The new qualification system has the super cool bi-weekly advancement pool that makes it so that the top x teams (x= ~30-31) qualify for champs every other week. This is super cool and I like this lots.
Now let me give you some quick stats that I am sure many of you already know.
There are 18 week 1+2 regional events.
Where these events are.
– 4 in Türkiye
– 4 in CA
– 2 in Canada
– 2 in MN
– 1 in NY
– 1 in MO
– 1 in AR
– 1 in Mexico
– 1 in Australia
– 1 in Taiwan
There are 29 week 3+4 regional events.
There are 22 week 5+6 regional events.
I’m not listing event locations for weeks 3+4 and weeks 5+6 as in my mind it doesn’t really relate much to the point that I am about to make.
Now for the point. With the new qualification system, the week 1+2 pool being the smallest pool brings a huge advantage to the teams in that pool.
You may be wondering why or how.
The answer is that because the same number of teams will qualify from each pool, even if the 1st pool were smaller than the 2nd pool. It would be notably easier to qualify for champs in the Week 1 pool than any other pool, this is due to a lower point total being needed to reach the top ~30-3. The top ~30-31 would also make up a larger percent of the pool.
There is another issue in here about the spread of events geographically in each week, but I am not going to get into that in my message here, feel free to discuss it here as I think that it relates to the main issue of this thread. (It could also be a new thread.)
I will also recognize that to my understanding, it is far too late to actually do much to fix these issues.
Not sure what needs fixing here necessarily. There was a conscious decision to make the progression in approximately equal pools. Reward for playing the game early and dealing with week1/2 issues is a slightly smaller pool.
My original thought was that if one goal of the new qualification system was to reward teams with the best performances a trip to champs, that having qualification in week 1+2 be to an extent easier would somewhat work against this goal when combined with
current regional availability.
This new advancement model more holistically rewards team performance with a slot on the global stage by incorporating a combination of both robot performance and cultural impact.
I will say that your point of view is also a very reasonable way to look at it.
Because the qualification pool only replaces the wildcard system for 2025, wouldn’t there be fewer chances to advance that way because it is less likely for a team to generate a wildcard? A team would either need to win an award and be on the winning alliance at the same event, or do one or the other in back to back weeks to generate a wildcard.
This isn’t true though, as the points needed to get pulled off of that list lowers in each set of two weeks, in every simulation. This means all teams who qualify off of the list in W1/2 would also qualify in the W3/4 and W5/6 pools.
Also do not expect every week to have even pulls. The numbers you referenced are specifically for 2026. Since 2025 is still qualifying 4 teams automatically that means only about 10 or so pulls are guaranteed every 2 weeks.
When an event doesn’t qualify 4 teams (aka when a wildcard would have been generated under the old rules), I imagine during that 2 week period an extra team will be pulled. Meaning week 4 and 6 are likely to have double or triple the amount of teams pulled compared to week 2 as FIRST won’t want to jump the gun on giving slots they don’t know will be available yet.
The document you pulled that quote from is titled “2026 Regional Advancement Changes” so there’s no reason to assume that it applies in 2025 and it wouldn’t be "going back"on anything.
I wouldn’t be so sure. The blog where that document was introduced has the 2025 changes. Notably, the points model is implemented to replace Wild Card and both waitlists.
With that said, the auto-qual throws a wrench in the whole “even pull” deal, because if you get a team that auto-quals twice that’s an extra slot added at the next pull. Those will be more frequent later in the season. So it’s reasonable that the pulls won’t be fully even; I would say that they’re likely to be “even plus even extras”–that is, the baseline estimated pull is even, but extra spots generated by teams qualifying twice get split evenly between all remaining pulls, and THOSE spots are particularly prevalent in Week 6.
And you are conflating two separate things. The blog post contained info on 2025 as well as 2026 advancement, but had no statement like the quote I was specifically replying to. That quote comes from a document entitled 2026 Regional Advancement Changes, which has no reference to 2025 advancement procedures and it would be unreasonable to extrapolate that expectation for even pulls to 2025.
Did you, or did you not, read the blog post where they said they were going to use the 2026 process for the waitlist pool, yes or no?
You know, the same blog post that issued said document detailing the 2026 advancement?
It specifically stated that besides the autoqualifiers, 3 per event, they would use 2026 if at all possible. That would reasonably include even pulls, which is part of 2026. If you’re going to use a process, and you remove a piece, did you use the process? No, of course not! You used a modified process. And that generally means telling people you’re using a modified process. (Trust me, one of the Selection taskforce members was griping mildly about seemingly every event modifying some part of the new selection process–which means it’s still mostly untested.)
So what I would see happening is that there’s even pulls.
With that said, there’s a pretty good chance that there are more spots available due to dual-qualifiers. The smart thing to do with those is to find them as they come up, and add them evenly to each remaining pull. E.g. if there are 3 extra pulls after Week 2, each draw gets 1. If there are then 18 after Week 4, split 'em 9 and 9. And if there’s another 47 after Week 6? Celebrate like crazy and pull 47 plus 9 plus 1 plus the base number.
Unless there was an update that I missed, there are still 4 auto quals per regional in 2025.
Winning captain
Winning first pick
Impact EI
With 68 events and ~300 Champs slots, there are only a guaranteed 28 pool slots. The plan as of a few months ago (out of the working group’s hands at this point and things might have changed in HQ) was to get champs attendance up to 100 at the first pull, 200 at the second, and 300 at the third. Just doing equal sized pools won’t work because the number of available slots in the pool is dependent on who wins invites at events.
The minimum possible pool invites counts are 16, 0, and 12 teams (or 28-0-0), assuming every single event slot is taken by a unique non-prequalified team (negligibly probable). In theory, the largest the pools could be are something like 51 teams, 60 teams, 100 teams. Both the minimal and maximal cases are nearly impossible though. Real numbers will be somewhere between.
My bad I misread I thought that was about 2026, so the assumption is the pools gain 60 from the 4th regional slot. And say another 15ish from the prequalified teams that won’t prequalify in 2026 either.
Per my simulation, (which only matters for getting the number of teams qualifying per district), there would be 109 teams qualifying through the regional pool in the 2026 system given 2024 district team counts and 600 teams going to Texas.