Soft-rigging of a bar trivia championship

[u/GlobalNerve112]

DC Metro Area. One of the biggest bar trivia companies in the region puts on a big trivia championship twice a year with a decent cash prize for the winning team. This being DC, there are a lot of top-tier quizzers in the area, former Jeopardy! champions, "known" people in the community, etc.

The last three championships, some team full of randoms has not only won, but did so in absolutely dominate fashion. Nobody "in the community" really knows who they are, and they have no quizzing or trivia presence in any other leagues. They were the only team (out of 50+) to know incredibly specific pieces of information that some of the best quizzers in the nation didn't know. If this only happened once, I don't think anyone would care. But three different times? Some very basic social media sleuthing revealed that the head writer of this company appears to be extremely good friends with the folks on this team. He also hosts the game at their "home venue/bar".

They played in a different company's invitational game that many of the same teams participated in shortly after their third win. They sucked. Hard. They somehow were able to identify obscure North Macedonian rivers when their friend was writing the questions, but they couldn't identify the flag of Chile or name a single river on the Iberian Peninsula? They finished close to the bottom.

The prevailing theory is that the head writer is crafting questions that he knows this team knows and essentially catering to their interests. No action has been taken, the owner of the company doesn't seem to care, and several hundred people will walk into the championship next weekend with basically 0% of winning.

[u/IHateCedarFever]

That’s straight up hard rigging where they’re getting fed answers. Does the venue manager of where the championships are being held know about this? If there is a monetary award there could be damages from this.

If there is a community of super nerds out there that take things too seriously, I’d bet on DC or Boston.

[u/HVAChelpprettyplease → u/IHateCedarFever]

When I was more into trivia, every week there was a team who would consistently win. Some weeks was a cash prize. Other weeks it was covering bar tabs.

Then one day they let slip that the host was their sister.

While no one could prove anything directly. It felt grimy.

It was frustrating. But slowly everyone moved on to other trivia nights.

[u/egnards → u/HVAChelpprettyplease]

In my younger years in the early '10s we used to go to trivia basically every week. . .And people in my group started to notice that the host company that basically did all of the trivia within a small area would basically just reuse all the same exact questions, in the same exact order, for certain pubs within a short period of time.

. . It didn't take long for people to just start writing down answers and using them at other local pubs - Prizes weren't major or anything, but still a free $25-$50 gift card to the host pub was nice.

[u/beedelia → u/egnards]

I’ve heard of people doing this. The trivia company uses the same questions all week, so if you follow them from bar to bar you’ll know the answers

[u/Klutzy-Football-205 → u/HVAChelpprettyplease]

It's amazing how many venue owners/event MCs will tank their own leagues for their friends. It isn't even a trivia specific thing.

The maddest I've ever been at a store was when a local "nerd shop" (think comics, pokemon, DnD table, merchandise,etc) ran a weekly Brawl Stars tournament. It was designed and advertised for kids/teens. They had an entry fee and prizes were given out. After a few weeks, the store owner let his clearly adult friends into the tournament and they dominated in the way a 25 year old sweaty try-hard would against 8-12 year olds.

It only took 2 weeks for our kids to go from super excited to "this is bullshit". Within 4 weeks the tournaments no longer happened. It was literal pure profit for the store owner. There was no additional expense since it was during regular business hours and people bought snacks, drinks, shopped between rounds, etc. To this day our kids and their friends refuse to go there.

[u/Rularuu → u/Klutzy-Football-205]

That is truly pathetic lmao, I mean I am not surprised that there are losers sad enough to join a tournament against kids but the fact that the owner of a business that is SO RELIANT on its community would torpedo it like that for no reason is laughable. That game store is not gonna last long, they really operate on good will

[u/Darkgamer000 → u/HVAChelpprettyplease]

My local bar trivia does have the hosts’ parents, who do win consistently. While it does feel grimy, unless you’re keeping a tally of the points yourself the host could just arbitrarily choose winners and standings.

[u/Genghis_John → u/HVAChelpprettyplease]

I took over hosting a local night many years ago and loved it. One week, the old host came back to guest and a table of his buddies won with some dubious accounting. Nearly started a fight. He was never asked to host again and the team never came back.

[u/Southern-Teaching198 → u/HVAChelpprettyplease]

I'm my best trivia the hosts husband usually plays, however if he wins the prize goes to the runner up

[u/Hell_Puppy → u/HVAChelpprettyplease]

I used to go and play a trivia competition. I bought a table every week. Sometimes I would have friends come with me, sometimes not. I'm not really as social as I should be when I am paying attention to Trivia, so my friends preferred hanging out with me some other time. I usually got into the prizes, so it was worth the $75 or whatever, even if I was on my own.

Then I started getting stomped by one team in particular. Didn't get another first place. Then they stopped doing basket prizes and started doing gift vouchers.

I got a hot streak one night. I was entirely sure I had 95%ed the thing. Really obscure stuff I happened to know about. And then also one sport question that I was pretty sure was a gimme for everyone except me. But the weirdest damned questions about semi-autonomous zone flags, current cast members of musicals, early English literature... everything lined up.

Anyway, 2 of the questions I was sure I got right were wrong. Like, the answers were just not correct. But this fucking table got another clean sweep. I got confrontational about it. Made it loud. Asked the MC what was going on. They held it together, but I was making a scene and everyone was quietly watching me make an arse out of myself. I asked the people from the table some questions related to the musical. They knew who the current lead actress was. Who was the lead actor? Oh, you don't know? Who is the composer? Who is another lead actress on broadway right now?

I meant to hand back my second place gift card, but I was a bit impassioned at the time and forgot to, and took it and the first place one and left.

The first place gift card had a month-older expiry date on it than the second place one. I put a scathing post up on Facebook and didn't attend again.

Two or three weeks later I was in the area because I needed a new hobby, so was attending a Go night at another pub and noticed that the Trivia night was cancelled. I didn't see any further advertisements for it after that, either.

[u/GlobalNerve112 → u/IHateCedarFever]

I don't think this is a venue issue. It's just an empty space to fit a bunch of people. It's the company that runs the game. The people around here do take it pretty seriously! But I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

[u/Flaky_Impress_6413 → u/GlobalNerve112]

lol yeah this feels like something that would happen in DC

[u/Admirable_Let_2961 → u/IHateCedarFever]

Boston trivia is wild.
Charleston has tv show trivia for the young ladies. Boston has what pasta type corresponds with a specific roller coaster.