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)
Thanks for the commentary on the situation. I figured you'd have some strong opinions on the subject.
Anyways, the more I read about the subject the more I prefer straight double elimination over the pool play first followed by single elimination.
For anyone who thinks double elimination is more difficult for spectators to understand, I don't think you've really considered how complex pool play is. Take Beach Volleyball, it also uses a pool system. Though, unlike Badmitten, it used randomly determined the matches for the first elimination round.
Beach Volleyball had 24 teams divided into six pools of four. After pool play, the field is narrowed to 16 teams. Each team plays every other team in their pool, so every team plays three games before any or eliminated.
Top tow of each pool move on. The last place in each pool do not. The third place teams are more complicated. First, the top two third place teams automatically move on. Then the other four third places are paired up to play matches for the bottom two places on the bracket. These matches take place in a weird space called, I'm not kidding, "The Lucky Losers."
Pool play took six days and required 36 games, with the Lucky Loser matches requiring another two. That's 38 games before you ever get to single elimination.
Anyways, the pairs for the first elimination round are determined randomly, but they make sure that no one plays anyone from their pool that first round. And, like Sirlin suggested, winners are paired with losers.
Then you have the whole single elimination tournament to go through. That's another fifteen games to get the gold and silver medals, and then a separate match to determine the bronze. That's 54 games.
Now, I think Beach Volleyball did it right. Matches are best two out of three, with the third set only played if it's tied after the second. Thus, the set win ratio is a factor in ranking. The top ranked team is the one that has the most matches one and the highest win ratio if multiple teams have won the same number of matches. The random seeding helps keep kingmaking down.
But double elimination is so much easier. If you win, you advance. If you don't you get another try, but then you have to keep winning. People can understand that. Pool play is confusing by contrast. Also, double elimination needs only 47 matches to determine the top three. No Luck Loser matches, no separate bronze medel matches. It's really elegant, particularly for a competition like the Olympics.
It's weird that anyone would argue that double elimination is two unwieldy and has too many games when the solution that the Olympics has adopted, pool play followed by single elimination, has more games, more complexity, and can creates situations where players have an incentive to throw matches.
@Mayyq, in your rush to ignore comments you don't like, you failed to understand what these arguments are about. As I said earlier, there is a fundamental difference between deliberately losing, and losing simply because the player is not strong enough. The former is a disgrace to the sports and bring down the level of standard, while the latter is blameless. However, no one has a mind reader, so no one can know what a player is really thinking. The only thing that can be easily seen by the public is the performance shown by the player. As long as a player is giving sufficiently good performance, no one can tell if he is deliberately losing or if he is simply not strong enough. You seems to assert that many players in triathlon are deliberately losing or not using one’s best efforts to win a match. However, you can not prove this. As long as the player is giving a sufficiently good performance, one can say that the player is simply not strong enough, and is not deliberately losing. In other words, it is possible to distinguish between good performance and bad performance, but it is not possible to distinguish between genuine good performance and "appearance of good performance".
Furthermore, you seem to be claiming that game rules about best effort is being ignored by triathlon, so such rule is useless. This not how one should react to unenforced rule. Firstly, the IOC comprise of many different sports associations and clubs. A rule being ignored by one sports association does not automatically means that it should also be ignored by other sports associations. To show an analog, a certain rule being ignored in Russia does not means that it should automatically be ignored in America. More importantly, the correct thing to do about an unenforced rule is to close the loopholes so that it can become enforceable, or to abolish the rule if it is no good. In the case of triathlon, it seems that one way to stop the practice of domestique is to add rules that a nation is only allowed to send their highest ranking players to the Olympic game, so that only players with realistic chance of winning can play in the game.
Another distinction that I explained earlier but you failed to understand is the major difference between a team game with multiple players and a matching game with only 2 players. Let me explain it in another way. Most people who have watched that fake Olympic badminton game would view the match as a joke played by clowns with very poor badminton skills, and their opinion of badminton as a serious sports is significantly lowered. Does the presence of domestique in triathlon game also lead the viewers to draw similar conclusion? Just in case you don't understand why public opinion toward a sports is important, it should be pointed out that a major job and purpose of a sports association is to promote the sports, rise the standard of playing, and increase the number of players and viewers.
Not to mention it's significantly worse than double elim at determining place 2 and 3.
It does, however, have the merit (and IMO, as a sportman, a sigiificant merit) that all teams will play 3 games and many will play significantly more.
