Last week at the Olympics, The Badminton World Federation disqualified eight badminton players for losing matches intentionally in order to get weaker opponents in the coming round.
It is one of those questions: is it OK to lose a match in order to get ahead, or are you always to supposed to put in maximum effort? The Badminton “Code of Conduct” does state that you should always try to win a match:
BWF’s Players’ Code of Conduct – Sections 4.5 and 4.16 respectively – with “not using one’s best efforts to win a match” and “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport”.
I can understand why it would be frustrating to pay money to watch such a match, but on the other hand the players really were performing to the best of their abilities in order to win the tournament.
I feel that it is the responsibility of the game designers, the Badminton World Federation and the Olympics, to make sure that the optimal way of playing the game involves winning every match. In this case, the players are really being punished for poor game design.
But part of the issue is also about the scope of “one’s best efforts”. The players’ best efforts were not going toward that particular match, but toward the overall tournament. It follows that we could imagine at least four different type of “best effort” arguments, from strict to lenient:
- As a player you should put in maximum effort in every single moment in a game.
- As a player, you should always put in maximum effort in order to win a match.
- As a player, you should always put in maximum effort in order to win a tournament.
- As a player, you can do whatever you want as long as it is within the general rules of the game. Win, lose, play well, play badly – it’s up to you.
As we can see, the BWF has chosen type 2: they will probably not punish a player for playing below ability when far behind in a set, or for not diving in order to catch every single shot. Conversely, they don’t acknowledge that a match in a tournament may be played for larger goals (type 3). A more lenient type 4 argument would say that players can do whatever they wanted within the rules (the famous spoilsport behavior).
Summing up, I was about to say that I intuitively support a type 3 argument, but do I really? For some reason I feel that losing on purpose is more acceptable in Badminton than in Soccer. Perhaps because Soccer matches are longer and involve more people, and hence feel more like standalone events? But I am certain that we are having this discussion only because the BWF made a poor game design decision.
The problem was that they weren’t trying to win the tournament. They were medal maximizing. It wasn’t about whether they would have a better or worse chance at a medal, it was about whether the two Chinese teams would meet in the final or not. Everyone else followed suit. However, is the game about winning or is it about Badminton? BWF went with the latter.
But that brings up another interesting question about games within games (i.e. the game of Badminton within the game of medal competition) and how they relate to one another.
I’ve read a lot of discussion about this on Dave Sirlin’s site, and there’s a theory there that both Chinese teams were formidable enough that they’d want to put off playing each other until the final even if they weren’t both Chinese – to have an easier ride to the final, hence a fitter team and a better chance of winning gold, or to have a better chance of getting to the final and winning at least silver. Such play has happened before, in other tournaments – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Tiger_Cup
The same kind of practice is surprisingly common in chess tournaments, where it is often referred to as the “Swiss Gambit.” The gambiteer intentionally stalemates one of his first games, giving him 0.5 points for that round. This ensures that she will never face the first-ranked player until the final round of the tournament.
Even though the Swiss Gambit is not generally forbidden, many players have found that the practice polices itself. If multiple competitors attempt it in the same tournament, they end up facing each other after their stalemates. Since two stalemates is no better than a loss, they have to frantically beat out all the other gambiteers who are also ranked lower than their abilities would merit, and the irony is rarely lost on the other competitors.
In the end, the problem turns into a kind of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” which, though perhaps not in the spirit of the game, certainly makes it interesting.
That is really interesting, and shows how clear rules should be for players. Type 4 really illustrates David Sirlin’s idea of “Playing to Win”: if you choose not to play to win and decides to respect a certain code of conduct in a game (a “loyal” play, a “fair” play, an “intended” play, etc.), you end up to put barriers for winning. I tend to agree that if the rules of the games are somehow “broken”, then BWF should have fixed them! But I find really interesting the idea that spectatorship is an important aspect of “gameplay” in sports in general.
That reminds me of an interesting example of such “bad manners” in videogames. In a StarCraft II tournament, Naniwa had to play a game with no chance of winning the tournament and decided to forfeit with an unviable all-in (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eyH_kBa0uo). He lost some respect from fans and lost an “invitational” place in other tournaments as well.
@eclectic Good point, but it wasn’t just Chinese players being banned, and is it wrong to help your team- or country-maters?
@Andrew Only just now saw Sirlin’s discussion. His main argument is that the fault lies with the tournament organizers. http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2012/8/1/playing-to-win-in-badminton.html
@Peter Doesn’t this speak against the Swiss-system tournament structure?
@Simon The Naniwa example is pretty obviously bad manners as you say, since he wasn’t trying to achieve *anything*.
@Jesper I think that depends on what criteria you’re judging the effectiveness of the tournament. Chess players are already accustomed to sacrificing tangible assets (pieces) for less tangible advantages (better positioning). If the tournament is just an extension of the board game, a meta-game to make things more interesting, then the Swiss Gambit is not very different from any other gambit. The player simply sacrifices something tangible (number of wins) for a less tangible advantage (playing “weaker” opponents).
As to whether this practice speaks against the tournament system, it depends on how we view the purpose of the tournament. Tournaments themselves are just games, with players and rules. The question is whether or not the tournament meta-game should be treated differently. In chess, sacrificing pieces, trying to mislead your opponent and using unconventional strategies is generally looked at favorably. Some people clearly see these acceptable tactics in the tournament, while others do not.
I suppose the real question is whether chess tournaments should reward good chess players, or good chess-tournament players.
@Peter Fair point. I think that it does up against the widespread intuition that tournament systems should never encourage players to lose (or tie).
And a lot of that seems to be about wasting the time (or money) of spectators.
But is anyone calling for changing the Swiss Tournament system?