Playing to Win in Badminton
Wednesday, August 1, 2012 at 12:15PM There's a recent controversy about players losing intentionally in Olympic badminton. A lot of people involved seem concerned that it's embarrassing for the sport. It its. It's embarrassing that some officals and spokesmen of the sport have so little understanding of Playing to Win that they think the players are at fault.
Playing Fake Matches
I have run many fighting game tournaments, and I have witnessed fake matches. I completely agree that fake matches make a mockery of the tournament. This is so important that one of the MOST IMPORTANT considerations when designing a set of tournament rules is to minimize the chances of fake matches occurring.
Forfeiting a match and playing a fake match are similar (in both cases, one side is losing on purpose), but not exactly the same. Forfeiting should be a natural right of any player in any tournament. A player should be able to forfeit for any reason or no reason, and this must be make explicitly clear in the rules. Further, it should be explicit that if a player (or team) wants to forfeit, then they should NOT play a fake match. Playing a fake match is about the worst possible thing for a competition because of the impact on spectators. If the rules make it clear that simply forfeiting is far preferable to playing a fake match and that forfeiting comes with no penalty, then the rules will have stomped out 90% to 100% of fake matches right from the start. It's just a lot more effort to play a fake match and there'd be no benefit over forfeiting.
That's not the whole solution though, not even close. That's just the failsafe you need in case there is any incentive to lose on purpose in the first place. It should be self-evident that if a tournament system ever gives players an incentive to lose, then it's a problematic tournament sytem.
Losing on Purpose
Let's look at some cases where you'd want to lose on purpose. First a few that don't have to do with the Olympic Badminton case, then the one that does. (If you only care about that, skip to the "Back to Our Story" section below.)
Let's start with two terms from game design: lame-duck and kingmaker. In a game with more than two players (or more than two teams), a "kingmaker" is someone who can, through his or her in-game actions, decide which OTHER player will win the game. The kingmaker is so far behind that he can't win, but he could deal a card (or whatever) to Alice or to Bob, which would determine the winner. This is considered really bad because you'd hope Alice or Bob would win off their own skills, not from some 3rd party's vote. "Lame-duck" (a term I use because I don't know what else to call it in game design) is the portion of a game where a certain player cannot possibly win anymore but somehow they are still stuck playing the game. Lame duck players are ripe to be kingmakers. When you don't have skin in the game anymore, so to speak, your potential to screw things up for others is pretty high. (Note that this is NOT what's going on the badminton case right now.)
Swiss. The kind of Swiss that at some point cuts to single elimination (for a more exciting finish) is full of lame ducks and kingmakers. In this format, you need a certain win/loss record to make that cut, but you can keep playing against more opponents even if you have a win/loss record that is *guaranteed* to NOT make the cut (lame duck). It's entirely possible that you will face someone who still has skin in the game: if they win they will make the cut to the top 8; if they lose, they won't. And you can decide that by forfeiting or not, with no effect on yourself, because you are definitely going to lose the tournament either way. Magic: the Gathering uses this format. You'd expect it would lead to shady situations because of all the lame duck / kingmaker stuff. And it does.
Round Robin. In this format every player (or team) plays every other player (or team). It has the very same problem as Swiss: lame ducks and kingmakers. You can be in lame duck situation yet determine the fate of your opponents. This is just ripe for their being under-the-table payoffs. Round Robin also has problems with the order that matches happen to occur in. If you have to play all your matches right at the start, you don't have the benefit of knowing the results of all the other (future) matches, so you don't know if you can get away with losing on purpose. But if your matches happen to be scheduled for later in the tournament, you do know the results of so many other matches that you can now do shady things. So all players don't even have equal access to the shady tactics, as it depends on the luck of scheduling.
