June 17, 2008
UEFA 2008 and Game Theory, The Dutch Disease
For those who've been watching the 2008 UEFA European Football Championships, there's been a lot of discussion about whether the Dutch, who lead their group, should let the Romanians win. The logic is this: if the Romanians win against Holland, the Italians and the French, two of the strongest teams, get knocked out, and the Dutch won't have to face them later on down the road. It would be strategic losing, and maybe a decent strategy, game-theoretically speaking, although I haven't thought through all the sub-games. Dutch manager Marco van Basten has responded to the idea in The Guardian:
Holland may make some changes - they will probably omit the two players carrying yellow cards (Andre Ooijer and Nigel de Jong) and Van Basten hinted yesterday that Klaas Jan Huntelaar will start instead of Van Nistelrooy, and maybe Van Persie and Arjen Robben will come in too - but they will still play to win. They will not willingly disrupt their momentum. Their adventure will not be diluted.
"Ninety per cent of the people back home want us to go for a win," one Dutch journalist told me. "I think the main reason is because to do anything else would be to invite pressure. Imagine if we deliberately let Romania through and then met them again in the semi-finals: we'd know that we would risk looking like total idiots if we lost to them then."
So, is this a case of minimizing shame?
[H/t: Mark Blyth]
Posted by Robin Varghese at 12:59 PM | Permalink
Comments
Nah, the Dutch have a history of "mental" weakness. Interupting the momentum may have effects in the rest fo the competition.
Posted by: Random African | Jun 17, 2008 3:56:18 PM
In my sporting days, I was involved in more than a few situations where the usually ironclad sports ethic of "win at all costs, no matter what, don't even think about losing" was brought into question. These situations usually (but not always) involved seeding or positioning of some kind, and invariably centered around the desire to manipulate current outcomes for future gain, even if that meant losing the present game on purpose. For example, I once competed in a double-elimination 3-on-3 basketball tournament: my team, made up of myself and like-minded friends, had no losses; a number of other teams, including Team A and Team B, had one loss. Team A had beaten Team B, and we had beaten Team A; we had not played Team B, and because of the way we matched up, were not certain we would beat them. We were certain, however, that we could beat Team A 9 times out of 10 — and almost as certain that Team A would beat Team B just as often. Because of the format of the tournament, we had to play Team A a second time, after which, if we won, we would finally face Team B. Strategically, we lost to Team A on purpose, much to the ire of our parents and friends. Team A went on to beat Team B for the second time, thus eliminating them from the tournament, and later, after beating other teams, we met Team A in the championship game. We won that game and the tournament. One might argue that we let ourselves down by avoiding competition with a team we feared would beat us, but the truth is, we couldn't have cared less about whether or not Team B was better than us. We simply wanted to win the tournament, and that's what we did — even though we had to lose to do it.
Do I regret that strategy? Not for a second. I still have my little plastic trophy, and every now and then I'll take it out of its box and admire it for what it stands for: in a game of physical skill, I was able to think my way to the championship.
I just hope the players on Team B (or Team A, for that matter) don't read 3QD...
Posted by: ghostman | Jun 17, 2008 7:18:42 PM
Er, ghostman, not to tarnish your achievement, but perhaps it might be said that there is more honour in winning a competition when that competition's rules (when designed to allow the best teams to play one another, and the best team to win) function normally?
I'm reminded of a softball championship team I was a member of: we knew so little about the other teams that when we won, we were sure that we'd somehow "lucked" into it. Afterwards, a fella from another team starting talking to us about how how great we were, how our batting strategy and speed gave the other teams "fits". The whole team relaxed and smiled: we hadn't just won, we were the best.
Posted by: Nick Smyth | Jun 18, 2008 12:54:25 PM
Actually, Nick, I agree with you regarding the honour of winning a properly functioning competition. I would take such honour over the alternative any day. Sadly, though, there are few competitions that function properly, and fewer still that have anything to do with, let alone reward, honour. In dysfunctional competition, I will gladly manipulate the dysfunction to my advantage — without cheating, of course, which I do not engage in.
For example, a foul is an illegal act in basketball (that's why it's called a 'foul' and is 'penalized'), yet there are a number of ways that a team can benefit from fouling — that is, a number of ways a team can turn the 'penalty' of fouling into a reward. A great example of this is the Hack-a-Shaq strategy. This strategy (named after its most famous victim, Shaquille O'Neal) is based on the idea that your average NBA team will score approximately 1 point per possession. However, the worst free throw shooters shoot below 50%; if you foul those players and send them to the free throw line, over the course of a game you will reduce the number of points per possession your opponent scores, and increase your likelihood of winning the game. (This math isn't exact, but you get the idea.) Can this strategy, which has been employed to great success by a number of teams at all levels, be called "honourable"? Of course it can't. But at the same time, it isn't cheating. Would you suggest I not engage in this strategy if it meant the difference between winning and losing? I don't know, maybe you would suggest it; I certainly wouldn't take such a suggestion seriously, even if the basketball purist in me wants to see this loophole addressed yesterday. I have seen it employed to victory too many times to not clearly understand its effectiveness, and would rather use it and win than not use it and lose.
But this is just one example. Almost every sport has its own loopholes, most of which are openly manipulated by teams and players. One might even argue that this manipulation of structural dysfunction has itself become (or rather, always has been) part of sport. I'm not arguing that this is a good thing, just that this is how it is — and as long as this is how it is, I will, as a passionate competitor, do everything within the rules to win, even if that means losing a game here or repeatedly fouling a player there.
Still, I understand what you're saying, and I don't mean to imply that such manipulations are so ubiquitous as to be happening all the time. To be honest, such manipulations usually carry huge risk and are typically only carried out by competitors faced with the loathsome choice of "Lose or Manipulate" — and even then, these manipulations of their sport's inherent dysfunctions will only work if said competitor possesses sufficient talent, athleticism, intelligence, passion, etc. That is to say, there aren't any hacks out there manipulating their way to championships. My team's losing on purpose may have paid off in the end, but it very well could have ended our tournament early, for it put us in the position of not being able to lose any more games.
Anyway, it's not like Team B was robbed — they lost twice, and did so both times to a team we beat twice, fair and square, including in the championship game.
Achievement not tarnished.
Posted by: ghostman | Jun 18, 2008 8:17:38 PM
Incidentally, at the recent Thomas Cup (badminton), Korea used the play-to-lose strategy and reached the final.
http://snipurl.com/2l4pp
Posted by: Gavin Bong | Jun 19, 2008 10:46:24 AM
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