Tanking games at the end of the year to improve your playoff

[SuperDuperFan]

seed. Is this ethical or unethical?

Suppose during the last week of the regular season you're in 1st place and if you tank your match-up, team A gets the 4th and final spot; if you play it through and win, team B gets the final playoff spot. Further suppose that team B is much better than team A and thus, you'd much prefer to face team A in the first round of the playoffs than team B.

Is it unethical to tank your last regular season match-up so you can reap the benefits of playing team A or do you have to suck it up, play through the final week and then end up with a good shot of being knocked out in the first round by team B?

FWIW, this is a $20 league between 10 friends (or friends of friends).

[shmolex]

Totally unethical and unfair to Team A.

I've considered doing something similar, but only when it wouldn't affect who makes the playoffs. For example, if I'm currently the 5th seed, I might want to tank the last week to let the 6th seed overtake me so that I wouldn't have to face the 1 seed until the finals.

[dmattingly23]

Play Roto. Solves all this nonsense.

[Neato Torpedo]

Looks like someone's counting their chickens before they hatch.

[kab21]

I don't care what game it is, it isn't okay to lose on purpose. but this isn't as bad as tanking to win the Strasburg sweepstakes (last year) or the Harper sweepstakes (this year) in a dynasty. This did happen in my dynasty last year.

[Merlin401]

If you are so confident you can manipulate playoff seeds by doing poorly, then go for it IMO. You're still trying to improve your team. Its the same as trading away talent for good keepers. Yeah, you're losing short term but you have a purpose to it. Both might negatively effect deserving teams but thats their problem, not yours.

That being said, its almost impossible to do this. I think you are REALLY risking a lot by trying to do it. Its not like real sports where there's just a win or a loss. If you end up losing worse than you expected, and suddenly a guy on Sunday turns it on and turns a 4-8 defeat into a 8-4 win, you can really screw yourself.

[Padsin05]

Karma is a bitch, you would have to beat them both to win anyways.

[Grounded Polo]

Meh, tanking to get a shot at someone like Strasburg in the draft is fine with me (the second to last team just not being active and ending up last is irrelevant to me) but this is pretty bad because this directly affects the championship picture.

[A Fleshner Fantasy]

Meh, tanking to get a shot at someone like Strasburg in the draft is fine with me (the second to last team just not being active and ending up last is irrelevant to me) but this is pretty bad because this directly affects the championship picture.

I agree with this...that said, if you can beat team B if you just try the last week of the season, what makes you so scared of them in the playoffs?

[GoodOl'Days]

Well it is certainly not ethical, but is it fine or ok? Yea. Good luck though, I've almost always got burnt when I tried that type of stuff.