[Chris Herold]

Well, it definitely happened at the Seattle Regional with us. Our team, Team 1983 - The Skunkworks was 3rd Seed. Team 1778 was 1st and 1318 2nd. We were talking to team 1778 before the alliance picking and telling them we were glad that they considered us but we would-due to our strategy-decline their offer in case they would chose us in the official picking! So they picked another team, not us. 1318 then tried to pick us, what we didn't expect so we "respectfully declined!" Our strategy was to team up with team 2046, one of the teams we were working closely together with during build season. Well, we ended up with them and won the regional.
This story shows pretty much your scenario at regional level!

I really don't think that we did not practice GP. We informed team 1778 before the official picking that we would decline in case they tried to pick us. We also were always polite while team 1318 asked us to join them. That is what I think most important.
Even if you decline-and I think there is nothing wrong with it-you should be very polite all the time. It depends very much on the way you handle your decisions! The gracious professionalism means, for me, to cooperate, to communicate and to be friendly and polite all the time, even though you are competitive.

I don't like the whole idea of intentionally losing matches, though. Anyhow one can hardly prove that and on the other hand every team has the chance to get through by winning all their games...so until a team does not actually confess they did it, I would be very, very careful with this topic.