Winning a Match vs. Winning Strategically

[rick.oliver]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

If your goal was to win the tournament, and loosing a match made it easier, I think that would certainly qualify as a grey area. It would be especially grey if your alliances agreed it was in their best interest to lose the match too.

I'm not sure if you read my first post on this thread or not, but essentially our motivation for loosing the match would be to keep a very inconsistent robot very high in the seedlings in order to break up and to weaken elimination alliances.

I did read your original post and read it over again before I posted that comment. As pointed out by others, I agree that late in the Qualification Rounds there may be circumstances which would cause a team to consider the consequences of losing versus winning a match.

I appreciate your transparency in sharing your situation and thought process. I also commend you for making the correct choice, in my opinion.

As I stated in my earlier post, I would strongly argue against ever throwing a match, regardless of the situation, based on my personal value system.

While I would support a team consensus (large majority) decision; i.e., I was unable to persuade them otherwise, I would be looking for a new team. I think that the example of the Olympic competition sited in an earlier post correctly illustrates the accepted view that such behavior is unethical and to be discouraged.