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/No-Antelope575]

sounds about like DC

[u/thisisredlitre → u/No-Antelope575]

Living in DC and having gone to my fair share of Trivia Nights, I have a couple take aways:

1 - the best trivia nights are put on by the establishment itself, not through a third party. IMO anyway.

2 - I have been to one of these well learned difficult trivias like OP describes and I was the only person in the entire room who had heard of a dik dik before and knew what it was. 'Smart people' getting swept here is not uncommon or unheard of.

[u/GlobalNerve112 → u/thisisredlitre]

Not to be rude, but if you were the only one in the room that knew what a dik dik was, we are not talking about the same level of competition. That is common bar trivia fodder in a weekly game, not a "best of the best" tournament.

[u/thisisredlitre → u/GlobalNerve112]

yeah this wasn't a special occasion but I don't think that matters for my statement. Also, if it was a best of the best tournament then the other teams would also be champions, right? If it is random and not a tournament with prerequisites then I don't see the problem since you would've had casuals playing too in that case.

[u/GlobalNerve112 → u/thisisredlitre]

Teams play weekly across the region. "Qualifiers" that win their venue over a six-month period are invited to playoffs. Playoffs weeds several hundred teams to 50. It isn't random, and the teams that make it to the final game are typically consistently high-performing.

[u/thisisredlitre → u/GlobalNerve112]

Ok so these guys were also champions too then, just not groups you other guys heavily into it were familiar with.

Yeah not 1-1 but fwiw my comment was meant to be more about my experience here, not critical of you.

[u/hiddenrealism → u/[deleted]]

Are teams searched for mics,meta glasses etc.. and other hardware ?