Throwing Matches at the Olympics

[BigJ]

The only ruleset I can think of that minimizes the incentive of intentional losses is that of elimination tournaments (be them single- or double-elimination or what have you), with seeding determined by past performances. I will explain in terms of double-elimination.

Sure, you may throw a game to drop to the losers bracket but there is no guarantee that it will be significantly easier. The person you "lost" to might drop down to loser's the next round, and even if they don't, you'll have to face them (or someone "better" by virtue of beating them) in the grand finals.

I watch a lot of fighting-game tournaments, and they all run double-elimination. They don't have a governing body or system for consistent seeding (except for the biggest tournament of the year, EVO) and matches are never "thrown" except for RARE circumstances, usually involving external incentives as mentioned before. And that's a whole other can of worms.

EDIT: I do actually have another example.

In Magic: the Gathering (a trading card game) Pro level events, competitors are cut to the Top 8 for eliminations after a number of Swiss rounds. However, 1 does not play 8 and so on, the top 8 are randomly matched up.

This would not be appropriate for FIRST or the Olympics. The M:tG events have on the order of hundreds of participants, so the top 8 can be seen as very very closely matched to each other as the top 3-5%, whereas even a division at championships only has 100 teams max so far, pitting the top 25% in eliminations.

HOWEVER, it is worth noting that intentional draws and forfeits are completely legal in the ruleset of Magic. This situation is mainly meant to reference the randomization of elimination seeds for tournaments with a small percentage of participants in eliminations and how the number of participants both in seeding and elimination should be taken into account when designing a rule system.