Back to Our Story
And now we come to the actual problem with the Olympic badminton situation. There are "pools" of round robin play where the top 2 finishers from a pool advance to a single elimination bracket. Further, the system of seeding in the single elimination bracket is known ahead of time. This creates the situation where you could playing pool matches but *guaranteed* to make top 2 by your record. If you win, you will qualify and play team X. If you lose, you will also qualify, but you will play team Y. If you think you have an easier chance of beating team Y, you absolutely should lose on purpose. If you don't, you aren't playing to win, and you are kind of a bad competitor. You also happen to be playing in a tournament with absurdly bad rules.
I hope it's clear by now that tournament systems absolutely can have incentives to lose. And if you are holding such a high profile tournament as *the Olympics*, then I hope you'd deeply understand all this and design a system that minimizes or removes all incentives to lose, and adds in the failsafe of encouraged forfeit rather than fake matches if there was some overlooked edge case. It's LAUGHABLE to put even the tiniest amount of blame on the competitors who are playing to win here, when the tournament rules so clearly, so obviously, and so predictably have major problems. That is, you wouldn't need to even hold a tournament to detect this problem. You could just read the rules, see the clear and major flaws in them, then you'd want to direct your blame at the rules writers and correct the system.
It's doubly laughable to actually disqualify the players involved—how about disqualifying the judges? They don't seem capable of making competent decisions about tournament practices. Those who conspired to disqualify players for playing optimally inside a bad rules system are doing the sport a real disservice. Hearing about fake matches in badminton should make our opinion go down, but hearing about the sport's inability to see glaring problems in its own tournament structure should make our opinion go down an extra ten notches.
It's an embarrassing time for Olympic badminton. But not because some players lost on purpose—because someone created horrificly bad tournament rules and then tried to blame the competitors for playing to win.
Reader Comments (203)
"But in this case - in the specific case at hand - that rule, squish and all, was part of the tournament. Tournament participants don't get to pick and choose which tournament rules to follow, no matter how bad the rules might be. Your entrance in the tournament is inherently an agreement to abide by them. You may disagree with them, and you may well be right to do so, but you are in the wrong to break them.
And in the specific case at hand, the badminton teams were wrong to break the tournament rules by trying to throw their matches." -eddie
You don't actually KNOW they were trying to throw their matches. You merely suspect it, alongside a great many other people.
So China A has said they were trying to conserve their energy for later matches (much as you would do in qualifying events). Other than that, I believe none of the teams have said they were TRYING to lose.
Given that, you don't know whether or not the other teams should be disqualified. It certainly looks like they were trying to lose, but perhaps they were just very angry at the judges for such a stupid tournament structure and did the best they could?
Unless you can read minds, or unless the tournament staff include experts in body language, psychology, facial expressions, and probably still ESP, you should NEVER have a rule that punishes the intention of competitors. Every rule should be based on actual actions performed or not performed.
If there was a rule that said "you have to maintain this percentage accuracy" or "you must play this fast", we could argue about whether it was good or bad, but it would be an objective measure of effort (and ability). Such a rule is the TYPE of rule that belongs in a tournament setting - it measures actual actions.
The other TYPE of rule measures thoughts or feelings, and has no place in a tournament setting. Ever.
For every tournament I enter that has a rule about my intentions, I will not follow that rule. I won't break it either. In fact, since judges cannot read my mind it is impossible for me to follow or break the rule - it is an arbitrary decision made during each match/play/moment by the judge. It is not an evaluation of my actions (although it might pretend to be).
Finally, an example from basketball: A rule saying you must throw the ball in, dribble it down the court, and shoot within a set of designated time limits is the TYPE of rule that belongs in a competition. The individual rules might be wrong or poorly thought-out (say, the shot clock is too short, or there shouldn't be a time limit to get the ball down the court), but they're the right kind of rule. A rule that says you must play with the proper spirit (or whatever) to prevent a full-court press is the wrong kind of rule. It's only enforceable at the whim of the judges.
If you want to remove the full-court press or fake matches or anything else you happen to dislike, it is possible. It is even possible to do it in a reasonably intelligent way. The solution is not to gauge the enthusiasm or mental state of the competitors. The solution is to design objective and enforceable rules that accomplish the task. Some of these rules will be about how the game is played, but others will be about how the tournament or season is played.
