Cool FGC article Patrick. Hope to see more on the site.
I feel like colluding matches and pot splitting are totally two different things. It's okay to pot split; what you do with your money is none of my business. But if you're in grand finals, be competitive and try to play your best.
Besides, if you're going to pot split, why not try to beat the other player at the same time? Whatever happened to competitive spirit and trying to prove that you're the best? That part still boggles my mind.
There are all kinds of reasons to not try your hardest to win once you're in the finals, especially if you and your opponent have decided to pot split (which I have no problem with considering most players are just dudes trying to grind out a living playing video games for as long as they can so guaranteeing yourself a payout at the end of a weekend is fine by me).
Say for example, it's a weekly tournament (like Wednesday Night Fights, a weekly tournament held in the LA area) and it's the week before So-Cal Regionals. The 2 finalists may not want to pull out all the stops or show their best stuff to try and win a weekly tournament when there's a much bigger one right around the corner that they want to save their best stuff for.
I have no doubt this rule works great in Evo because Evo is the biggest tournament of the year, there's no longer a reason to hold back.
Let's take a ChrisG vs. Justin Wong example. Justin Wong believes he can beat ChrisG's team but knows if he does everything he can to beat him, he'll tip his hand to his techniques, allowing Chris the opportunity to train and prepare for those techniques should they meet in an upcoming (and bigger, more important) tournament. ChrisG on the other hand is thinking exactly the same thing, that he knows how to deal with Justin's team in a way that other players haven't thought of but he doesn't want to tip his hand early either, winning a minor tournament but risking a shot at a bigger one by showing too much of his techniques that Justin or another player can prepare for.
Basically, in this scenario you're forcing both players to either show their hand early which is stupid because players should be allowed to do whatever they have to do to give themselves the best competitive advantage (such as not trying their hardest to win a minor tournament if they believe that doing so could hurt their chances at a bigger tournament down the road), or you're forcing players to make it look like they're trying their hardest when in reality they're just pretending by taking it safe, doing nothing out of the ordinary, still not really trying to win but masking it better for the sake of audience. To me, I don't see much difference. As a spectator, I would be more entertained by them picking a random character and goofing around and having fun than players "going through the motions" and not caring about the result. To me, that results in a more boring match to watch.
Ideally, players would always bring their 'A' game and always trying their hardest to win every match, but in reality that's just not a very good winning strategy if a player has their mind set on a the big stage, like Evo. Collusion is not nearly as much of a problem at a big tournament like that because the stakes are so much higher that it practically handles itself. Collusion does become a problem at small tournaments because it's just not worth it most of the time for players to do everything to win because it can actually put them at a disadvantage when it comes to a bigger and more important tournament, when there is a lot more prize money and pride at stake.
It's a difficult problem to solve though because the two parties involved (players and tournament organizers) are sometimes at odds. Tournament organizers want the most competitive matches possible while sometimes players don't for the reasons stated above. Like I said, it's not typically an issue at big tournaments, it's the smaller ones where it becomes an issue.
Log in to comment