[DampRobot]

Because I was the one in the situation, I think I should take a moment to explain the rational behind my decision.

The probably most important factor in my choice was that it would be hard to explain throwing the match. I still believe throwing the match might have been the right strategic choice, but making that decision would mean mentors getting on my tail and my teammates questioning me. Both would be bad for the team, and be painful for me to go through personally. Because other people wouldn't feel "right" about it, I would get a lot of flak about it, deserved or not.

Secondly, it would hurt us, and cause us to lose a match (duh). I knew that other teams considered us a threat, but I didn't know how much of a threat they considered us. I wasn't willing to drop us from, say, first pick on the fifth alliance to second pick on the seventh alliance because we needed to lose to gain a "strategic" advantage in elims. The risk wasn't really worth it. And also, it felt so good to be finally winning with a good robot that at that point that I wasn't willing to lose a match. Winning is fun, and losing would feel bad. And let me tell you, beating the legendary Pink, a NASA team, felt awesome.

Lastly, I knew that friends on other teams had a good opinion of our team up until that point, and I wanted to keep it. Michael Corsetto, your opinion means a lot to me, and I wouldn't want to slight you after all the support you've given to me and my team. Fairly or unfairly, if word got out that we threw the match, we would be looked down upon by the community, which might cause us not to be picked at all. Another case of "it wasn't worth the risk."

I usually try to make big decisions by considering if I would regret my choice later or not. In some ways, I've failed my own test. I still wonder if letting Pink seed second would have somehow opened up a slot for us in finals through the funky strategies of alliance selection, and Champs. On the other hand, I'm sure I would wonder what would have happened if I hadn't thrown the match had I made that choice.

In short, the best of all worlds is not to find yourself in this situation. Playing to win is the "easy" choice, and it might even be the right one. I'm not ready to condemn throwing matches as wrong in all situations though, even when it hurts alliance partners. Maybe in the situation I was in, it wasn't right to throw the match, but I'm not willing to say that the time will never come.