Sirlin, I just wanted to post to state how much I appreciate your repeated posting in this comments section, even to the point of beating a dead horse. I feel this is very important, and every single person who your comments make pause and think makes it worthwhile.
See when this story was reported in the media, it was always portrayed as though the athletes were dirty wrong-doers, or at least neutrally. Not one opinion piece, editorial or pundit, let alone a news report, dared question the circumstances or rules.
The poor Chinese badminton champion who publicly quit the sport in disgust and tears over her disqualification and character assassination (doing so at the risk of antagonising the Chinese authorities who in fact supported the judges), was held to scorn for her 'sore loser' mentality almost *everywhere*.
Personally, I would have thought the issue was a little clearer to many people - at least people familiar with human rights and constitutional law.
Laws have for most of history specifically recognised the inherent cruelty and inhumanity of penalising someone for failing to act directly contrary to their own interests, or even survival. Under British law and Common Law, someone cannot be compelled to give incrimininating evidence against their spouse, recognising how this is must conflict with basic human interests of family and children. And most every credible legal framework has some analogue of the '5th Amendment', not requiring a person to give testimony which will then endanger their own life or liberty.
Apparently sports are different, because you can be compelled to play a game against your will, even if doing so openly and manifestly injures your legitimate intentions to succeed within the legal framework of the game. It is nonsensical to the highest degree.
The question exists in the first place because these interests are known overtly to the other players, spectators and tournament organisers/judges: It's not some shady backroom match fixing business, where the incentivisation takes place outside the context of the game, and its rewards are also outside of the game. It's PART OF THE TOURNAMENT. Winning a gold medal is PART of the game.
Thanks Alec, I thought it was getting old going on and on about this, but I guess at least someone is glad to see it. Your post is one of the best in the whole thread really, as it summarizes the problem well and gives some perspective.
I agree with Alec Wilson 100%. It's horrible, and almost sadly predictable, that all the media seems to push the same point of view that that there's nothing wrong with the rules and that the players are to blame.
I'd just like to add my own personal thanks to Sirlin for his replies and to everyone else who has posted here. It's nice to read logically constructed views from people.
But isn't it exactly the *wrong* attitude to take (one could even call it scrubby) for one of the players (not a TD) to say, "This rule which is undeniably part of the tournament's rules and which I was just warned about being disqualified for breaking is a bad rule so I will ignore it. Then complain when I get disqualified."
Whether or not the rule is a good rule, a player who was playing to win medals would not have engaged in such behavior. To do so only undermined their chance at winning a medal. It may be quantitatively different from "The rule that you're allowed to throw me while I block is stupid so I won't throw you when you block and I'll get mad when you throw me" but it's not qualitatively different from the POV of a player trying to win a tournament.
Of course, as a TD, the rule is totally idiotic and has no place being there in the first place, but as a player, you play to win within the rules of the tournament. Nobody ever won a medal for pointing out how stupid the tournament's rules are.
Very well said, when I first heard about the throwing of matches I thought "good, they should be DQed" but then as the specifics of the tournament rules came out it became clear that there was no reason TO WIN the game, and that is a problem with the tournament, not the players.
Since you mentioned it, I have to say that I really like Swiss with a top-cut. I completely agree that it can suffer from the kingmaker problem, but to me the lame duck is only a problem if someone makes it a problem for themselves (like if someone who was expected to top-8 goes loses 2+ games early on, they may just pack it in). Swiss at least gives you the opportunity to keep playing and see where you stand against the field better than a double elminiation tournament does, you are still playing for something, even if there's no monetary value to it (and in games like MTG there usually is as well).
A few months back we had a fighting game lock-in and I ran a $2 Swiss SF4 tournament, because we had the time and setups to run one. We had 24 people, everyone was guaranteed 5 tournament matches, and then we ran a top-8 single elim bracket to determine the winner (with a 3rd place game). It was very well recieved by everyone, it really wasn't that much different for the better players other than the single elim top-8, but the middle and lower players got to play more than they would have otherwise. In a perfect world I would run that over double elimination all day, but of course the logistics involved make it near impossible to do on a large scale.
