

All eight women disqualified for throwing badminton matches - repsieximo
http://www.nbcolympics.com/news-blogs/badminton/all-eight-women-disqualified-for-throwing-badminton-matches.html

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revelation
I feel theres a critical omission here. Part of the game rules is that if you
don't play to your fullest (which can probably only be proven if you play
terribly bad), you are immediately disqualified from the whole tournament.

Obviously a rational player with complete information would try to fulfill the
two conflicting goals of maximizing ones chances by losing (and thereby
securing an easier competitor later on) and not being kicked out
simultaneously.

In this case, you have players that acted in complete ignorance from that one
critical rule. Thats not game theory, thats just stupid.

~~~
kenjackson
_I feel theres a critical omission here. Part of the game rules is that if you
don't play to your fullest (which can probably only be proven if you play
terribly bad), you are immediately disqualified from the whole tournament._

What does "play to your fullest mean"? Let me give you an example... in boxing
I may be fighting someone who I know can knock me out easily, but he tires
easily. If I can simply avoid him for the first few rounds, I know I can win a
decision. Should I be disqualified for not engaging, knowing that this
maximizes my chances of winning the fight?

At an even more micro level, in basketball, it's common to intentionally foul
a poor free throw shooter. At the moment you're doing the fouling you're not
playing to your fullest, but you do so with the knowledge that in ten seconds
this "poor" play will pay off.

The badminton players did the same thing, except extended over the course of
the tournament.

One could argue that, like a basketball team that doesn't foul the poor free
throw shooter, a badminton team that doesn't try to optimize their chances of
winning the tournament are actually the ones that aren't playing to their
fullest.

~~~
revelation
But they didn't optimize their winning chances! They chose a very low chance
of not being disqualified over a reasonable chance to still beat a tough
competitor later on.

They especially didn't change their strategy after being given immediate and
clear warning that they would be disqualified (and in the process forfeiting
any chance to win).

I also don't think theres any ambiguity here that they were in violation of
the rule. They were repeatedly putting the ball into the net on their openers.

~~~
kenjackson
Their ability to not hide their intent is more disappointig to me than trying
to lose in this case.

Funny, no one blamed the US Mens gymnastics team for intentially losing, but
they looked like they were trying to lose on purpose. The only thing they had
going for them was (a) they looked sincerely distressed and (b) there's no
incentive we know of for why they would have done so poorly intentionally.

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xcolour
A bit off-topic, but my favorite example of incentives gone awry in sport
occurred during the 1994 Caribbean Cup (football), which ultimately resulted
in one team defending both goals while the other team tried to score in
either. In this case, the rule that caused the chaos was recognized to be
poorly thought out and replaced in later tournaments.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados_v_Grenada_(1994)>

~~~
nandemo
Not only it's on-topic, it's even more amusing. At some point one of the teams
was trying to score +1, but as the time passed it became safer to score -1 for
a chance of +2 later; after deciding on scoring -1, the situation sort of
reversed and the other team tried to score either +1 or -1.

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derefr
A deeper analysis of the same controversy, from a game-designer:
[http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2012/8/1/playing-to-win-in-
badmin...](http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2012/8/1/playing-to-win-in-
badminton.html)

~~~
ChrisMac
If you don't feel like reading the link above, what the author is basically
saying is that if a tournament structure is so badly designed that it
sometimes incentivizes losing on purpose, then that's the fault of the
organizers. The players are just playing to win within the rules given to them
and shouldn't be blamed.

~~~
jaems33
"The players are just playing to win within the rules given to them and
shouldn't be blamed."

Indeed. It seems kind of stupid to penalize them now instead of refining the
rules afterwards as they didn't particularly break a hard rule.

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elithrar
What surprises me is how _obvious_ their attempts to lose were; so much so
that the audience boo'ed them and they were warned by the umpires.

~~~
mkinsella
One umpire even showed a black card to both competing teams (which would
automatically disqualify them) but then rescinded his decision and allowed the
farce to continue.

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scoofy
Game theory often goes against many peoples morals. That's why people often
act irrationally in things like the ultimatum game. I'm glad 'throwing' games
is considered unacceptable under olympic guidelines. On a side note, this is
why British Premier League's final week of games are played in unison, so that
no one has the ability to dodge relegation via an intentional tie.

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orangecat
My days of not respecting the IOC are certainly coming to a middle. I suppose
next we should disqualify swimmers who didn't go as fast as they possibly
could in the qualifier rounds, in order to save energy for the finals?

~~~
mkinsella
Completely unrelated.

All four of these badminton teams had already qualified for the next round
with only the seeding still to be determined.

In swimming qualifiers, only the top 8 swimmers across all heats advance to
the finals. There is absolutely no guarantee that an individual swimmer in a
heat will qualify for the next round if he or she simply swims slowly to
conserve energy.

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incision
"Teams blamed the introduction of a round-robin stage rather than a straight
knockout tournament as the main cause of the problem. The round-robin format
can allow results to be manipulated to earn an easier matchup in the knockout
round."

Well there you have it.

Unless there's some fantastic explanation for the value of a round-robin
stage, it's pretty clear...

The organizers screwed up and someone has decided to penalize the players for
adapting to the organizer's stupidity.

~~~
mkinsella
A round-robin stage is fine as long as all final matches are played
simultaneously (as is the case for most football/soccer group stages). That
wasn't the case this time.

~~~
smallblacksun
There can still be issues even with that. I watched an international youth
tournament (CONCACAF u20 championships, I think) where the US and Canada?
could each guarantee advancement with a tie, but could be eliminated if they
lost. The first half had both teams trying a bit, but not being willing to
push enough men forward to have a real chance. The second half was a joke,
with the US midfield and defense kicking the ball around their own half for
20+ minutes at the end of the game, while the opponent stayed in their own
half.

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golovast
Reminds me of this soccer match in 1994. Somewhat a similar situation, but it
was treated as ridiculous, rather than unsportsmanlike. I think it was widely
agreed that the rules were to blame instead of the players.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados_v_Grenada_(1994)#Match>

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ximeng
One of the Chinese players says she will quit badminton. Her weibo about it
has been "retweeted" 50,000 times. Sad situation.

<http://t.qq.com/yuyangyumaoqiu/>

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patrickyeon
Canadian here, so I can't see footage on nbcolympics.com. Not sure if the
following link is geo-restricted, but for me at least it shows the video of
players obviously throwing matches.

[http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--eight-badminton-
playe...](http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--eight-badminton-players-
booted-from-olympics-for-throwing-matches.html)

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mrobataille
Here's a possible solution that doesn't exclude round robin games:

1\. Play round robin as usual, but use the results of this to uniquely seed
the teams (tiebreak any way you want)

2\. In the elimination stage, for every round, assign the highest seed to play
lowest seed, 2nd highest vs 2nd lowest, etc.

Open question: can anyone think of a way to game this system?

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cdcarter
And that is why you should have the LAST phase of the tournament be the round-
robin (ideally with an advantaged final), not the first stage!

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dinkumthinkum
This title is pretty misleading. I was expecting some strained reasoning about
game theory and all I got was essentially straight reporting about something I
already knew.

