Like
14

almost exactly what we do to attend 6 regionals lol

15

Just have to hope the robot shows up :slight_smile:

16

Just when I thought summer CD was done, you pull me back in.

This is great stuff! Someone get the caffeine thread guy involved so you can actually stay awake for it.

13 Likes
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This is why I read CD.

2 Likes
18

I think there are a few volunteers that have a schedule almost this intense.

1 Like
19

There are dozens of us!

3 Likes
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The event that really pushed the number of match for 3538 in 2018 and 2022 was WVROX which teams do 35 matches in 26 hours and 14 minutes ( though 2022 ended a couple of hours early. 3538has been at several of the events I go to and even brings extra robots (they had four at MARC this year)! They are true road warriors!

2 Likes