TM Manager Scheduling & Worlds Waitlist Invitations

VEX IQ General Discussion
1

Hello All,

Before I begin, I don’t mean in any way to look down on any team or criticize what RECF or VEX does.

I truly believe the things I’ll mention need to be improved, and it’s time for us to talk about them and see what kind of solutions we can come up with.

  1. First, I think the way World Championship waitlist invitations are sent needs improvement. As you might know, right now it’s random. If there are open spots, teams from the waitlist get invited at random. Sometimes teams located closer to the competition venue may even have a higher chance of being invited since they’re more likely to accept on short notice.

Possible solution: Make it merit-based. For example, if there are 30 open spots, go down the skills rankings. It’s fair to assume that mostly US teams would benefit from this since these invites go out late and international teams may not be able to attend due to travel or visa issues. This approach would push teams to work harder throughout the year and aim for higher skills rankings to be considered for extra invites.

Right now, teams that have worked hard all season can get left out, while a random team that may not have put in as much time building, programming, documenting, and practicing gets an invite to Worlds. This might sound extreme, but here’s a real example: last year in our state, there was only one World spot for middle school, which went to the Excellence Award winner. A few weeks later, a random team from the same state got invited off the waitlist. As a result, the state teamwork champions couldn’t go to Worlds. That doesn’t feel right.

  1. Second, this might be partially related to how extra invites are handled. One team I coached this year in Mix & Match was paired with 6 Huey bots. From my experience, 3–4 is understandable, but 6 felt excessive. That team still managed to average over 300+ points, but it was clear that many teams that made it to the Dome were less skilled than them.

I know many teams have had similar experiences. Teams at Worlds should be able to compete against others at a similar skill level and based on the effort they’ve put in-not just luck from getting strong partners in matches.

Some ideas:

  • Tie extra invites to merit (as mentioned earlier).

  • Adjust the random scheduling system in TM for Worlds so that teams are distributed more evenly based on skills scores.

I know this wouldn’t completely solve the issue, but it could help prevent situations where one team gets multiple low-experience partners while another consistently gets strong alliances.

Again, I’m not trying to offend anyone-I just wanted to bring this up and hear your thoughts. What solutions do you think could make this process fairer and continue to push students to work hard for a spot at such a prestigious event like the World Championship?

2

Agreed across the board!

Random invites off the waitlist are in my opinion inherently unfair. I get it that many teams would love a chance to go to Worlds but if Worlds is the pinnacle of VEX Robotics then the teams there should be good at something. I don’t care if it’s skills, notebooking and interviewing, quals, whatever. Different teams succeed in different ways and that should continue.

Perhaps a criteria could be added to being allowed to add a team to the Worlds’ waitlist. Maybe a certain minimum threshold in skills (my preferred option as it is the easiest to measure and doesn’t rely on random pairings that qualification matches have), or having won an award at an event region championship that didn’t automatically qualify for Worlds, or having won Excellence or Tournament/Teamwork Champions at a local event. Something. Anything.

By adding a waitlist criteria of some sort the teams could be vetted to an extent and on the whole be more competitive. Would it be perfect? No, but certainly there would be fewer teams on the fields at Worlds that are incapable of performing even a minimum of actions necessary in the game.

Why do I think this necessary? Because I have seen too many times at Worlds were teams get a terrible schedule and these are often the result of random teams getting into Worlds. Teams that spend untold hours, effort, and money that qualify for Worlds with a hope of doing well can be out of the running with an awful randomly generated schedule. For example, a few years ago one of my teams were Teamwork Champions at State, then at Worlds were partnered with teams ranked 1, 24, 51, 57, 60, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78. They were 47th in Skills at Worlds that year and managed to finish 5-5. Unfortunately they were ranked 36th in their division and didn’t make finals as they were an unknown team that first year. Season over. I’ve seen similar situations happen to my teams and other teams I know, not just that once. In some years, the game is designed so that a completely incapable robot will doom an elite robot/team to a loss.

I have to believe that the (skills?) data exists to help with creating more equitable pairings/matchups as gasimov suggested. It’s not perfect but it’s a move in the direction of fairness.

3

I completely agree with everything you said. During my last year of IQ, I was considered to be the dominant team in the state. However, at our ERC, 9/10 matches, I was paired up with teams in the bottom 30% of the tournment. This effective killed any chances we had to succede (the year was rapid relay, having good alliance partners was way more important than previous years due to passing).

We ended up finishing 40th at the end, not even getting close to finals. However, we finished 5th in skills without using the “meta” strategy that, in my and my coach’s opinion, violated the spirit of the game. I understand that its already over, and there’s nothing I can change about it, but this experiance of being “screwed over” by the schedual clouded my memories of IQ. I ranking teams differently could help as well as what @gasimov amd @EHowe said. Maybe include this rule for only ERCs, as early events would not benefit from this change.

4

We have this discussion every year. What’s the point of the whole thing?

At the end of the day, RECF will always say that it’s not really about finding the best robot. There are robots that win competitions, and those are good bots that kids put a lot of work into.

There are also spots for judged awards, and those teams may or may not have a great robot. This is an educational program, and I’m glad that’s important too.

WORLDS has never really been a “best bot” showcase. My team played with a team from Ghana that had a modified Hero Bot. Our team had a 180, and together they got a decent score. The other team had a gift for us and took a picture with our teams together. They were very excited to be there, and they really did their best in the match.

Why travel to St. Louis from Ghana with a Hero Bot? Is that fair to the teams they would be paired with? Did they come all this way to be in a “B league”?

