Hey guys. Due to a highly controversial call (which we do not agree with, but that is beside the point), there was a no call on our robot being pulled down by an opponent in autonomous. We lost by only 13 despite being over a mobile goal and having 8675A playing a 2v1. In short, it was certainly match affecting (no arguments there). I am remiss that the referees had to make such a call to end one alliance’s season based only on their call. Our robot had no tipping issues all season, or in practice. Never tipped. However, this incident ended our season (and that of the US Open Champions) prematurely in quarterfinals. This is the theoretical situation that we have been worried about when the GDC announced single elimination. Any robot could be hooked by a roller and pulled down in autonomous and could not do anything about it. Bye all. My last season! I hope my legacy can be the GDC overturning this horrendous decision to do single elimination. There is nothing we could have done to prepare for this, yet we lose out anyway.
I saw the match in question and agree with @Aponthis; there is absolutely nothing that he could have done to have built a robot that would not tip in that situation. His lift was only a foot off the ground and had such a low center of gravity that as later demonstrated had to be tipped past 45 degrees inorder to fall over. Please GDC overturn this anticompetitive rule that has prematurely ended the seasons of very high performing teams.
There lift was like one foot off the ground and I have tried to rip the bot after and I tired and I had to put it pull past 45 degrees.
(Full disclosure, Aponthis is my brother, so I’m just a little bit biased about this particular incident, although I actually think the refs made the right call)
30 minutes. That was how long it took for the referees to come to a ruling on this incident, while eliminations ground to a halt. These are the best referees in the world, and I believe they actually had somebody from the GDC come to rule on it, and it took thirty minutes . As a person who helps run tournaments, that would ruin my schedule. In a normal best of three, whatever, you tipped, that’s life. With single elimination, it took 30 minutes to get to the next match, because the entire advancement came down to this one little fluke. I don’t want to run a tournament where I have both teams arguing with my referees while the audience sits there bored for thirty minutes every time a robot tips and it might or might not be worthy of a DQ. I also think stuff like this leads to referees trying desperately to find a ruling that will ensure who they think should have won actually wins the match in cases like this, especially at local tournaments where referees tend to be… less than familiar with the rules.
So, yeah, I’m not gonna be involved in a single elimination tournament. If VEX goes to single elimination, I’m done running tournaments, it’s not worth the amount of hassle. I like being able to be done about when the tournament is scheduled to be done and go home.
Additionally, regardless of what the rules say: going forward, rules should not be written in a way that an alliance can even accidentally gain an advantage through tipping. My robot never tipped, and only did so as a result of extremely circumstances and outside duress. As noted by others, the lift was extremely low to the ground - no higher than it needed to be for stacking a third cone in autonomous. How could I have a better robot that would not do this? I could not have predicted or accounted for this, or in any way prevented it entirely from being possible. Should this really end my season? Again, in double elimination this would be rough, but we could definitely overcome the disadvantage in the next match. It was a fluke, after all. In single elimination, and with the rules written so no replay is possible, my VEX robotics career is over without a win or a real loss. If someone had outscored us, okay. But ending it like this is a hard pill to swallow.
I would like to see a new clause in the rules that would allow a replay if there was a match affecting unintentional incident like this. Not sure how the rule would be worded, though.
It should be worded almost exactly like that. “Unintentional but match affecting violations may result in a replay at the head referee’s discretion.”
I think the GDC should seriously consider closing up this gray area in the rules. I do not believe that our opponents meant to tip us at all. But they still gained an advantage by the way that their robot tipped us. This should not happen.
ouch that’s gotta stink. =\ yeah, a match affecting thing like that should deserve a replay.
I think this is a good suggestion, fair and making things a little better on referees so they don’t potentially have to just decide a winner by DQing or not DQing a team when it’s truly unintentionally as opposed to intentional or negligent. I think this would be far superior than the suggestions of keeping Bo3.
So, it looks like there is already some agreement:
RECF could easily decide that this is the type of circumstance where this applies.
I highly doubt that’s true.
For the record we’ve had single elimination since the very beginning. The term you are looking for is best of one.