billiv15 wrote:
Sorry Trevor, you are dqed from the 2008 National Championship because you didn't move Boba away for evade.
Actually, to set the record straight, I think what you're referring to is that I forgot to declare Draw Fire with R2P0 when your Han Scoundrel attacked Boba. My 20 hp Boba had just made 2 evade saves vs Luke's SS, and then when you said that Han is shooting at Boba too, I forgot to say "Draw Fire."
Anyway, now that the record is set straight, I've gotta say that I agree with Bill.
When we're speaking of "the spirit of the game" what is it that we're talking about? I know that Dennis has said that Tim's style of play (outactivate and then pound like crazy, then lock doors) was "against the spirit of the game" and unfair. My response is that Tim's style was entirely legal, and completely within the spirit of the game (defeat your opponent's pieces while minimizing the chances of your pieces being defeated). If that's the "spirit of the game" angle that people are taking in this debate, then I have to disagree heartily...it has nothing to do with the spirit of anything, but it's instead a matter of competitive-vs-noncompetitive mindsets.
We need to give some credit to Tim. It is patently unfair to accuse Tim of unsportsmanlike play. Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago when Tim chose to accede to his opponent's desire in a rules dispute at another regional because "I wouldn't have felt right if I had won that way"? I said (and still believe) that Tim deserves the Uber-Sportsmanship Award for that Regional...and now people are accusing him of unsportsmanlike play here. Do leopards really change their spots that quickly? I certainly cannot see Tim trying to cheat here at all, and I even find it a massive stretch to say that he was trying to unfairly manipulate the tournament standings. Why?
Because the goal of every player, from the moment the tournament begins, is to do his/her best to advance to the playoff rounds, hopefully with a chance of making it to the final and winning it all. Normally (ie, 99.54% of the time) that [very] sportsmanlike goal equates to the tactic of, "Get a 3pt win every game that you can." In a very real sense, we're ALL trying to manipulate the standings with every game we play: we want to manipulate them by pushing ourselves to the top of the heap!
But Tim recognized in this tournament a situation where that same sportsmanlike goal led to a different
tactic for achieving his goal. Tim had not stopped trying to win the tournament for a moment, but rather, his intentional loss was a carefully-calculated tactic to improve his chances at winning the tournament. His tactics changed for the last game, but his goal never did. He was fully in control of his tactics throughout the entire tournament, and he didn't make any decisions in collusion with anyone else. He simply looked at the tournament situation and (accurately) discovered that his best move was to lose his last game, rather than win. He broke no rules and engaged in no manipulative efforts at all, beyond what everyone else does in every game (ie, trying to improve their chances of winning the tourney).
If we're going to say that Tim was being unsportsmanlike by throwing the last game in order to increase his chances in the playoff rounds, then I think we also have to agree that Dr.Divot was unsportsmanlike by bringing a horrible map [Geonosis Arena] as his map for the Championships in 2007. Because it was a map that nobody else ever played on, it gave him an unfair advantage and was a tactic that nobody else had thought of. Or was he being unfair because he broke the unwritten rule of "Always bring a good map"? [I think it was a stroke of genius, for the record.] Likewise, it is not wrong to use override to your advantage when you've eliminated all of your opponent's door-control...this is just how the competitive game is played. Enough examples for now.
So I want to reverse the question back to those who say that Tim's change of tactics was unsportsmanlike:
What gives you the right to dictate which tactics a player uses to increase his odds of winning a tournament? Just because most players CHOOSE TO seek after 3pt wins 100% of the time doesn't mean that they MUST. IMO, changing the rules to say they
must is absolutely a step in the
wrong direction. I thought Russian communism died in 1989, lol....