We still have colleges graduating students with computer science degrees in the age of LLMs. It’s always possible that you can do everything right, put in your best effort, and in the end it still doesn’t work out. Every team that goes to the Dome might not have made it if they had a terrible schedule. You have to be good, and you have to be lucky. That’s not just the nature of this game. That’s a bigger lesson for life.

We can invent a thousand different ways to rank teams. We could do two rounds, then generate the next two rounds based on the first two rounds, and so on. But what if you had a bad first couple of rounds? Then your day is basically done after two rounds instead of after all eight. In IQ, dropping low matches works very well. Lowering or rewarding teams based on skills score, or any other criteria, isn’t actually going to make the ranking system better.

And if you want to rank teams at WORLDS based on their previous skills score, that doesn’t take into account that teams can improve dramatically between their regional event and WORLDS. Or they could go the other way because of team drama after the fact. There is no way to fairly group the teams before WORLDS.

So, I get it. 1000%. Teams are disappointed when they are paired with Hero Bots on the WORLDS stage. I guess one thing RECF could do is set the expectation better for teams ahead of time. Everyone should know going in that this is a celebration of teams from across the globe who excelled in their region, but might not be competitive in yours. It’s an event to celebrate all of those accomplishments.

But it’s not always going to feel fair, and that’s OK. Just do the best you can and enjoy the experience.

5

Well said @sankeydd, I wholeheartedly agree. In my trips to Worlds, I tell the team(s): it’s a congratulatory celebration, a Disneyland for robotics teams. Long lines for quick thrills. Meet your favorite characters. Eat junk food all day.

However, on the original topic of the Worlds Waitlist, I believe that it should not be 100% random. In the spirit of congratulatory celebration, I don’t understand why it makes sense for, say, a Signature Event Design Award winner to get passed over for a team that has never won an award or posted a Skills score all season. At Worlds this year, we partnered with a number of teams like that.

I feel that if there are excess spots available, there should be a process that allows “Accomplished Teams” to be recognized. The pool of candidates might be: all top Signature teams + top Regionals teams + top Qualification Excellence winners (e.g. a team that won 3 Excellence awards at different tournaments) + Robot Skills (although these teams already get favored due to the Double Qualification rules). What “accomplishment” means may vary by region of course. Invitations could be random, perhaps weighted, to this pool of Accomplished Teams.

6

I want to give the RECF some grace here. If they tell us how they are selecting teams, then that is something that teams could game. So, if they just say it’s random, then that lets us not have something else to manipulate.

The qualifying criteria has some clues…

First, we are not pulling teams at random… We are pulling teams that waitlisted their teams. Given the tight timeline to pay and plan, it’s only going to be teams from America. I think it’s highly unlikely that international teams are going to be able to organize visas for their kids in that timeline.

I know there are some coaches that don’t waitlist their teams. It’s a lot of work to go, and maybe teams that go should have earned those spots… So if your team didn’t earn a spot, they shouldn’t go.

For local events, there is a preference:

image
image847×234 21.8 KB

You can use it for regionals:

image
image1154×509 52.3 KB

At our regional events, our RSM just keeps adding by skills score until we fill the tournament.

For VEX U / VEX AI there is also some criteria for qualifying to WORLDS through the waitlist:

image
image1144×545 58.4 KB

Teams can be added by skills from small regions:

image
image1167×402 49.5 KB

My personal take:

I think that everyone would want some kids of qualifying criteria for waitlisted teams. I would propose to take teams based on those that are on the waitlist, sorted by their skills score. I would also say that you only get one waitlisted team per organization number, and if you already have a team at WORLDS you get skipped over.

7

To be invited off the worlds waitlist you do have to at least have qualified for your ERC. So if the concern is that many teams qualify for their ERC from skills roll down, than maybe a minimum skills score wouldn’t be a bad idea.

8

Well the idea that only good enough teams should go to worlds contradicts your desire for orgs with teams in worlds to not get waitlisted. Some organizations are naturally stronger than others, and some regions have a main really strong all around org, with all the good teams going there, and a couple of bigger orgs with a good team each. This will make teams worse at worlds because it gives waitlist invites to orgs that couldnt get a single team in worlds

9

Yeah, that’s the point. Better than random, but still spread the love. They will still be high-performing teams.

There are 420 spots for MS IQ. If you want a “good bot” competition, you could just pull the top 420. But we don’t do that. But given the small number of waitlist spots, it would probably still be teams in the top 420 that get the waitlist invites.

By orgs, I’m talking about team numbers. To an extent, if you are having to give out waitlist spots, those should go to decent teams, but better to give those to orgs that didn’t get in. It is about the experience.

If you really “deserved” to go to WORLDS, you were already in.

Numbers and things…

These are the ranks of MS IQ teams in the top 420 on the skills list that meet the criteria that I’ve given. There are over 50 teams. This would not water down WORLDS and make it terrible…

Rank Score
21 451
48 412
73 387
76 383
79 379
91 365
121 340
126 338
141 330
142 330
150 324
154 323
156 321
166 318
172 316
175 314
176 313
187 311
200 306
203 304
204 303
212 300
222 296
228 294
243 289
245 289
247 288
248 288
259 285
267 283
270 281
278 278
282 276
290 274
293 272
307 266
311 262
317 259
332 253
343 250
346 249
349 248
350 248
355 246
359 245
360 245
370 241
371 241
380 239
390 237
396 234
397 234
410 228
411 228