We, along with our awesome alliance partners 1640 and 1391 (both event hosts 
), won the Westtown MAR District yesterday with a tied score of 145 against 4954, 341, and 484 in the second finals match. The outcome ended up being decided by the 3rd-order tiebreaker of autonomous points (manual section 5.4.4, table 5-3). I think this makes complete sense, but I did get a lot of negative opinions from people who thought that was unfair, cheap, or just dumb, and that a tie in elims should always just be decided by another match. Of course, you canât change the manual, but do you think the manual should include tiebreaker rules, or should it always be a replay?
I believe it should be based off points in playoffs. Itâs a rare enough occurrence that realistically it wonât add much time to the event. Even as a volunteer that stays for ALL of teardown, Iâd rather take the extra 10 minutes to see a good closure to an event.
Quick story time: My senior year we were picked in Archimedes. Our quarterfinal matches went loss, win, tie, loss. I remember how hyped I was waiting for the official scores, and I can easily imagine how bummed I would have felt had we lost based on a tie breaker.
Playoff tiebreaker matches ended after 2010 when there were many ties (due to it being a low-scoring game). There hasnât been a game since then that needed this rule, though. All the games 2011-2016 have had few enough ties in playoffs that you could probably play another match without it hurting the schedule too much.
Firstly, I certainly donât have any complaint about the red alliance win in that match. Itâs in the manual, #1 earned it. If the GDC wants to prioritize something (say, auto), then I see tiebreakers as a valid way to implement that priority. Furthermore, if the reason we go to tiebreakers is so that everything happens on time then I totally understand going to tiebreakers.
All that said, if I had my druthers, weâd replay tied eliminations matches.
I believe that they added this rule as a precaution for Worlds. I know that in the Archimedes finals there was a match in this situation and if it were to be replayed, then it wouldâve set the whole of Worlds behind. In a smaller competition setting, one match wouldnât change the schedule too much. But in a huge setting such as Worlds, it would throw a large wrench into the whole schedule. All in all, this is probably more a rule for Worlds, not a district event. Congratulations on the win and thanks to Metal Moose and Sabotage for hosting it.
FIRST emulates the sports model to achieve its goals. You know what the sports model has? Tiebreakers.
(As an event manager, Iâm not swayed either. Itâs a long enough day as it is!)
Sports have tiebreakers to determine seeding (like FRC has tiebreakers for seeding). But those tiebreakers arenât whatâs being discussed. No major sport has tiebreakers to determine the winner of a game. The closest thing is shootouts in hockey, and they donât have those in the playoffs.
Luckily this tiebreaker only determined 10 ranking points, but I think more people would be upset if it determined the winner of a Regional and who qualifies for Champs.
But again, I donât think any major sport entirely replays a tied game either.
Since most traditional sports like Basketball and Soccer have sudden death scoring tiebreakers things that arenât possible to do in FRC.
I think the auto tiebreaker is an entirely fair way of breaking a tie.
Australian-rules football had a âminorâ problem a few years back when the championship game down there was tied after one overtime.
Seems they had no further tiebreakers, or provision to extend the game, or other similar items. So the âhead honchoâ of the league announced that the game would be replayed one week later.
Had a playoff match in OC flipped by one penalty. The alliances were 5 points apart without a penalty, red (I think) in the lead. Problem was, somebody on red committed a secret passage violation and was flagged for it. Blue got 5 points (score is now tied) and the first tiebreaker happens to be cleaner match (fewer penalty points). Blue won the match.
Speaking of âtimingâ at Westtown⌠On Saturday, the crowd was asked for their patience while the event turned into a big âdance partyâ for twenty minutes. No explanation given except that the event was âtoo far ahead of schedule.â (I think I heard a collective groan from all the mentors and volunteers that had been working until 10:00 the night before and knew they had to wake up at 6:00 the next morning.)
There has to be a better way to use this extra time, right?
What would you have used it for? I agree that â20 minute dance partyâ might be better spent, but in the spur of the moment, what would your suggested filler be? I canât think of any quick-fix for taking up that amount of time.
