That happened to my team at CREATE Open. I am not going to name the team, but they wanted my team to pick until one of theirs got picked early on. No communications about that was given, so when A picked them…they were really mad and told my team that they were going to tank. It was so ridiculous! My team captain reported them to the head guys. I won’t say anything else but it is a stupid elementary style decision. They need to just grow up.
That is not a good example. I think that was some misunderstanding of some sort between teams. I just want to know if there are severe repercussions for these types of things. @Karthik
1 would be at the discretion of the head referee
2 would be at the discretion of the head referee, and maybe the event partner
3 would be at the discretion of the Regional Support Manager.
Based on the hypothetical, the manner of delivering the message “[we] are going to tank” and the perceived egregiousnous of the “other unsportsmanlike type [sic] behavior” could be deemed a violation of rule <G17>, which states:
Presumably, that’s up to the officials. And, as @Karthik says “We can’t offer blanket answers on snapshots of hypothetical situations like the one you’ve proposed.”
I think throwing a match falls under the following rule: <G17> All teams are expected to conduct themselves in a respectful and professional manner while competing in VEX Robotics Competition events. If a team or any of its members (students or any adults associated with the team) are disrespectful or uncivil to event staff, volunteers or fellow competitors, they may be Disqualified from a current or upcoming Match. It is important to remember that we are all judged based on how we deal with adversity. It is important that we all exhibit maturity and class when dealing with any difficult situations that may present themselves in both the VEX Robotics Competition and our lives in general.
Throwing a match is, in my opinion, extremely disrespectful to your fellow competitors, both to your alliance partners who have every right to expect that their partner is playing the game to their fullest capability and disrespectful to your opponents, who have the right to expect that their opponents are playing the game to their fullest capability.
Typically, the interpretation of the rule book is that if it is not specifically prohibited, then it is allowed. However, I believe that there are times when something may be technically not illegal (double negative on purpose), but is not ethically right to do. I would never allow one of my teams to throw a match. One might argue that it is part of the game. I would wholeheartedly disagree. I hope I teach my students that they should have respect for themselves, their fellow competitors and the game. I would rather have my students lose the tournament than lose their integrity.
Before the Kentucky State finals, Mr. Neagle told all the EC3 teams “If I see or hear that any of you threw a match or gave less than you could, I will pull you out of Alliance picks. The only acceptable way to influence the brackets and the picks is to play your matches and stand by your record.”
During qualification matches, there were many cases where EC3 teams faced each other. In those situations a “strategic loss” would have influenced the top of the bracket. It didn’t happen.
Many have argued that taking a loss for the good of the program is a loyal thing to do. Seems hard to swallow. Read about one such case in this thread from 4 years ago:
PPPPPPPPPPPersonally, if its during eliminations, it should be completely illegal, however there is a strategy to tank matches, and that shouldn’t be penalized, after all if your trying your best to win the tournament, then tanking matches should be a valid strategy. However during eliminations its completely unsportsmanlike, and should be penalized
I wholeheartedly and respectfully disagree. Tanking a match while “trying to win” a tournament, to me, is an oxymoron. And as I have spelled out above, in my opinion, is extremely disrespectful, regardless of when it occurs, qualifying or elimination.
Due to the teamwork aspect of vex robotics, tanking a match may have a “positive” benefit for your own team, but it will always hurt your alliance partner. It is totally unethical to try to game the system at the expense of another team.
I’m not sure how throwing a match and harming your alliance partner is showing good sportsmanship. Your partner sure doesn’t think so. It could be time for the GDC to make this explicitly forbidden.
Creating rules that are effectively impossible to police is pointless. A clever programmer can tank a robot with any sort of command that will look completely natural in the vex arena.
This is the system, we have to deal with the consequences of such an ecosystem where “teams” have to play each other. As long as it is beneficial for someone to lose, teams will do it no matter how many “feel good” rules we apply. It’s not fair but that’s life. When we play against a team with a sister bot in our alliance we will just assume the worse and hope for the best.
To answer your question.
Senario: Your sister team is ranked second with (Pick one: WPs APs or SPs). You are partnered with the team in first. You know your sister team will pick you in alliance selections…
That decision is tough, you want to be ethical, but then again you want to go to state…
My opinion:
Anything short of actively attacking your partner shouldn’t be attempted to be policed.
Not for SP, Andrew. For example, there are some who will tank a match to be ranked low enough in the qualification ranking in the hopes of being picked by the #1 alliance captain as their second pick, but not high enough to be picked by one of the lower alliances as their first pick. There are several scenarios that could play out that way. Losing in the qualifying rounds in order to better themselves for the elimination round is the “losing to win” strategy. In my opinion, it is disrespectful to do so.
This is one of the justifications that people assert for changing away from the current 3 team alliance system. The belief is that removing the second pick (2 team alliances) or changing the order the second pick is accomplished (captain 8 picks first in round 2 rather than captain 1) will remove all the incentive for purposefully losing a match. However, that’s not the case. So long as rankings are used for anything at all, there will exist some incentive to change the order. And while going to 2 team alliances will remove much of the incentive to lower your own ranking, it won’t remove it all. Suppose you want to be picked by captain 8, for instance. More realistically, though, is the issue that lowering the ranking of your alliance partner can raise the ranking of a team from your own program. @TheColdedge mentions this scenario above.
Last year Nothing But Net afforded a really interesting opportunity to sabatoge your alliance: the box of driver load balls. At one tournament, the one of the top EC3 teams was allied with a team from a rival program. The alliance partner insisted they were very high percentage on the driver loads, so they wanted to control the box of balls. During the match, they held the box and never used a single ball, despite repeated proddings from the EC3 drive team. The forced loss changed the rankings.
The alliance selection process–both networking and scouting aka data collection-- are important soft skills. Embrace the experience. But if you chose to lose to win and rig the process, you can expect rules to be drafted accordingly. If “sister teams” are the problem, you can expect limits on the number in a tournament or on an alliance or maybe random assignment of the third pick. Robotics is unique in that few other interscholastic endeavors talk about an ethos. But that ethos is only as good as the least common denominator. If you like the competition aspect, compete. If you want to lose and still get a trophy play youth soccer. ( With sincere apologies to those soccer players who hate that bad rep as much as I do as a former youth soccer coach).