What is noteworthy here, IMHO, is not just the usual matches that don't look right or the unsubstantiated claims by whistle blowers, but the statistical evidence. In certain 15-round events, a sumo wrestler must get at least a 8-7 score to maintain his position with his house/club/guild. In the last round when wrestlers who are 7-7 and need one more win are paired against opponents who already have their 8th win, you would expect the guy with 8 wins to be slightly better and therefore win more often. But an amazingly high percentage ( 80% !!! ) of such matches are won by the guy with 7 wins.
Certainly the 7-7 sumotori who needs the win is going to have stronger motivation, and there is some risk of injury in sumo so the 8-7 sumotori is not going to take any risks. Whether that is enough to explain the 80% figure I don't know.
What is noteworthy here, IMHO, is not just the usual matches that don't look right or the unsubstantiated claims by whistle blowers, but the statistical evidence. In certain 15-round events, a sumo wrestler must get at least a 8-7 score to maintain his position with his house/club/guild. In the last round when wrestlers who are 7-7 and need one more win are paired against opponents who already have their 8th win, you would expect the guy with 8 wins to be slightly better and therefore win more often. But an amazingly high percentage ( 80% !!! ) of such matches are won by the guy with 7 wins.
Certainly the 7-7 sumotori who needs the win is going to have stronger motivation, and there is some risk of injury in sumo so the 8-7 sumotori is not going to take any risks. Whether that is enough to explain the 80% figure I don't know.
The actual study was a bit more robust that just the part Joaz cited, if I recall one of the most damning things was that not only would the 7-7 wrestlers win 80% of the time....but the next time the same two faced it was something like an 80% reversed result, regardless of tournament score (as if the original 7-7 wrestler was paying back the favor).
illluck wrote:..... It seems like the biggest issue was that it was too obvious. Had two of the teams tried to give a good show to the audience, the games would have looked much nicer (as games where both sides try to lose are rather obvious) but the honest teams would have been punished by the format in having to face tougher competition next round. .....
If both teams want to loose they can't cooperate for a good show. They have to compete in underperformance. If the rules don't allow underperformance they have to compete in masquerading underperformance. Masquerading might be more fun to watch.
illluck wrote:..... It seems like the biggest issue was that it was too obvious. Had two of the teams tried to give a good show to the audience, the games would have looked much nicer (as games where both sides try to lose are rather obvious) but the honest teams would have been punished by the format in having to face tougher competition next round. .....
If both teams want to loose they can't cooperate for a good show. They have to compete in underperformance. If the rules don't allow underperformance they have to compete in masquerading underperformance. Masquerading might be more fun to watch.
Yes, that was what I was trying to say, but got lazy and failed epicly at communication. By "...two of the teams tried to give a good show to the audience..." I meant "one team each from the two games tried to play well and win despite it being disadvantageous".
"In the immediate aftermath of the Olympic Women's Badminton scandal that saw eight participants disqualified for trying to throw their final pool play matches in order to secure more favorable matchups in the knockout stage, we discussed a nightmare scenario that could play out in men's basketball. As it happens, that perfect storm for tanking has formed once again...."
Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21
illluck wrote:..... It seems like the biggest issue was that it was too obvious. Had two of the teams tried to give a good show to the audience, the games would have looked much nicer (as games where both sides try to lose are rather obvious) but the honest teams would have been punished by the format in having to face tougher competition next round. .....
If both teams want to loose they can't cooperate for a good show. They have to compete in underperformance. If the rules don't allow underperformance they have to compete in masquerading underperformance. Masquerading might be more fun to watch.
Tennis professionals have been known to rig exhibition matches. The spectators assume they are both trying to win, but actually they have decided the winner ahead of time and are really just putting on a show. I suppose if the badminton teams trusted each other, they could draw straws to decide who gets to lose, then put on an exhibition for the officials and spectators.
I classify possibly unsporting behaviour in go under four headings.
[list=] Those which are clearly against the rules, including unwritten rules. Examples: punching the opponent; slyly moving stones around the board during play; adding to one's prisoners from a hidden supply of stones of the opponent's colour.
Those which are very bad manners. Examples: playing inside one's own territory; playing out all the ko threats (in both cases, at the end of a game with an absolute time limit).
Those which one would never do oneself, but which one could not object to if done by others. Examples: highly speculative invasions late in the game when behind; mirror go; and "invade all corners then live in the centre". I would not expect success from mirror go or "invade everywhere", so there is no temptation for me to try those tactics. On the other hand, if you don't know how to respond to those tactics then there is a gap in your go knowledge which it is your task to fill.
Those which one might do oneself. Examples: playing a ko threat to gain time to think, if the timing rules encourage this; speculative invasions late in the game when behind. I sometimes start two speculative invasions at the same time, playing one stone in the opponent's Area A, then the next in Area B, then back to A and so on. I feel a bit uneasy doing that. Even when it works, there is no telling what would have happened if I had played out Area A before trying Area B. (I am a weak player, so the outcome is basically random, against a well matched opponent.) [/list]
I can't really justify these classifications from first principles: it all depends on how one was brought up to play the game. What do others think?
I have recently returned to playing in UK Tournaments after a long absence. There are no valuable prizes at stake: even the winner will be out of pocket after paying the tournament entry fee and his or her travel costs. In these tournaments, the complexity of the game and time pressure are the real enemies, not one's nominal opponent, who is a fellow enthusiast who has also spent time and money to attend. When a sleeve or bomb tesuji occurs, both players do their best to try to reconstruct the position as it should have been, without crying foul. The only problem I have is getting used to Canadian-style overtime, which had not been in use when I last played. Seeing that my clock would soon run down, I used some of my thinking time to count out the 10 and 30 stones that would be needed for the first two 5-minute periods of overtime, reasoning that it would take at least a minute to count out 30 stones and cover my bowl to make sure no stones were accidentally taken from there instead. After using the first 10, I switched to using the next 30 without resetting the clock (which is probably illegal), and my opponent thought he had won when the first period of five minutes ran out. In my next game, I was surprised when my opponent simply stopped the clock while he counted out his first 10 stones. What is the correct procedure? Would it be OK to bring a set of small containers and count out 10 and 30 stones into them before the game began?
P.S. The "invade all corners then live in the centre" style was apparently used with some success on KGS. The player in question managed to get to a high dan rating and make himself highly unpopular. A stronger player eventually showed how to defeat that tactic. I can't now find where I heard about this: it could have been through Bat's video lectures or something similar. Has anyone here got the reference?
P.P.S. A young Korean woman has appeared on Baduk TV while wearing a very short skirt, totally ignoring the rules for polite Pair Go. Her name may be , which could be romanised as I Seong-A. In the irresitible "Females versus Seniors" series, she played a senior whose name I could not read, but his face and hair reminded me of Simon Cowell. He looked very upset afterwards, but that was because he lost by half a point (as best I could tell). I am also an old man, and if faced with an opponent showing lots of flesh, I'd expect first to feel cheered up and then to play no worse then I normally do, so I wonder why someone thought the Pair Go dress code was needed.
Tournament rules must be set to minimise trouble strategies. For that reason and for the small board tournaments during the European Go Congress 2012, I set area scoring and replaced sudden death by 3 * 10s byoyomi. Players are creative though: some of those qualified for the KO stage refused to play. Therefore, next time I will use the explicit rule that qualified players are required to play. (Regardless, those players will get a penalty of prohibited entry during the next instance of such tournaments where I can ensure it.)
