"giving someone a free win" In chess, people don't care as much about who won or lost, as they do about... I'm not sure exactly. It might be the specific tacti

"giving someone a free win" In chess, people don't care as much about who won or lost, as they do about... I'm not sure exactly. It might be the specific tactic they used, or prescient intuition somebody showed, or the possibility of a move they saw but nobody else did, etc. But the point is they care about the playing of the game. It's a much different affair with most physical sports. There are so many possibilities, so many "moving parts", so much room for randomness to set in, that you can't really care nearly as much about exactly "how" anybody played a physical game. The winning and the loosing is really all you're left with. In chess, games are recorded move by move. You can literally buy a book and read exactly how dozens (hundreds?) of major chess games played out. And you'll be reading exactly how they played out. Every single relevant detail of the entire match is there, in a textual format, that you or anyone else can learn from. In physical sports you rarely get more than who won X major tournament each year, or what a team's win / loss ratio was. That's it. There are so vastly many more variables going in on a physical sports game that it is inconceivable to record exactly how they played out. Anyway, I think this and similar reasons, are why somebody "giving" away a win is hardly relevant. Who it was that won is hardly worth knowing. How they won, what strategy they employed, or what mental weakness the loser exhibited, are what everyone is really hankering for. By throwing the game he robbed everyone of what they are really after: knowledge. And not knowledge like "who won" but knowledge of "how do you win at chess against the best player in the world". Because in chess, and other games of pure mental gymnastics, anybody can employ that same knowledge in their next game.