A red alliance has a slight benefit of placing the robot last before the match.
That’s why the higher seed in the elimination matches gets red plates.
Likewise, it would be somewhat unfair if a team got assigned blue for 9 out of 9 qualification matches.
Is there any rule for match scheduling regarding even distribution of red vs. blue matches? I have lived under the impression that there is some rule about that, but I couldn’t find any. I have only found such a criteria in the FRC rules (10.5.2 “5. provide even distribution of MATCHES played on blue and red ALLIANCE”).
Obviously, it can’t be a hard rule (since you can have a tournament with odd number of qualification matches), so it may be “more of a guideline”, but I still wonder if there is such a rule in VRC.
In qual matches, the red alliance gets to look at how the blue robots are set up and set up their robots based on that information. In over under it doesn’t matter too much but in a game like tipping point it really does.
And there is no such rule; I guess in vex we have to trust that the law of large numbers guides our red/blue distribution ever closer to 50/50.
The match scheduling algorithm in Tournament Manager takes into account the red advantage and attempts to balance the number of times each team plays on the red alliance vs blue alliance. However, this is one of many competing goals of the scheduling algorithm so it is not guaranteed to always be perfectly even.
When i get home from Worlds I can double check the stats over the last few years, but largely for qualification matches there is no statistically significant advantage to Red. Pretty sure red qual win rates is within .2% at most
That’s an interesting stat, though I think it’s artificially low. Let me expand on that:
First, some games have very little benefit potential just based on the game design - very little benefit from knowing what’s your opponent about to do.
But second, more importantly, many teams, and especially early in the season either don’t realize the potential or don’t have enough opponent intel to turn that benefit into overall, or at least auton win.
Still, I’d be curious about the data sorted per-season.
Long ago, there were a couple things that would happen during games where last placement would be a definite advantage, and are not longer part of the game:
3-team alliances: Imagine a time when there was variety in the robots at a tournament…a time before youtube and meta-designs… also a time when matches in eliminations were Best of Three. Alliance selection was 3-teams, and each match was played by two of the three bots. Assuming the 3rd bot was more than just a clawbot trainer (which happened a lot, unfortunately), there was a big advantage in choosing which robot the red team would place last to combat the opponent.
kamikaze autonomous routines: Prior to the rules separating the bots during the autonomous period, you could program a robot to drive straight and fast, and could “aim” the robot specifically to crash and/or ruin the autonomous routine of your opponent. Obviously, placing last was vital to aim the robot for maximum effect.
As rules changed over the years, especially in regards to these two points, the “red places last” rule has less meaning than it had in the past.
Total Qualification matches: 79,604
Total Qualification ties: 579 (0.73%)
Total Qualification Red Wins: 39,755 (49.95%)
Total Qualification Blue Wins: 39,270 (49.33%)
From Spin Up, full season stats:
Total Qualification matches: 65,519
Total Qualification ties: 402 (0.61%)
Total Qualification Red Wins: 32,651 (49.83%)
Total Qualification Blue Wins: 32,466 (49.55%)
From Tipping Point, full season stats:
Total Qualification matches: 48,932
Total Qualification ties: 630 (1.29%)
Total Qualification Red Wins: 24,258 (49.57%)
Total Qualification Blue Wins: 24,044 (49.14%)
At most a .6% benefit; in reality, I don’t know any teams during qualifications that actively look to take advantage of this rule. In general, just getting teams lined up and on-time takes priority; even during elims, I hardly ever observe the Red team actively ask/use the “place last” rule.
Well, it played significant role for tipping point with the rush for the MoGos, since owning 2 of the 3 neutral MoGos was a huge benefit. It might have a similar effect in High Stakes with one contended MoGo, but likely not as huge (5 MoGos for 4 robots, only one contended in auton).
And yes, I do remember various forms of suicide or attack (shoot a cone into the opponent’s path) autons from In The Zone.
As a minimum, I’d like the referees to at least consistently ask “Blue, are you ready? Red, are you ready?” and not the other way around as it often happens.
IMO, it is up to competitors to assert this option. The rule itself is quite specific, and once a team has positioned their robot on the field, they can no longer reposition without allowing the other team to do so as well. This is from Over Under, but I’m pretty sure this language hasn’t changed year-over-year.
The red Alliance places last. The red Alliance has the right to place its Robots on the field last in both Qualification Matches and Elimination Matches. Once a Team has placed its Robot on the field, its position cannot be readjusted prior to the Match. If a Team chooses to reposition their Robot after it has already been placed, the opposing Alliance will also be given the opportunity to reposition their Robots promptly.
I feel as though this is especially apearent in high stakes. If you look at the field you will first notice that the field is not symetrical, but also that BLUE has the slight advantage. On the far side of the field (The side without the extra mobile goal) there is a large pile of rings. On that bar side blue has the positive corner and red has the negative corner. This means that Blue can easily fill a goal with 3-6 rings and put it in the zone for double points, whereas red does not have access to this on the far side and the side they do have access on is the side where the extra neutral goal is and there are very few rings on that side of the field compared to the other side.
I wasn’t gonna bug about it, but you said “statistically significant” which piqued my interest. Over Under matches on a binomial distribution gave me a p-value of .04256, so just barely statistically significant.
Is that even possible? Maybe. I can imagine matches where rushing for the center ball is actually significant in determining who wins and loses, but that’s probably not very many.
Yeah, the difference for Red is greater than I thought it would be, and consistent over 3 games (and I double checked to make sure I was only counting qualification matches).
That said, as a former VRC-HS competitor, did you ever actively “place last” in qual matches? As far as I can tell from every tournament I’ve been to, qual matches are generally “get your robot on the field ASAP” endeavors. As a ref, I’m more concerned (perhaps wrongly) with keeping the even running on-time than checking if Red wants to “place last” during quals.
What I’m getting at, is that while Red wins a small amount more frequently than Blue, I’m not convinced that the reason (or a part of the reason) is from the benefits of placing last.
I absolutely did this in Tipping Point. At worlds specifically, I had a high goal bot and so getting the center goal was really important. When I was red I’d angle the bot depending on whether the opponents were rushing the middle goal. I’d be hard pressed to show that that ever affected a match’s outcome, but it’s possible I guess.
I agree that it’s wild, but it’s also the only difference between being red and blue in a qual. I think it has to be the reason.
I do agree that that could be a standard. I know when I MC I always ask in that order cause of that rule. But I guess it doesn’t matter too much as robots will already be set-up at the point.
I guess what I’m getting at is, did you ever explicitly ask the ref to enforce this? Likewise, as a Blue player, did you ever try to place last?
What I’m getting at is that while Red does have this advantage in the rules, do competitors actually make use of this? As a ref at tournaments in Illinois, I’ve never encountered this during quals. I’ve not reffed at Sigs or World’s so I don’t have direct knowledege there.
My point being, I think the statistical advantage we see for Red seems to be too large to be explained by something that, in my experience, doesn’t happen very often. But perhaps other regions are much more assertive about this than what I’m aware of.
I have asked the original question because a member on my team asked whether there is a rule after noticing they have 4 red and 6 blue in world quals.
Similarly for the second part - a student was complaining at previous tournaments that the referee always asks red first. Imagine red saying yes and blue stating no, then rearranging their robot. Now red has to assert their right to react to that - a good practice of the self-advocacy, but a bit awkward and risking they’d alienate the ref that’s trying to keep the schedule (let’s not pretend the event staff is perfect. And I say that as a former EP myself).
As for actual benefit from placing last - my students were always aware of that benefit and used it (and actually benefited from it) whenever it made sense, since In The Zone.