F for effort
Aug 2nd 2012 The Economist
THE Olympics are supposed to offer spectators the world’s greatest athletes giving their
best efforts in all 26 sports. The fans at a farcical women’s doubles badminton match
between pairs from China and South Korea on July 31st were treated to substantially
less. Both teams continually played poor shots into the net, without even a pretence of
trying their hardest. They continued their half-hearted efforts even after the referee
stepped in and warned them (pictured). Shortly thereafter, an Indonesian duo and
another South Korean squad played out a similarly lacklustre match, prompting a chorus
of boos from the crowd.
The players had good reason to throw their matches. For the 2012 Games, badminton
adopted the model used by many other Olympic sports and divided its competition into
two steps. It now starts with a round-robin group stage, in which the 16 teams are
divided into four groups of four, who all play each other. The top two squads in each
group then enter a single-elimination tournament.
At the beginning of the group stage, every team wants to ensure they win in order to
advance to the tournament. However, as the matches progress, winning teams become
highly likely or even guaranteed to advance to the next round. At that point, they start
looking ahead to their expected matchups. If they believe that finishing second in their
group gives them an easier path through the tournament than finishing first will, their
optimal strategy is to lose.
By the time the Chinese duo of Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli faced off against South Korea’s
Jung Kyung Eun and Kim Ha Na, both teams had already punched their tickets to the
knockout stage. The first-place team in their group was likely to face a second Chinese
entry, which was seen as one of the strongest teams in the field, in the tournament’s
semi-finals. In contrast, the runner-up was expected to face significantly weaker
opposition in the knockout stage. Both teams believed that their best hope of winning a
medal was to lose the last group match. They each duly did their best to secure a defeat.
The Chinese proved to be more skilful match-throwers than the South Koreans were,
and lost.
The tactic quickly caught on. Once the powerful Chinese team successfully managed to
lose their last match, their position in the knockout tournament was determined. In its
first round, they would play against the winner of a group-stage match between another
South Korean team, consisting of Ha Jung Eun and Kim Min Jung, and the Indonesian
contingent of Meiliana Jauhari and Greysia Polii. Neither of those two teams was
particularly eager to face the Chinese team. So they too did what any medal-minded
Olympian would do: played to lose. Once again, the South Koreans proved to be less
wily match-throwers than their opponents, and were stuck with an unwanted victory.
Perhaps the coaches in Seoul did not spend enough time training them to bury the
shuttlecock in the heart of the net.
This spectacle proved too much for the Badminton World Federation (BWF). The sport’s
organising body quickly decided to give the match-throwers the losses they sought—but
for the duration of the Olympics, rather than for a single contest. All four teams were
immediately disqualified from the entire competition for “not using best efforts” and
“conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport”, in
violation of the BWF’s code of conduct. The South Koreans and Indonesians appealed
against the decision, but their pleas were rejected.
The ugly display prompted an outburst of sanctimony from commentators. “In sport,
morality should come before anything else,” wrote Xinhua, the Chinese state news
outlet. “Whoever violated the rules should be criticised and looked down upon.” Gail
Emms, a former silver medallist in badminton who now works as a sports consultant,
said it would have been “disgraceful” if the match-throwers had been allowed to
advance.
But as in every other walk of life, counting on athletes’ better angels when their
incentives encourage them to misbehave is a hopeless proposition. Now that a
precedent has been established that outright match-throwing will get you disqualified,
players will simply start working on their acting, in the hopes of perfecting tactics that
will lose them points while appearing to give their all. The only way to guarantee that
athletes play to win is to make sure that winning is always in their best interest.
A simple solution would be to scrap the two-stage structure in favour of a doubleelimination tournament, which preserves the incentive to win at every point while still
allowing teams to remain in the field after suffering a loss. If the BWF is determined to
retain the group system, it could assign the group winners and runners-up to places in
the knockout stage via a weighted lottery, like the one used in the National Basketball
Association’s annual draft. Alternatively, the four group winners could simply be allowed
to select their opponents, picking in order of their record in the group stage, and then in
order of their point differential for teams that are tied.
The other issue the sport must address is match-ups between teams from the same
country. Badminton players are often willing to put overall national success above
individual glory: according to Badzine, an online magazine focused on the sport, a fifth
of the 99 professional matches between Chinese players in 2011 did not finish, because
a side forfeited or was unable to play. In contrast, when Chinese competitors faced
rivals from other countries, the non-completion rate fell to less than 1%.
Olympic badminton rules already limit each country to two entrants in a tournament. To
avoid such malfeasance in the Olympics, organisers can start out by putting teams from
the same country in different groups. If they both advance, they can be placed on
opposite sides of the knockout bracket, so that they cannot meet until the finals. If the
two teams both make it to the gold medal match, the outcome will have no effect on
the country’s overall medal count. Under those conditions, even the most dedicated
team players can be expected to play their hardest.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/gametheory/2012/08/match-throwing-badminton