For Tipping Point’s High School tournament, an expected 800 teams will compete. I don’t recall where I saw it, but I’m pretty sure it will be divided into 8 Divisions of 100 teams each. I don’t think there are many tournaments with more than 100 teams (Kalahari and maybe WPI come to mind). Kalahari ran 2 Divisions , and WPI ran 1 of 80. Having 100 teams per Division seems like a lot; I’m not sure the number of qualification matches per team, but I would hope for at least 8, maybe as many as 10.
Assuming enough refs, field resetters, judges, etc. would competitors prefer:
8 Divisions of 100 teams, with an 8-team Finals round
16 Divisions of 50 teams, with a 16-team Finals round
In both cases, the Divisional Elimination rounds would be Round of 16. The 16 Divisions choice may imply 9 Qualification matches instead of 10 (I’ve not worked out that math)
8 Divisions of 100, 8 team Finals
16 Divisions of 50, 16 team Finals
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Would expanding the number of Divisions “water down” what it means to be a Divisional Winner, enough that it would be “devalued” in the eyes of competitors?
I’d actually kind of like something in between - maybe 10-12 divisions? I know it would be slightly unequal, and I don’t know how the finals matches work out at the end, but I like the # of teams in each a bit better.
100 teams per division would be precedented – in 2019, VRC HS Worlds was 6 divisions of 96 or 97 teams each, and they played 1 practice and 11 qualifying matches.
Of course, they also had an additional half day or so to get those matches in – for a team I picked at random from 2019, they played their practice match late morning of day 1, 3 qualifying matches in the afternoon, then 6 matches on day 2, and the last two on the morning of day 3.
My current understanding of this year’s schedule (I don’t have any special knowledge, just what I remember seeing on the website and hearing at the town hall) is that day 1 will be just inspection and skills, with no matches until day 2. But I think they can probably make the schedule fit into two days of matches by lengthening the days and/or dropping to 10 matches per team. 10 matches per team at Worlds seems reasonable to me.
The venue layout images show 10 competition field areas. Past event high school divisions were close to 100 teams per division so hopefully 2022 will be 80 teams per division HS if there are 10 divisions. VEX-U is 2 divisions leaving up to 8 divisions for MS. Assuming those preliminary layout images are correct of course.
Unless RECF surprises us, I expect that it will be similar to the plan originally announced for 2020; 8 divisions. See more on what that plan was here and here.
Crazy thought, if there were 10 divisions, how about two pre-determined 5 team round robins with the two round robin winners in the world final? The 2019 round robin + Bo3 final was 18 total matches and also included the Bo3 final from VEXU and VRC MS. That makes 24 total matches. Two 5 division RRs + Bo3 final would only be 21, and with VRC HS having it’s own final would be shorter than in the past.
I mean, there’s a simplicity in 8 or 16 team divisions when it comes to the Finals.
But if Tipping Point has taught us anything, it’s that “simplicity” is not a priority this year.
Maybe it will be 13 Divisions. The winners of each Division re-draft their alliances from the Division Winners, limited to 7 Alliances of 3 Teams, with 5 Teams out of luck. The 7 Alliances then play Skills matches with each of the 3 team doing a single run of each programming and driver, with the Alliance getting the median score of each run. XD