Sorry for that tangent, good article :-P
@ApolloAndy
I don't think the players reaction should be considered wrong or "scrubby". I think their reactions were protesting ones. I agree that players make a commitment to follow the rules when they enter the tournament, and that their actions should be punished according to the current rules. But when you face stupid rules, there is nothing wrong at confronting them. That's the "survival of the fittest" for rules: they may be created, but if they are not fair or doing any good, they may be removed as well, and only the best ones will remain.
The players broke the rules, but they played how they though the game should be played under the circumstances the organizers have put them, the way they thought would be fair. The question here is not whether they broke the rules, but, instead, if their actions were right or wrong. If people agree that their actions were right, rules should be changed so the sport can improve. Otherwise, I agree that it is them that must adapt to the new rules.
IMHO, these players have done a lot for the Olympics Games. Their protest followed by this unfair disqualification remembered people that any sports rules should be questioned and validated, and, if necessary, stupid rules should be banished. When you see that something is wrong and realize that they are right under the point of view of the rules, you probably spotted unfairness in the system. When this happens, you cannot turn back time and undo the harms already done, but you can change the system so no harms will be done in the future.
You could rewrite the exact same post with "throwing vs. block" instead (and changing broke the rules to "got mad at everyone else for breaking the rules").
There is no need to allow forfeits, etc. All that is required is that the winner of the group has, say, one hour to decide which of two slots they wish to take up - there is then no incentive to lose.
It is unclear why this is not already standard practice, as this problem has existed for over a century in every tournament in every sport where more than one team can qualify from a group. I'm actually very sceptical about 'common sense' explanations, but for whatever it's worth, a possible 'common sense' explanation is that the existing system allows the sports authorities to unsportingly fix the draw to maximize short-term financial benefits.
In this case the draw was in fact honest, as the top two seeds, both Chinese, were scheduled to meet in the final, as is right and proper and sporting. Unfortunately the number two seeds unexpectedly failed to win their group, which then lead to other seeds throwing matches. The result was that there would once again have been a final between the top two seeds, both Chinese. The disqualifications had the easily foreseeable and presumably foreseen effect of replacing that all-Chinese final by the far more financially attractive one of the Chinese 2nd seeds against the Japanes 4th seeds, with moneymen being the winners, and, at least in my view, sport ultimately being the loser - along with other losers such as justice, fairness, decency, patriotism, etc, and 8 unfairly scapegoated sports-women who were only sportingly and patriotically fulfilling their Olympic oath to seek to bring honour to their country by doing their best to win medals for their country by behaving exactly as many other patriotic sporting people have behaved in similar circumstances without disqualification for over a century.
Incidentally, as many of those outraged by these unfair disqualifications will be some of the 200 million Muslim Indonesians, there is every reason to expect that at least a small number of these will have been made at least marginally more likely to join or support Al Qaeda, so these disqualifications have probably at least marginally increased everybod's risk of dying at the hands of suicide bombers, or losing loved ones to them, though the precise extent of this risk is obviously impossible to accurately quantify.
Even if you did, you still need to allow forfeits. Not allowing forfeits is equivalent to inviting fake matches should should anyone ever want to forfeit. You can make reasonable rules though, so that forfeits are really rare and probably for valid reasons.
I shall start by saying:
1. I am avid follower of Sirlin's theories and games, and suscribe to his "Playing to Win" philosophy
2. I am avid follower of both mainstream sports (football, tennis, badminton, F1, etc.), e-sports pro-gaming (Starcraft, fighting games, etc) and also other non-professional competitive games with interesting rules (e.g. debate competitions follows the Swiss format)
Now my views:
1. I think a distinction must be made between the mainstream spectator sports (which involves audience participation, revenue flow, logistical aspects, etc., and are run by sporting associations which regulates organisers, promoters and competitors), and any other typical competitive sports. The former not only requires considering game design, but also matters like sportmanship and integrity of the sports.
