When it comes to playing in pub quizzes I tend to keep quiet if I notice any cheating etc. I have a little mumble to my girlfriend who is usually my only team-mate and all is soon forgotten. Two weeks ago however at the local quiz I attend on a Thursday I broke a habit of a lifetime.
The quiz is usually chat free with evenly matched teams and a friendly atmosphere. Although the quizmaster disappears between rounds very rarely does anyone cheat. Every team can just about see each other, most teams play every week and I know of at least 2 teams who would challenge any cheating. All's well and good.
The quiz was very busy 2 weeks ago and a team of students came in at the last moment. Huddled round a small table in the only part of the quiz not visible to all teams. The first round of the quiz is a tough set of 20 written questions which you are given 30 minutes to do. Usually 14-15 points wins the round as it is very hard indeed in places. The students clearly took one look at the tough questions and almost in sync, all 8 of them began googling. Incidentally they scored 18/20 winning the round by 3 points over some very good teams. Only two teams noticed this cheating, the quizmaster was absent.
So prior to handing my first round sheet in I decided to write "Obvious cheating for team in the corner" on the bottom. It is too close an environment for me to have a word with the quizmaster without anyone hearing and a) I don't want to be seen as a moaner and b) I didn't want to annoy the team of students and create an atmosphere.
Because we are regulars the quizmaster made an announcement after the round...the students scored 1 in the next round and ended up last in the quiz by a long distance.
Without my intervention I imagine they would won every round, the jackpot and the quiz itself!
However, this week something happened again which gave me the dilemma.....to moan or not to moan? I don't my moaning to became an irritation for the quizmaster, I don't want to look like a bad loser and I certainly don't want to be known as the moaner of the quiz. A music round, worth 10 points in a 50 point quiz, comes last and the dominant teams are all of a certain age. Prior to the music round the quiz gained about 10 new players who these teams had drafted in just for the music round. No entrance fee, no part in the rest of the quiz.
So the question is, should players moan/raise issues within a quiz even if it means annoying other players and getting a reputation of "taking it a little too seriously"? Or should we let it slide?
A harder question to answer than people might think. Now, before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy I will come clean and admit that I am a moaner. However that doesn't necessarily mean that I like myself for doing it, and it doesn't mean that I am recommending it to other players.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth I think you got it spot on with letting the QM know what was going on. The first time you do something like this with a QM, then you'll know if you were right or wrong. If the QM says or does anything about what is happening, then you're right. If the QM does nothing, then there is no point moaning. For example, John and I used to go to a place where different question masters did it each week. We noticed that whenever the QM did the quiz, then a relative of that QM played for another team, and they nearly always won comfortably - and their answers and scores were far better than when another QM did it. We didn't moan, because we couldn't prove anything, and the QM was hardly likely to admit any skullduggery. So we stuck with it for as long as we could, then stopped going.
As a rough rule of thumb I wouldn't say anything the first couple of times you play in a particular quiz, however much you see going on. You'll get the feeling for how seriously you're allowed to take it after a few times, and you'll see whether it's worth moaning or not. If it's not, well there's always other quizzes to play in.
I tend to think that I play in a quiz for pleasure - yes, I want to win, but I want to enjoy it first. When it stops being a pleasure, time to move on.
Which begs the question, why do I moan when I'm in a quiz? Can't help it. Guess that I do take it too seriously.
I think the cheating ruins it sometimes for me though regardless of the finishing position. The quiz itself is really erratic and sometimes we can be first my miles and other times we are nowhere (a 20 point picture quiz and 10 music tracks to identify means bigger teams benefit). They do a tiebreak at the end of each round which is usually a "closest to the pin" question for a couple of free drinks and usually requires working out. Spending time working it out and ending up, for example 2 years out, only to find the cheating time have googled it correctly ruins that round as it becomes pointless trying.
ReplyDeleteYes, I know where you're coming from, and it's bloody annoying. But at the end of the day, for the sake of your own sanity you have to decide whether you can realistically do anything about it - and if the QM isn't going to do anything about it you're fighting a losing battle. When I can't realistically do anything about it, then I stop going, because it makes me too angry otherwise, and that takes away any enjoyment.
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