Another thread here asks if being first seed is a good thing. I’d like to know what people think of being 2nd or 3rd to 8th seed. These are the only teams that are prevented from being on the aliance with the top seeded (and perhaps the best?) team.
What do you think? Is it a beter position to be ranked 3rd through 8th, or be ranked just below that and get selected by one of the top two teams?
-Mr. Van
In my mind it is almost always better to be a picking team rather than a drafted team.
There are some cases when folks on your team might think, “Hey, if we lose this last match we will be in a better position because team XXX will pick us up.”
This is a risky strategy that I have always arqued against when it came up for our team.
[list=1]
[li] You have no guarantee that the team you want to pick you will actually WANT to pick you
[/li][li] You have no guarantee that you will be available to be picked when the team you want to pick you gets their pick (sometimes they have a bad round and fall or someone else has a good round and climbs above them)
[/li][li] Sometimes you get in to the top 8 even when you DO have a lousy round – in this case you might have been ranked quite high if you had tried your best but instead you end up picking last.
[/li][li] You are not being fair to your partner – they may be on the bubble and your low score might be the doom of their chances to be playing at all on Sat. afternoon.
[/li][li] Lossing matches on purpose just doesn’t seem right to me…
[/li][/list=1]
Just my opinion. Others are welcome.
Joe J.
I might be wrong here, but I don’t think this is actually an issue this year. I know last year the top 8 seeds could not pick each other.
My understanding from FIRST is that they have gone back to the alliance picking of a couple years ago and that the 8 seeded teams can in fact be on the same alliance - meaning that the #1 seed can pick ANY team, even seeds 2-8, to be their partner. The advantages of being seeded 2-8 are that:
I think teams like it this way and it ends any wonder of “is there any advantage to NOT being in the top 8”? There is now NO reason for any team to think losing a match could actually help them. I agree with Joe J that teams should always try their best and that is the way it should be. IMHO.
If I misread the rule let me know.
JM
Jason-
I believe you are correct, but the rule is not completely clear. If it is possible for seed #1 to select seed #3 (in which case seed #9 becomes a selecting team) then my question is a moot point. I hope this is the case.
BTW, I agree with Joe. I hope that every team would always do their best, but I was wondering if the “qualifying points to get to Nationals” system would influence teams this year.
-Mr. Van
I can recall a certain nameless regional with certain nameless/numberless team who flat out said that their strategy was to NOT get into the top 8. :mad: Our last regular match was with them and two rookies. They gave this ‘wonderful’ idea of scoring 700 some points (a rediculous number, given the alliance) that got the rookies salivating. Left us with no choice but to go with it and see it not work. :rolleyes:
~Tom Fairchild~, who firmly believes that teams should play each of their matches to the best of their abilities.
This year’s recently named team 365 bot “MOE Hawk” might seem to try to do this. But really, we’re not. Our strategy for grabbing all three goals will get us max 90 QPs as is (we might change a few things). We actually designed MOE Hawk to have a good win/loss record as opposed to having a high QP score. It is through this that we hope to be picked by one of the top seeded teams who see our win/loss record to be trusty enough to invite us. Good idea? Bad idea?
I am glad to here that we can pick for any team that we want to this year. I hope to see the same mistake i saw in the reagionals 2 years ago with the top seed teams choising other top seed teams just because the seeded high and not seeing that the game changed in the finals giving our team a better chance.
All I can say about the #1 picking anyone in the top 8 is:
WildStang & the Chief!!!
I don’t remember the details, but I think Wildstang was #1 and Chief Delphi was somewhere in the top 8. Wildstang picked the Chief. That was an awesome alliance.
-Paul
Paul…
I remember that day well…my team happened to be other partner in that alliance…
That finals match at that regional was quite an experience, that i will never forget…especially since it was my first year.
There is a danger this year, in the seeding rounds, of teams defending against the three goal grabbers by moving themselves out of their scoring zone and getting zero points. 3 * 0 = …
You score none and they score none. Not exactly gracious, but just the thought might make a strong alliance keep the needs of the weak in mind during seeding.
Hmm…would it be strategy or just plain mean?
I don’t know about the rest of you,
but I interpreted the seeding rules as follows.
Seed team 1-8 become allaince captains in each repective allaince.
then a draft is done from all the team remaining, because 1-8 are already on teams, they can no longer be picked.
The way I see it, there will be no automatic pairing of allainces this year, there are quarter semi and then finals instead of last year where there was only semi and finals.
Anyone else read it the same way I did?
*Originally posted by Clark Gilbert *
**Paul…I remember that day well…my team happened to be other partner in that alliance…
That finals match at that regional was quite an experience, that i will never forget…especially since it was my first year.
Nice pic!
Here’s the video.
http://www.soap108.com/2000/events/il/qf1m1.mov
And a fairly complete elim tree.
http://www.soap108.com/2000/elimtree.gif
KA-108