Very nice article - until reading it I'd jumped on the bandwagon of blaming the players, but as you've pointed out, they were merely playing the optimal strategy... or rather not playing it.
The lame duck and kingmaker ideas remind me of the game Solium Infernum, where players compete to become the most powerful demon in Hell. During the initial character creation, you have an option to choose two very interesting options; one of them enables you to actually win the game by making someone else seemingly win (of course this perk is called 'King Maker') whilst the other enables you to submit as a vassal to another player and if that player 'wins' then the victory is transferred onto yourself... (called 'Power behind the throne'). This game is very much about manipulation and cooperation (for your own benefit) so the leaders are always being underhandedly taken down by lame ducks, usually because of some events in the early game - great game design - albeit more for entertainment than competition :)
Throwing a match because you want to compete against an easier opponent is total BS. Game theory aside, whether it's a throwaway match or an opponent you're hoping to avoid you're supposed to be good enough to represent your country. To compete in the Olympics you should perform at your best REGARDLESS of who is put in front of you. THAT is playing to win.
If you throw a match on purpose to face an easier opponent to get the Gold, you tarnish the medal and you spit in the face of the spirit of the games itself. Exploiting a convenient loophole in tournament rules is underhanded and should be penalized.
I am not sure I have anything new to add to the discussion. But :
I agree that the turnament rules were suboptimal. That doesn't excuse the players for their blatant insult of all the people watching and arranging the game.
I only play local things, like roleplaying and boardgames. As an example -wich may be irrelevant - : I stopped playing Axis and Allies with a friend of mine, after he attacked with no statisctical chance of winning, with the argument : "I just need to roll all hits, and you need to miss all your throws". He had 10 dice, I had 40. He DID have winning options, he just couldn't be bothered to calculate the odds beforehand.
Our problem was that we entered the game with different ideas of what the game was about : He wanted to roll some dice, and maybe semi-"roleplay" the leader of the country in question (with no interst in "winning"), I wanted to win a strategic game by playing an optimum strategy, and using the cumulative dicerolls to play my chance.
In this case, the "Bad Players" played to maximize a chance of medals for their country, but us other "players" -the spectators- wanted exciting games to watch. I wouldn't want to "play another game" with those players ever again, since they cannot be trusted to play to my expectations. So I don't want to watch those players play Badminton again.
I have seen this in other games I play too : if all players don't have the same idea of what the game is about, arguments and non-pleasure will happen!
And yes, I expand he idea of who participate in the olympics to include the wievers and spectators..wich will also neatly remove your "anyone can forfeit for any reason" -rule..
Of course the players are at fault! The ONLY reason they threw matches is because they trust rankings as Word of God--to the extent that they disregard the ACTUAL results of group play matches that JUST happened in the SAME building in the SAME week. They are morons and they earned the DQs richly.
On the subject of forfeitures, while I wholeheartedly agree that they a) should be allowed without the need for further explanation, and b) are infinitely preferable to fake matches, I'm worried about a situation where BOTH contenders stood to benefit more by losing; i.e. a situation where both would want to forfeit. I guess my question is, who would win and who would lose, then? Perhaps if the situation arises, they should be allowed to play, then the winner gets to count as having lost? It might seem paradoxical, but I can't think of a simpler (or perhaps even more elegant) solution.
While I agree that the rules are poorly implemented so as to allow this "strategy" to be possible, the teams playing are still responsible for their actions. Playing to win is generally the right approach, but in this case it goes against the basic spirit of competition. The players that intentionally lost are playing the meta-game of "get to podium" instead of their chosen sport, essentially saying that competition doesn't matter because winning is the only goal.
Sports without competition are boring. Very few people care about a game where one team blows the other out of the arena. Were you excited when America blew that other basketball team out by 70 points just a few days ago? I didn't care enough to remember who they were playing. I do, however, remember the anchor leg of the relay in Beijing where Jason Lezak chasing down the French swimmer for gold in '08.
The crux of my argument is that what happens between the starting whistle and the podium matters. The way that players treat their sport helps us understand it as spectators. This is especially true for the Olympics. Players are ultimately responsible for how their sport is perceived, and in this case the world saw players not respecting their sport. The rules should be amended, but the players are at fault as well.
Do you want to see someone compete, or just win?
It's actually really sad to see the bad-rules-apologists here. While they think it shows a lack of understanding to say losing on purpose is ok, I think they are the ones with the lack of understand who have not really thought through the problem deeply. On the surface, this sounds like a bad thing that the players did. But if you really think about this particular case of the tournament organizers creating this impossible situation for players, and players don't what makes the most sense in that situation, it's very anti-competitive to punish players for trying to win a gold medal.