If an event is running 20+ minutes ahead of schedule (which, GO WESTTOWN CREW! Thatâs impressive), a lot of the âlittle thingsâ on the backstage end of the event get jumbled up. Teams arenât ready for their matches, and if the event is that far ahead of schedule it means the breaks between matches are even shorter due to compressed cycle times. Volunteer rotations can be confusing, and food service/venue staffâs schedules get mangled.
On-time is good, 5m ahead is nice, any more than that starts to be as hectic for the event logistics as being behind.
On the actual topic of thread, Iâm not the biggest fan of the tiebreakers - like others have said, Iâd be happy to stay the extra ten minutes to see another play - but I can understand where the GDCâs coming from in terms of time-savings and not wanting to over-complicate things.
AWoL, Iâm sorry that someone said your win was âcheapâ or âdumbâ because of something thatâs right there in the manual. 
You guys have a lot to be proud of this season, and I hope that doesnât take away from the win.
Eliminations tiebreakers are the result of an overreaction to a problem unique to the 2010 FRC game. In that year, scores were very low (one point per ball, 2 points per hang) so ties were very easy to accomplish. Many events had 4 or 5 match rounds waiting for ties to resolve one way or another.
Despite this being pretty much a non issue in literally every other FRC game there has ever been, FRCâs GDC has written in tiebreaker rules into the manual ever since to avoid a situation that happens only a handful of times per year. Personally I think this is among the most ridiculous rules in the manual, and that tiebreakers are poorly explained when they do happen. Not the fault of the volunteers - the scoring screen just makes this super ambiguous.
Thanks for explaining why events running ahead of schedule need to get put back on schedule; I was wondering why they did that dance party.
And thanks, Iâm certainly still proud of the win and how weâre doing this season. Iâm looking forward to competing with you guys at MAR Champs. 
As the field supervisor, this did not happen. We never stopped for a dance break. There were only small delays to allow for teams to properly connect their robots to the field and only one stopped match. The only delay I can think you are referring to was when a Cheval de Frise broke in consecutive matches and we had to take about 5 minutes to repair the first one as it was the audience selected defense. We started and ended on time Saturday.
You deserved every bit of that victory. 225 is an awesome team and your partners were also amazing. The rules are the rules and we all get the same manual in January.
Cue debate regarding whether or not soccer counts as a âmajor sport.â :rolleyes:
So, I think Iâm uniquely qualified to answer this. As the event MC, or an Event Manager for FIRST Mid-Atlantic, or the Senior Volunteer Coordinator for FIRST Mid-Atlantic, or a team mentor. Take your pic. :]
As Libby said, the goal is to keep the event on time. Not early, because that can negatively impact a team who needs every second to repair a piece of their robot (which is their right with the posted schedule). So we had the first dance break on Saturday afternoon, which brought us from nine minutes ahead of schedule to six minutes ahead of schedule. Which is why I made the reference to it during Sundayâs Opening Ceremonies.
Coincidentally as we went to take more time, there were issues with the field. Brian Sherman, being one of our many world-class volunteers, led his field crew to repair the problem while we had another dance break. We were still able to pick up time on Saturday after those breaks, ending matches about 6 minutes ahead of their scheduled time that evening.
Our goal is to make sure that the students have fun at events, first and foremost. Most students, thatâs playing with the robots. Which is awesome, and the point. For some students, they want to get up and dance. Itâs hard to have people sitting or doing the same task for a repeated period of time, so I would like to think that the momentary break in action to do something fun was generally welcomed by all. (I do believe I heard more cheering than groaning when the dance songs came on.)
If you have any other thoughts or suggestions on how to make the experience better for students going forward, Iâm happy to hear them. Feel free to send me an email, twexler at midatlanticrobotics.org.
Congrats to all the students and teams who attended the Westtown District. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting every team, and loved seeing all the robots perform on the field.
-Tom
I thought about this Sunday knight and thought that the best way to have handled this situation (from a GDC standpoint) would have been for the rule 5.4.4 award 1 technical point to the alliance that met the tie breaking criteria. This would take away the controversy of a tie.
Thank you to Sabotage 1640 (oh Lordy) and the Mighty Moose 1391.
And thank you to all who have said such nice things about 225.
They used to do that.