2. I won't repeat what has been said, but I think the REAL issue here is not whether "Playing to Win" is applicable here, but rather whether the rules used in the Badminton Olympics is badly designed, why, and how it can be reformed (with all things considered). Why I think is "PTW" is not applicable here is because the rules have been determined before the competition, the competitors are well aware (and even reminded during the game) of the "spirit of game" rule, and the judge made a subjective, but legal decision to disquality the competitors within the framework of this rules. Disagree or hate the rules as you like, the fact is that it's legal. Playing to win would mean taking into consideration this rule. Risk breaking it, and you risk playing to lose. Whether the rule should be changed is something to debate for future competitiones, and not a ground to invalidate the decision.
3. So I think the REAL issue is whether such subjective rules are fair, justified and should be adopted (or reformed) in mainsteam spectator sports.
(Comparing this type of sport with not-so-mainstream and less-spectator-friendly sports may be warranted or reasonable on certain aspects, but I don't think a direct analogical comparison is fair, especially when the other considerations I stated above are ignored)
To end my post with the right tone and context (as I see it), look at this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/sportvideo/9338063/David-Nalbandian-disqualified-from-Queens-after-injuring-linesman.html
Now, debate.
The rule is inherently bad, that's the problem. It actively fucks up the competition by creating an impossible situation for the players.
That it's a spectator sport with money on the line etc doesn't even matter here really. The way that would matter is that you'd say it's even MORE important than ever to not have fake matches played because it hurts the integrity of the sport. So the rulesamkers are even more at fault than they otherwise would be, not less at fault. I think the high profile nature makes my point even more valid than it would be at some small time thing with no one watching.
As covered earlier in this thread, if you really want squishy rules to attempt to combat *out of tournament* forces such as taking bribes and losing matches to cash in on those *out of tournament* payoffs, you'd at least have some ground. There is no good way to stop that really, so you can choose between no rules for it or squishy rules. Say you chose squishy rules. Ok. When you apply that rule to someone clearly losing because of *in tournament* forces making it advantageous to do so to win that tournament, that is a nonsense move by judges. It's applying the rule in a way that stops something the rule should not be stopping, and it's putting a win button on the playfield while telling players they can press that to improve their chances of winning, but if they do, some subjective rule might kick them out of the entire tournament. That makes the whole thing a farce. Source of farce: rules and judges applying those rules.
The more comments I read about needing to provide good matches for spectators the more puzzled I get as I think about it. At a certain point, why even bother playing a match? I mean, you know what provides good drama? Scripts! You can get upsets and dramatic finishes and all kinds of cool stuff. Let's just get some screenwriters into these matches and then we can guarantee every match is a nailbiter.
If that's not a good idea -- and I trust we all agree it's not -- then how is it any different from rules that encourage/force players to pretend to try hard when they want to lose a match (because it's in their overall best interest)? You're saying "I want you guys to fake it for the good of the fans." That's what professional wrestling does. There's basically no moral difference.
Any time that you don't allow forfeits AND you raise the possibility of disqualifying players if they don't (appear to) try to win, you're basically setting up that situation. Why is there even discussion? What's really, really good for spectators overall are good rulesets that encourage everyone to always try to win but allow competitors as much leeway as possible in trying to determine their own best strategies. Yes, sometimes it may result in boring matches or forfeits. But the possibility of a few bad matches is part and parcel of real competition -- you can't have one without the other. Fixing the results results in more "interesting" matches but without integrity, there's no real drama.
Sirlin - Sure, I understand your sentiments. I do agree it's a badly designed format, and rule. We are on the same page on this.
Looking ahead, and to pose something constructive, consider the most current pool-to-single elim format that GSL uses for its most prestigious 1v1 Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty competition held in South Korea.