The reason the rules-apologist stance is so frail here is when you think about the incentives and what winning a gold would really be like in this situation. If you actually believe the players did something wrong, then you necessarily must believe that a totally honest and straightforward player would have an *advantage* if they were mentally devastated from being put in this absurdly bad situation. If they were really debilitated by the whole thing, they'd be more likely to lose this one match and more likely to get the gold medal. Or if they happened to have not gotten any sleep, so that their "best" performance that day was extremely bad (though still, the best they can give). The more impaired they are (temporarily, for only that match), the better their chances. You just can't get around how absurd that is if you spend any time at all thinking it through. When you're part of a sham tournament system, it's hardly fair to call out an athlete doing his best to win a medal, rather than those who created and enforced sham rules.
And further, trying your absolute hardest so that you can hurt your own chances of winning is certainly not what the competitive spirit is about. People should be held responsible for their actions though: those people being the rules creators. How can you take any tournament seriously that has this property? You basically can't.
And to Andrew, I want to see someone compete, just like you. That's a false dichotomy though. You've wrongly set that up to imply my only choices are condone terrible rules or see someone compete. Quite the opposite actually. By setting up reasonable rules, the kind that meet the ridiculously low bar of "winning a match is better for you than losing," you get to see people compete. So I want to see people compete and the way to do that--the only way--is make reasonable rules. Not a way: apologize for known-bad rules while blaming those who didn't make the rules.
Question for discussion: Say you were the lame-duck kingmaker in a badly-designed tournament. Further suppose no one bribes you toward winning or losing. Should you forfeit (or throw, if there's no forfeit rule) the game? Or should you try to win? I would probably forfeit, though I'd talk to my opponent and the referees to get their opinions on the matter first.
"The players that intentionally lost are playing the meta-game of "get to podium" instead of their chosen sport, essentially saying that competition doesn't matter because winning is the only goal."
-Andrew
The Olympics does not give out medals for Best Sportsmanship. They give out medals for WINNING. After this is all over and the media is publishing post-Olympics stories, they are going to rank countries based on the number of gold medals that they won. If you look at some of the other stories coming from the Olympics - other accusations of throwing games, that British biker who crashed on purpose to restart a race - it's pretty clear that winning medals is at the forefront of everyone's mind.
And you are taking issue with the players here? The players that are doing what their families, countries, and opponents expect of them - that is, trying to win gold medals? Shouldn't your blame lie with the organizers who don't incentivize the athletes with anything but medals for winning?
lettucemode: if you mean that losing would help you, then forfeit seems best there partly because it's simply easiest (you don't have to exert yourself physically, so save your strength for future matches) and also because it doesn't mock the sport. Often this is not a possible option because there's some squishy rule against it that forces you into supposedly trying. Frustrating situation as you would have shown up at this thing in order to actually play whatever game or sport is at hand, but you'll probably be able to do that next round.
If instead you meant that losing / winning was to affect someone ELSE in the tournament, that's kind of shady to try to lose there. People do it for their friends and it's hard to really police or enforce rules against that. You should probably try not to lose specifically to kingmake for someone else if you can bear it though. I mean your default stance should be "try to win matches and play your best," I'd hope, unless there is some big reason that is a bad idea for you.
Andrew: Sadly, what you and others who are apologizing for the rule makers are arguing is that the degree in which they threw the match was morally unacceptable. Swimming is an irrelevant comparison because there is never an incentive to lose. There is even a small incentive in swimming (and track) to do well in the heats and semifinals (as opposed to doing the bare minimum to qualify) because of placement in the pool or track. Actually, in the 200m Individual Medley, Chad Le Clos qualified for the final swim, but withdrew (because he had very little chance of winning) in order to not tire himself out further for the 100m Butterfly the next day. Is that morally acceptable? Should he be punished further? He did forfeit the match in order to better his chances of winning a gold medal, that is, he did it for the meta game.
Back to other sports, you would rather they played the match while "trying hard" as long as they appeared to compete to acceptable moral standards. So, in essence, you're OK with fake matches, as long as you can plausibly believe it was a real match and that the superior team was "upset" by the underdog. Because they had thrown the match so obviously, you're incensed, but had they thrown it convincingly, you would be OK? You cannot force people to put in maximum effort with rule, "do it because I say so." You can only force them to do it if it truly is the best way to win the tournament. Otherwise, you're just forcing them to act better, not actually play their sport to win.
