Playing To Win - WD fiasco from a game designer's perspective

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yamsyams

Regular Member
David Sirlin is a game designer responsible for much of the balancing in Street Fighter HD Remix, one of the top competitors in fighting games in the USA, as well as one of my favourite writers on the Internet. Evidently the WD situation has been so extensively reported that he has decided to weigh in as well.

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.
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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.
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It's an embarrassing time for Olympic badminton. But not because some players lost on purpose—because someone created horrifically bad tournament rules and then tried to blame the competitors for playing to win.
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You can read the entire article here: http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2012/8/1/playing-to-win-in-badminton.html

On a related note, the ridiculous rule upon which the players were disqualified should absolutely be abolished, and Sirlin explains why as well: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned.html
 
The Olympic Oath is also a set of rules that the players swore upon. So you're staying it's OKAY to abuse a rule to get to the gold and then throw a sworn oath out the door to suite your needs?

A little of a hypocrite there mate.
 
Li Mao called it a trap, set up to catch willing preys.

However, it does not give Li Yongbo the excuse to do what he did.
 
gamelessx25 said:
The Olympic Oath is also a set of rules that the players swore upon. So you're staying it's OKAY to abuse a rule to get to the gold and then throw a sworn oath out the door to suite your needs?

A little of a hypocrite there mate.
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I quote the Olympic Oath, In the name of all the competitors I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, committing ourselves to a sport without doping and without drugs, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honor of our teams.

The bolded parts are those which I see as relevant, yes?

The rules in question are arbitrary at best. How would one decide if a player/pair isn't playing to the best of their abilities? Sure, it's beyond obvious this time round, but how would one judge future matches? There is no defined benchmark as to whether or not one is trying their best. And as such it can be argued that they are all just maximizing their chance to get the best possible medal, within the arbitrary ruleset.

Sportsmanship can mean different things to different people. To me, it means doing your best in the tournament (let's skip the respecting opponents, umpires, etc here), not necessarily every single match. When playing at 50% gets the job done, why go all out? When losing gets the job done, why expend energy to win?

Glory of sport is...ambiguous. I take it to mean the glory one gets upon winning? Again, they are maximizing their chances to get the best possible medal, I don't see how that goes against the Oath.

Lastly, honor of their teams should be self evident. Like it or not, the honor comes from medals. Sure, one can get the occasional recognition by exceptional qualities, but those are extremely rare.

What I'm saying is that the rules have loopholes. It is the job of the organizers to recognize and rectify them. Players should never be penalized for "abusing" loopholes in the rules, because all players should play to win.
 
Let's quote some common law... ie.. common sense. It was obvious to NON badminton players who had no idea who these WD's pairs rankings that something was going on.

Without respect for the sport you're representing, why even play? How glorious are they now? BWF set up the rules, like it our not, they have the final say, and bang, DQed.

You cannot blame the BWF for doing what they did. Everyone needs to save face, if someone came to your house party and **** on your couch, you'd throw them out too.
 
So, what do you want to say, and what do you want to achieve?

there is a loophole but does not mean it is right to abuse it
does not mean the players are not wrong
they are wrong, got punished, the end

vice president of BWF european division (which also member of IOC) was present there, and even tried to give those 4 pairs black card
the president of IOC also sighted 1 hour prior to the match
there is no way those player would escape after ignoring warnings from vice president of BWF


and every single crowd in there PAID the money as much as £95 to watch the match (almost go there, add £77 for my ticket train)
imagine how pissed the spectator would be?
you are not there, so can you said, it's fine to do that

imagine they bring their kids, 2 parents, 2 kids, almost £400 (777 SGD) and this is their only ticket since it is so expensive
and watch this crappy show, what do you want to say?
"tough luck, the rules makes this happens, they should blame to the rule?"
the rule is wrong, but that doesn't mean the players are allowed to abuse it

this sporting matches are what people called: experience service
experience service: once it is damaged, you cannot return it to the normal state
they got crappy games, what they remember: badminton is crappy sport
even if they got 1 Yonex high end racket, that will not gonna fix their bad experience

what they did is GAMESMANSHIP not sportsmanship
setup the game to get best outcome

Gamesmanship is the use of dubious (although not technically illegal) methods to win or gain a serious advantage in a game or sport. It has been described as "Pushing the rules to the limit without getting caught, using whatever dubious methods possible to achieve the desired end" (Lumpkin, Stoll and Beller, 1994:92).
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gamelessx25 said:
Let's quote some common law... ie.. common sense. It was obvious to NON badminton players who had no idea who these WD's pairs rankings that something was going on.

Without respect for the sport you're representing, why even play? How glorious are they now? BWF set up the rules, like it our not, they have the final say, and bang, DQed.