- In RO32, 32 players randomly placed in 8 groups of 4. The top 2 players of group advances to the RO16.
- In RO16, players are drawn into 4 groups of 4 based on a special selection process (more on this later). The top 2 players of each group advances to RO8 (No. 1 meets No. 2 in predetermined draw)
- RO8 to RO2 follows normal elimination format i.e. quarters (BO5), semies (BO5) and finals (BO7). Pretty standard. Nothing novel here.
Now, there are two interesting parts.
1. How group matches are played are like this. Four players - A, B, C and D. Double-elimination format.
(a) A v B
(b) C v D
(c) Winner of (a) v Winner of (b) -> Winner advances as No.1
(d) Loser of (a) v Loser of (b) -> Loser finishes as No. 4
(e) Loser of (c) v Winner of (d) -> Winner finishes No. 2, loser finishes as No. 3
2. How groups are drawn in RO16 is like this. The highest ranked top 4 players in the GSL points ranking is grouped into 4 groups (A1, B1, C1, D1). Then the round of players picking players begins.
- A1 of Group A picks any player (A2). Then B1 of Group B picks any other player (B2). And so on.
- A2 of Group A now picks any other player (A3). Then B2 of Group B picks any other player (B3). And so on.
- A3 to D3 will pick players who will be A4 to D4 (who obviously can't pick any player). The end.
Now, brief comments:
1. Double-elimination format for pool matches incentivises winning. There will be no "fake matches", as every match counts. Only drawback is there might be repeat match-ups between same players.
2. Player-pick selection this way is quite fun, and involves a lot of meta-gaming. The players you pick will try to screw you up by picking the next player in the group which you are weak against (or he is strong against). It gets more interesting when the match-ups are like this: A1 v A2, A3 v A4. So A1 and A3 gets to pick their first match-ups. Over a few seasons, it has resulted into hillarious and cunning picks. Oh, and it helps that the selection process is screened live. Expect a lot of trolling and fooling around from these SC2 players.
Regarding the issue of whether or not the spirit of the game "rule" should've been followed even if disagreed with, (as has been stated already), this isn't a case of a rule that's just really bad.
One can imagine a bunch of rule additions for badminton that would just be really bad (for assorted other reasons). One could disqualify players for hitting the nth (say, 6th) shot of any rally, or could start disqualifying players with given random probabilities at given times during the match for wearing shirts of the wrong colour as measured with a given instrument, for instance. Typically, if an event were hosted with extremely bad rules, I'd expect no one would care or participate, but with real-life events which decide to implement bad rules (which does actually happen), I'd expect them to be enforced, and then perhaps changed for the next event
Additionally, there are multiple ways in which something written under the 'rules' section isn't an actual rule. It could be that the 'punishment' for breaking is clearly negligible, or not described at all. To actual competitors, such a "rule" isn't really there at all. It's pretty much something that just happens to be written in the rules section of some document. Other ways that something written in the rules section isn't much of a "real rule" is if it's incoherent, or poorly defned.
This "spirit of the game" rule is basically equivalent to "the judges can disqualify you whenever they feel like it", a particularly bad instance of a poorly defined rule. It doesn't mean anything to "follow" this rule, or to try to break it. Even giving a warning for this kind of rule doesn't help, because it isn't tied to anything concrete - whether any action is in accordance with the spirit of the game or not is just made up by the judges (unlike a bad but not quite as bad rule like stalling, in which stalling is at least somewhat defined).
This is backed up by the official statement that the teams were disqualified for "conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport". There's nothing "clearly abusive" about the players' conduct here - to me and many others in this comment thread, all that happened was some teams playing to win the gold medal, amidst a horrible tournament format.
The above official statment is pretty much analogous to "we felt like banning them" coupled with a "the judges can disqualify you whenever they feel like it" rule. The main difference is that it's easier to get away with this kind of ridiculous rule if it's labelled as a "spirit of the game" rule instead.
