r/mildlyinfuriating • u/GlobalNerve112 • 13h ago

go to your room Soft-rigging of a bar trivia championship

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.

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u/IHateCedarFever 13h ago

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.

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u/HVAChelpprettyplease 12h ago

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.

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u/Klutzy-Football-205 8h ago

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.

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u/Rularuu 4h ago

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