Playing to win, "winners" loosing and Can a pub quiz be taken too seriously?

Sadly, I will not be attending the usual quiz tonight as I am dog-sitting. The poor little chap is having his first night with us in the flat and leaving him would not be wise so I wont have any questions for you from the Moorcock quiz this week.

Before attending the Moorcock quiz, I tried a few local quizzes and there was one in particular that amused me greatly. There was always a team of teachers who won every week bar none.....this is a bit before the time I took quizzing a bit more seriously.....and they would win each week by 6-7 points.  However, once every 4 weeks a certain team used to enter the quiz. It was a mystery where they came from, who they were or why  we only saw them at the quiz once a month.

This new team won with a maximum score, putting the teachers in second place and looking very glum. The next week....no teachers. They came back, won two weeks and then lost to the new team when they came in for their monthly go. Again, teachers did not attend the week after. What sort of behavior is this? In recent months they have lost to a few teams and never show up the week after.

Now there could be something in this......the prize money might pay for the night out the following week or something such like and thus if they do not win they do not attend.

But seemingly, every time they get beat they miss the following week. Has anyone had this happen in their local quiz? Again it proves my point raised in the "Seat Wars" blog post that quizzing brings out irrational behavior that can only be seen in a quiz room.

Nevertheless, it raises the issue of teams who only play quizzes they can win. I once knew a member of a team who took pub quizzes "too seriously". They were well known in the local city area and to give them credit they were very good quiz players who played in more "professional" leagues. Suffice to say though, they play to win and win only. Of course everyone likes to do the best they can and it is nice to claim a victory but there is certain times when this goes too far. For instance....

Living in a busy-ish city, Sunderland, this team had a lot of choice of quizzes to attend. Instead of trying out a new quiz as a team, what they used to do was send one member as a "scout" to quizzes around the area. The "scout" would not enter the quiz but he would sit in the quiz room, making a note of questions and the team would decided based on the questions, and the winning score, if they could win the quiz and thus would enter the following week. If the quiz was too easy, too "pop-culture" based or had a large amount of points allocated to picture rounds, cryptic rounds or such like they would not enter.

Now, these were clever guys and chances are would have won most new quizzes without a "scout" being needed but this again raises the issue of whether you can take a pub quiz too seriously?

Would like to hear the thoughts of others on this