Look at today's basketball pool match up between Spain and Brazil. Because Russia has already clinched the #1 seed in their group, the loser of Spain vs. Brazil would be the #3 seed and on the opposite side of the bracket as the USA. While both teams have publicly stated they will play their hardest, is it morally acceptable for them to sit some of their starters? Ostensibly, they could claim they were resting them for the elimination round or that they had minor injuries, but isn't that the same thing as throwing the match? Just a different degree of doing so. If you had paid for a ticket, would you be OK with watching the benches of both teams play? I'm sure the bench players would be "trying their hardest."
Again, the issue is with the rules. Make rules which always force the competitors to WANT to compete. The olympic rules prefer pool play because it's more lucrative and is easier on television scheduling, but that, more than the competitors meta gaming for gold, is against the spirit of competition.
I was thinking along the lines of the second situation - where I no longer have "skin in the game", but my opponent does, and whether or not he advances depends on winning or losing our game. I would be tempted to forfeit the match out of (1) politeness, as I don't see any reason to ruin this guy's day if there's nothing in it for me, and (2) protesting against the tournament rules system that has placed us in this awkward position. I see the merit in playing to win no matter what, though, even if I am a lame-duck.
I believe that lettucemode was saying that they are already in the position of lame-duck. They are hoping to not become a kingmaker by removing themself from the game. The question then becomes "Is forfeiting is the most ethical move to make so as not to effect the other players?"
lettucemode: that situation is not so uncommon in mtg tournaments. I think people are kind of split on what to do there. If you forfeit because you lose nothing by doing so but also don't ruin some guy's day, it's hard to fault you for it and some even *expect* that. On the other hand, I really can't fault you for trying to win a match. I would personally probably try to win, as it sounds more fun and I don't really have a duty to help other players in a tournament. I am "affecting" them no matter what I choose, and you could say they should be able to beat me if they want better standing in the tournament. But I don't know. I have no strong opinion either way in that case.
Wow, I think this discussion ended up being quite enlightening, for me at least. I think there are a lot of analysis we can make in here, so, if you allow me, I will expand a little bit on the subject.
I think one of the main points to consider is that the tournament itself is a whole different game from the original sport. If it's main objective is to represent the sport with the most accuracy as it possibly can, so we can still consider the tournament as a "meta" representation of the sport and a valid method to decide the best player in a larger scale that the game could not decide otherwise, it must test and reward the exactly same skills.
Sirlin might not remember this, but he answered a few questions back in 2011 for our bachelor thesis, about competitive games, where he pointed out (and if he allowes me, I set the interview public so anyone can read it):
And considering the tournament as a game system itself, this is an important quality we should check: Is the tournament testing any additional, unwanted skills that are out of the scope of the original sport? The way the tournament rules were set in badminton, they clearly violated this principle by rewarding players for loosing in the core game, thus failing at the originally tested skills.
This is where, in my opinion, things get really interesting: there is no problem with that. But only if you want to detach the tournament from the sport, therefore making it loose its validity as a competitive tournament. It tests new skills and can no longer declare its winners as the best players in the sport. If we agree that Olympic Tournaments have the main purpose of declaring the best player in each sport, then we should declare such systems as flawed, detached from the "Olympic spirit", and removing any guilt from the Disqualified players and putting the blame into the tournament organizers.
Of course, we can look at the other side of the coin and say that the Olympic games' main purpose is to entertain the audience. Then, the tournaments can declare themselves as independent from the sports and setting new skills to be tested: e.g, Entertain the audience. Which would be sort of paradoxical for an event that rewards players in a "best of the world" fashion, and constantly checks their performance in their core sports skills tests, so my guess is that anyone analyzing things this way grasped the wrong Olympic spirit idea.
Those who are criticizing Sirlin's arguments seems to lack the knowledge in how competitive systems works, (and how games works), and are focusing in their only point of view: the audience who wants to be entertained, no matter what. Well, since there are always a whole bunch of athletes at the Olympics games, I guess it's easier to blame them.
lettucemode: generally, there are a limited number of spots in the final bracket of a tournament, and so if you allow your opponent to get in by forfeiting, you are also at the same time, sending some other player home as a result. If you have no reason to not play (conserving yourself, etc.) then you should play because it's more fair to all competitors who are attempting to secure the last spots. If the setup is akin to the cut in golf, where all players below a certain score are included, then the situation is a bit murkier I'd say, but nobody can fault you for playing, since that's what you're supposed to do.
Very well-put, Bruno.