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Comment by revelation | Hacker News Reader

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.

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This is purely the fault of the organizers. If losing provides an advantage to the losing team, the tournament rules are broken. There should never be a need for such a rule.

Yes, the tournament rules are broken. But you can't make the claim that the players were being completely rational per game theory.

What do you mean? They clearly saw an advantage in losing, per the structure of the tournament.

The structure of the tournament also precludes throwing matches. Thus, they were not being true to the (mathematically) ideal rational player - they were violating a constraint of the tournament in their attempt to maximize another advantage.

I think this means the tournament was poorly designed.

And I certainly don't disagree. I was simply clarifying how the players weren't being completely rational game theorists. If the tournament is viewed as immutable (as it should be by the players) then the players misjudged, misunderstood, or completely ignored the possibility of disqualification.

That's why there's conflict. The 'moral' rules of fair play were not consistently enforced (information withheld), or you could just say not even consistently prioritized (likelihood of getting caught varied).

Well clearly it didn't work out. What do you mean? I mean, this outcome was obvious so why would a perfect game theorist make such a bumbled performance?

I just call BS on that. Any reasonable players that understood rules and spirit of the Olympics would not have put on such a sham performance. I find it only excusable if the players were from some dictatorial country where poor medal performing athletes are tortured or shamed for life, other than that, they should have known better. It was just ridiculous and childish.

It's a tough call.

On one end of the spectrum, you have a 100% direct elimination system. No cheating there (you lose, you're out) but you don't get a good feel for who is really the best since so few games are happening (log2(n)). Somebody can win just because they had an easy draw, even when you try to be smart with how you pepper seeds.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can do a 100% pool system: everybody plays against everybody else. The winner is very likely to be the best of all, but it's obviously an organizational nightmare that would take forever to complete (n! games). Again, here, there is zero incentive to lose.

This is why most professional tournaments operate with a mix of these two: a set of small pools first that leads into a direct elimination system. The trick is to implement the transition so that you always want to win all your pool games. Seeds are supposed to take care of this problem, but it's not a guarantee.

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.

The rules say you must try to win every match, not try to win the tournament. Violation of Players’ Code of Conduct, Section 4.5 for “not using one’s best efforts to win a match.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetorch/2012/08/01/157703869/badmi...

Why is that rule necessary? Shouldn't the tournament be structured such that the only way to win the tournament is to win matches?

I can't think of any algorithms to accurately rank all teams except to just have every team play every other team.

There's the ELO system, but I think that's only an approximation.

Probably to prevent match-fixing.

In the context of a tournament that doesn't make sense.

Let me give you an example.

Lets say I'm playing team A. I know if I beat team A then I must play B and C. Both of whom I know I can't beat. If I lose to team A then I must play D and E, both of whom I know I can beat.

Thereby me using my best effort to win against A also means that I'm knowingly putting myself in a position to lose my next two matches. So I'm not using my best efforts to win a match -- it just happens to be a future match, not the match that I'm currently in.

Now if Section 4.5 was clear that it only applied to the match you were currently playing then it would be fine.

But it's still a braindead tournament construction where to incentive players to do their best you must create a rule dictating it.

Braindead tournament - agree.

Interpretation of 4.5 ambiguous - agree, though I think your alternative interpretation is less compelling.

See also 4.16 - "Conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport", again under a reasonable interpretation this was committed, although you could argue that there is some future chain of events where this could be good for the sport I suppose.

The fact that the judge told them to stop and they carried on doesn't go in their favour.

http://www.bwfbadminton.org/file_download.aspx?id=364321&...

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.

They especially didn't change their strategy after being given immediate and clear warning that they would be disqualified.

I think this is the key piece--the referee in the South Korea/China match initially disqualified both teams before getting reined in by the IOC.

If I'm one of those teams, I'm cutting out the bullshit after that and winning. They just kept going, however.

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.

Strategically conceding a point or advantage during a game, in order to win that game, is not the same as intentionally losing a game.

A triathlon competitor may decide strategically to swim slower during the swimming component of the race in order to have more energy during the cycling component of the race.

What's the difference? The only difference is the scope. In both cases you have some ultimate goal and in both cases you view the intermediate steps as just steps along the way to the main goal. In both cases you sacrifice an intermediate step as a way to strategically increase your chance of achieving your ultimate goal.

The difference isn't scope, the difference is in what's allowed to slide. In basketball, when does a player foul another player? When the ref calls it. If it was the home team's fault, the ref might even look the other way. The olympics are supposed to entertain the crowd. If the crowd is not entertained, the players are execu--er, expelled for being unsportsmanlike.

All sports are supposed to entertain, but virtually all sports make concessions for cases where their rules incentivize the behavior.

Intentional fouling in basketball, rope-a-dope in boxing, intentional walks in baseball, sacrifice hits/bunts in baseball, gambits in chess, etc...

I'm a competitive badminton player, and while what you may is partially correct, the product they had on the court was utter crap. There's a significant difference between playing half-hearted or reducing energy and just putting out garbage on the court.

What the Chinese, South Koreans, and Indonesians did was put on display non-sense. Pure garbage that had no place in the sport. It's not like basketball at all or any other sport. If you want a comparison to how poorly these teams played, let's compare it to baseball.

Suppose two teams wanted to lose. So the pitcher decides to through balls nowhere near the strike zone in an attempt to walk the batter constantly. But think of it as 4 intentional walks combined in order to force the opponent to score runs. But conversely, the batter decides he's going to swing wildly at bad pitches out of the strike zone so that he gets strikes and strikes out (some of you may be thinking of the South Park episode where this occurred).

What the 4 pairs did on the court WASN'T EVEN PLAYING. They were scoring useless points for the opponent. It was a complete disgrace. Strictly speaking, you can't even make the comparison to other sports because of how ridiculous they "played". It doesn't matter that this is a round-robin style tournament or that they're trying to game the system for the benefit of their team. When you put garbage on the court like that, you SHOULD be disqualified.

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