[robocup-small] Tournament Format

Jay Kamat jaygkamat at gmail.com
Mon Sep 4 11:50:50 EDT 2017


Hi Christian (and the rest of SSL),

Here are my thoughts on your points:

> - The increased number of games was a great improvement for the weaker
> and especially the mid-tier teams. I still have strong memories of the
> situation of NEUIslanders last year (They had 3 very strong teams and
> 1 team without moving robots in their group, placed 4th and dropped
> out without having played a single game against a similarly skilled
> opponent). Not even playing an interesting game should not be a thing
> on an event where you have to spend thousands of dollars to
> participate.

I think this was a big improvement from last year. Most people got to
play more games, and the games seemed much closer in my opinion.

> - There were concerns that the increased number of games would be
> difficult to schedule. I had the feeling that it was not really a
> problem (also because of Toshi's great work). One minor problem was
> that the technical challenges were played in the late evening when no
> audience was around. Maybe this was a blessing this year, regarding
> the abysmal game play in the mixed team challenge.

I can't speak for the OC, but the scheduling seemed to work pretty well
from my point of view. The lateness of the technical challenges was an
issue though (which I hope could be fixed next year). I think that the
mixed team (and other technical challenges) are the most interesting
part of RoboCup SSL, even from an audience perspective.

Maybe the technical challenges could be moved to the start of the day,
rather than the end? I'm not sure if this would cause more problems
though.

> - There was also a concern that the large number of games may be too
> stressful for the teams.

I agree that the increased number of games was a problem. Our team had
to put in extra work preparing and repairing our robots because of this,
but I think that's a small price to pay.

> I have to say that I only know that ER-Force had some troubles getting
> the batteries ready for the finals because the semi final and the
> grand final were almost immediately consecutive. Did you also have
> some issues related to the high number of games or were we the only
> ones?

I think that this is unacceptable, especially in-between the semi finals
and finals. Ideally teams would get ~1 hour or more to prepare between
matches, but I can see this becoming difficult as we approach the
finals. Perhaps in future years we should implement a 'minimum grace
period' of ~30 minutes or so for teams that find themselves in your
position? I'm not sure how feasible that could be due to timing
constraints. Implementing such a grace period can help teams identify
how many chargers, batteries, tools, and people they need to turn around
before a match.

> - Prior to the event, I voiced the concern, that the sub-tournament
> games would maybe not be taken as seriously as the main tournament
> ones, since the difference between placing 12th or 13th for example is
> negligible. On the RoboCup I did not feel that this was an issue at
> all. But I'd like to hear your opinions.

I don't think this was an issue from my perspective, but I'm interested
in hearing other people's opinions.

> I'd really love to read about your opinions on the current tournament
> format. My goal is to find a compromise that satisfies everyone: the
> strong teams, the weaker teams and the audience. And since this became
> kind of my hobby horse, together with you I want to develop the
> fairest, most enjoyable way to decide who will be the next champion of
> the RoboCup SSL.

Thanks again for all the effort you're putting into this, I'm sure that
RoboCup 2018 will be much better because of it!

-Jay Kamat

(RoboJackets)
https://github.com/jgkamat


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