The GSL system in general gives too much of an advantage to the players who get to pick (this issue is compouded by the fact that they choose who gets to pick based on results in previous GSLs, which results in undesirable entrenchment). In practice this doesn't seem to have resulted in problems (even though mvp managed to get exactly the group he wanted a couple sesaons ago and then lost to gumiho twice anyway), I don't think it's an ideal format in its current state. Still, at worst, allowing the kinds of opponent-picks GSL does isn't a major problem.(not even on the same scale as the main olympics issue being discussed)
@Zero: Yes, it was still hilllarious how everyone was raving how MVP managed to magically "picked" his own group by his meta-game sense, yet he surprisingly got knocked out eventually, in RO16. But I don't think it's that imbalanced. Picking first is not really THAT advantageous, as the other players might pick players who can screw you over in the group big time. Picking the worst player may be the obvious choice, but you have to also consider how he will pick, hence the meta game (a might have a weaker match-up against a player who coincidentally has a strong match-up against you, thus screwing you if you pick him). Looking at how the past results have been, the margin of advantage and disadvantage is rather narrow, I feel. More importantly, it adds an element of meta-game to the competition as a whole (players will always have a list of players they want to pick, or as Protoss President MC puts it, "ez man list").
But I think the double elim format for pool play is a great idea, nonetheless.
I don't like the "if you don't like the rules of the tournament, don't enter it" arguments. These athletes train specifically for the Olympics in the intervening years between events. Their funding and livelihood is dependent upon their Olympic performance. What else are they supposed to do?
@RKC, in your first post, you basically say "The players were not playing to win because they violated one of the rules of the tournament which they knew could get them disqualified." The problem I see with that argument is that the rules they were playing by were inherently contradictory. The players had a choice: play to win the game, or play to win the tournament, and this is the crazy, messed-up part of it, _those_were_completely_different_goals_. Playing to win the game did not help them win the tournament, and vice versa.
So, to summarize, they entered the tournament because they had no choice, and when faced with a decision between contradictory tournament rules, they made the only choice they could make, and the judges didn't like it. There is no way that blaming the players for this makes sense.
RKC, I was planning to type up the rule for the GSL and ask sirlin about them. Thanks for doing part of the work for me.
I would like to point out that the group matches in the RO16 still have the problem that the RO8 brackets are known. A player may want to risk losing the winners match so he gets seeded vs someone else. It also brings up the issue of a player knowing his opponent if he wins, and not doing builds or strategies that would tip his hand for the next match. On option the player who plays first does not get. I still like the format over all, they just need to hide the RO8 seeding.
Sirlin, do you think losing being the “right move” is good, if it does not assure a spot in the next round, and forces a player to play another match? I don’t like this way because your king making someone else into the next round. I wonder if there is a way to make this work without the drawbacks.
On a more on topic note, I agree with Sirlin on all accounts, at least with this issue.
@lettucemode
I actually agree with RKC in this point. The players were presented two options:
1. Play to Win the match, giving them a lesser chance to win the tournament.
2. Play to Loose the match, taking the big risk of being Disqualified.
In my point of view, being Disqualified is way worst than facing a stronger opponent, so they may have though they were playing to win, but under these stupid rules, they were not. The main point here is that, if they knew the rules, they were fighting this new system. They were either choosing to be martyrs and show people how unfair new rules are, or naive to think taking the risk of being Disqualified was better than the first one.
The main problem in here is that these rules made them choose between two punishments, they were not being rewarded in the tournament for showing good skills in the game. That's completely unbalanced since many other players were, in fact, being rewarded for winning the game and taking the positions they wanted to be, while they were being punished for being good.
The "spirit of the game" rule may be stupid and, as already stated, a bandage to avoid fake matches in these cases, but it was a rule, and if they wanted the gold they would probably have more chances if they followed it and accepted the punishments. This does not put the blame on the players at all, and really shows how badly designed the tournament was, when looking at the two poor choices they had and the awful outputs of either of them. Fighting the system hardly gives short term rewards, but who knows, perhaps the next tournament will have better rules.