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Someone reading that title would be almost certain this is a political post, and not a post about Asian World Cup Qualifying. They’d, of course, be wrong.

I’ll get to the update later on Thursday but a fascinating “life meets theory” moment evolved today when Saudi Arabia and North Korea came face to face with the mother of all game theory examples, the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

The shortcut to the meat of the issue is that the Prisoner’s Dilemma is when two players face a situation where co-operation by each results in a universally positive result, but defection (or undermining or whatever) is the correct play. The idea is that regardless of which your opponent chooses to do, your best interests involve defecting.

And so that brings us to today’s final matches in the final group stages of Asian qualifying. In a turn of events that simply baffles me, the first match was played several hours before the second, giving the participants in the 2nd match a decided advantage. After Iran gamely tried to hold a lead in Seoul, the match finished 1-1 leaving Iran’s only chance at qualification through a playoff (certainly against a set of teams considered weaker than they).

A couple of hours later, North Korea met Saudi Arabia in Riyadh (which, for the geographically challenged among us, is not in North Korea). For North Korea, a win or a draw sees them punching their ticket to South Africa next summer. A loss by two goals or more sends them home. A 1-0 loss also sends them home. A 2-1 loss brings in the dreaded coinflip, and any one goal loss in which they score 2 or more goals sends North Korea to the playoffs and Iran home. Saudi Arabia’s situation was easier. Win and they go to South Africa. Lose and they go home. Draw and they go to the playoff.

We can see that an agreed upon draw by both teams meant positive things for both teams, and an agreed upon 3-2 win by Saudi Arabia does the same. These situations do pop up from time to time in soccer, including during the group stages of the 2002 World Cup where a draw between South Korea and Portugal would have sent both to the next round and the USA packing. This, needless to say, can cause all sorts of conspiracy theories about teams conspiring to achieve mutually beneficial results.

However the Prisoner’s Dilemma then comes into play. In American sports, such arrangements between teams are illegal, and in other countries they are often, at best, unethical. What precisely would compel a team to honor such an agreement, if (as the Prisoner’s Dilemma suggests) the best case result for your team, regardless of what your opponent does, would be to make the agreement and then ignore it. Then from the opposing view, if you reason that part of the equation out, you now know (or at least deeply suspect) that your opponent won’t honor the agreement, so why should you? It’s kind of a complicated thing to consider doing.

Of course in the real world there are all sorts of repercussions and other factors to consider, but a mutually agreed to draw isn’t as easy as it often sounds. And that’s probably a big reason why South Korea won that match (that and the fact that the Portuguese lost their minds) in 2002 and sent the US onto its best finish in the modern era. Today, The Saudis and North Korea finished 0-0, sending both Koreas to South Africa, the Saudis to the playoffs and the Iranians home.

As it turns out, outright throwing games isn’t as easy as it sounds either. Ask Dickie Kerr.