You cannot blame the BWF for doing what they did. Everyone needs to save face, if someone came to your house party and **** on your couch, you'd throw them out too.
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Once again, I am not denying that the two WD matches were deliberately thrown. I am disputing the validity of the rules in the first place. How can one systematically detect fake matches? Is serving once into the net ok? What about two? Three? It goes on like this, can't you see?

Where did the respecting the sport part even come from? Are you saying that oh, BWF has the final say, let's all keep quiet and accept it, despite how stupid it is?

BWF is not saving face doing what they did. That is the whole point. The disqualification of the players were simply a way to find scapegoats, which in my opinion reflected on their poor organizational qualities.
 
Kindly refer this example from another sport :
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/18022010/58/bowls-rocked-match-fixing-scandal.html

Purposely/Intentionally losing to gain better advantage in next round. They call it match fixing and match fixing is against the rules of all sports. If you say there is nothing wrong with that, then why is there so many court cases on match fixing ? Sure, most of it involve bribes cos it is clearer evidence, BUT it's still match fixing with pre planned, pre determined desired results
 
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Avenger said:
there is a loophole but does not mean it is right to abuse it
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Yes it is. Players should never be penalized for the failure of rules. The blame lies squarely on the BWF, nowhere else. Paying spectators should complain/protest/criticize/whatever the BWF, no one else.
 
yamsyams said:
Once again, I am not denying that the two WD matches were deliberately thrown. I am disputing the validity of the rules in the first place. How can one systematically detect fake matches? Is serving once into the net ok? What about two? Three? It goes on like this, can't you see?

Where did the respecting the sport part even come from? Are you saying that oh, BWF has the final say, let's all keep quiet and accept it, despite how stupid it is?

BWF is not saving face doing what they did. That is the whole point. The disqualification of the players were simply a way to find scapegoats, which in my opinion reflected on their poor organizational qualities.
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You brought up the part of respecting the fans/opponents/umpires etc. I am just bring in the most important part of human existence. Self Respect... if you spend your whole life doing something, I would sure hope you respect it and respect yourself while doing it. What they did show Zero respect for the sport of badminton. Thus zero respect for themselves, that's my perspective on this event.
 
yamsyams said:
Yes it is. Players should never be penalized for the failure of rules. The blame lies squarely on the BWF, nowhere else. Paying spectators should complain/protest/criticize/whatever the BWF, no one else.
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well, good luck with that attitude

as I said before, it is gamesmanship, not sportsmanship

if you cannot see the players who took the chance are also wrong, there is no point to argue with a stone :)
 
yamsyams said:
The rules in question are arbitrary at best. How would one decide if a player/pair isn't playing to the best of their abilities? Sure, it's beyond obvious this time round, but how would one judge future matches? There is no defined benchmark as to whether or not one is trying their best. And as such it can be argued that they are all just maximizing their chance to get the best possible medal, within the arbitrary ruleset.
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You really think there needed to be some sort of benchmark to figure out they weren't trying their best? Do you really think the uproar is simply because they weren't trying their best? They went way beyond simply not trying.

Sportsmanship can mean different things to different people. To me, it means doing your best in the tournament (let's skip the respecting opponents, umpires, etc here), not necessarily every single match.
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You are cherry picking a concept to suit a personal bias. This is your view alone and is meaningless. The fans and the officials, it would seem, would beg to differ.

Glory of sport is...ambiguous. I take it to mean the glory one gets upon winning? Again, they are maximizing their chances to get the best possible medal, I don't see how that goes against the Oath.
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The 'glory of sport' not that ambiguous, and your interpretation is flat out wrong. You not being able to see how this goes against the Oath speaks more about a degraded intellectual and moral outlook than the existence of any murky gray area. "The glory of sport" in no way refers to personal glory.

Lastly, honor of their teams should be self evident. Like it or not, the honor comes from medals. Sure, one can get the occasional recognition by exceptional qualities, but those are extremely rare.
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This is pure bull$hit, and are the words of someone with no inkling of the concept of honor and an extremely cynical and negative view on humanity. Only a psychopath accept your mangled concepts of sportsmanship, honor and glory of sport.

What I'm saying is that the rules have loopholes. It is the job of the organizers to recognize and rectify them. Players should never be penalized for "abusing" loopholes in the rules, because all players should play to win.
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They weren't penalized for abusing loopholes. Technically they didn't even get DQ'd for violating the Olympic Oath so, your twisted interpretation of it is meaningless anyways. They got in trouble for blatantly violating the BWF's clause about playing to your best ability. In fact they did it so blatantly that the BWF really didn't have any choice in handing out the DQ's.

Edit: Deleted rant about yet another useless and fragmenting thread on this topic.
 
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Avenger said:
well, good luck with that attitude

as I said before, it is gamesmanship, not sportsmanship

if you cannot see the players who took the chance are also wrong, there is no point to argue with a stone :)
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Be it gamesmanship, they're playing the game. As with the in-game delay tactics of Boe/Mogensen. To paraphrase Voltaire, I do not like what you do, but I'll defend to death your right to do it.

To thunder.tw, when you can move past ad hominems like "degraded intellectual and moral outlook", I'll take you seriously. Meanwhile, since only your last paragraph is actually making a point: For the last time, I am not denying that they are close to even playing 1% of their abilities. That should be evident. I'm saying that the DQs were unjustified because that clause itself is unjustified. And BWF did have a choice. Take the blame. I'm not saying I won't have done the same thing in BWF's shoes, but that doesn't make it right.
 
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yamsyams said:
Be it gamesmanship, they're playing the game. As with the in-game delay tactics of Boe/Mogensen. To paraphrase Voltaire, I do not like what you do, but I'll defend to death your right to do it.
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The WD weren't playing the game, they were playing the system and they lost. Failed acting. Why argue it's still BWF's fault for weak characters trying to take advantage of a weak set of RR rules? IOC has asked BWF the review their rules for RR or badminton gets eliminated in future Olympics. It's not like the BWF doesn't know they f'ed up on their part. They are not 100% to blame, the actors(players) are at blame too.
 
yamsyams said:
Be it gamesmanship, they're playing the game. As with the in-game delay tactics of Boe/Mogensen. To paraphrase Voltaire, I do not like what you do, but I'll defend to death your right to do it.
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How dare you muddy Voltaire with such a twisted mis-quote. That is definitely NOT a paraphrase which was about freedom of speech.

Additionally, 'not using ones best effort' was not the only charge - the more serious one that the likes of you are conveniently ignoring is "conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport"
 
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yamsyams said:
Be it gamesmanship, they're playing the game. As with the in-game delay tactics of Boe/Mogensen. To paraphrase Voltaire, I do not like what you do, but I'll defend to death your right to do it.
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Hilarious, there are no rights or a need to defend rights. There are rules and codes of conduct. Sports isn't a court of law. You do not get to lawyer your way through an issue by attempting to get a favorable interpretation on a set of laws. If you behave in a questionable manner and do it in egregious way you are going to face consequences. They should have taken the warning seriously. Even if you want to go so far as to say they were completely right to do what they did. They had every opportunity to realize that the people who's opinions matter disagreed with them. They tested the system and lost.

To thunder.tw, when you can move past ad hominems like "degraded intellectual and moral outlook", I'll take you seriously.
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I stand by that description of the outlook you presented in your post. I'm not terribly concerned about you taking me seriously given your inability to grasp matters of principle.


Meanwhile, since only your last paragraph is actually making a point: For the last time, I am not denying that they are close to even playing 1% of their abilities. That should be evident. I'm saying that the DQs were unjustified because that clause itself is unjustified.
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Nonsense, that is just your opinion and you don't even bother to provide any reasoning for why the clause is unjustified.

And BWF did have a choice. Take the blame.
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Take the blame and........ possibly get badminton booted from the Olympics? Lose all credibility in front of the world at large? Yeah, I think they had a choice, the same choice as the players had. In a difficult situation you can either do the right thing or the wrong thing. The BWF made the right decision the players did not.

I'm not saying I won't have done the same thing in BWF's shoes, but that doesn't make it right.
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Good to know your a man that acts according to your principles <=== sarcasm. Of course given your principles, I won't complain.
 
Avenger said:
So, what do you want to say, and what do you want to achieve?

there is a loophole but does not mean it is right to abuse it
does not mean the players are not wrong
they are wrong, got punished, the end

vice president of BWF european division (which also member of IOC) was present there, and even tried to give those 4 pairs black card
the president of IOC also sighted 1 hour prior to the match
there is no way those player would escape after ignoring warnings from vice president of BWF


and every single crowd in there PAID the money as much as £95 to watch the match (almost go there, add £77 for my ticket train)
imagine how pissed the spectator would be?
you are not there, so can you said, it's fine to do that

imagine they bring their kids, 2 parents, 2 kids, almost £400 (777 SGD) and this is their only ticket since it is so expensive
and watch this crappy show, what do you want to say?
"tough luck, the rules makes this happens, they should blame to the rule?"
the rule is wrong, but that doesn't mean the players are allowed to abuse it

this sporting matches are what people called: experience service
experience service: once it is damaged, you cannot return it to the normal state
they got crappy games, what they remember: badminton is crappy sport
even if they got 1 Yonex high end racket, that will not gonna fix their bad experience

what they did is GAMESMANSHIP not sportsmanship
setup the game to get best outcome
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Sorry if you find £95 tickets too much...you shouldn't be going. Here in Vancouver, regular season hockey tickets for for $120+ easily.

And for the athlete, isn't the ultimate goal the gold medal? They are trying their best to get gold, by dropping to a weaker tree
 
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