Tournament organizers supposedly design rules such that a team cannot be better off by exerting a lower effort. It is shown that the European qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup are not strategy-proof in this sense: a team might be eliminated if it wins in the last matchday of group stage,...

UEFA Euro 1996 qualifying is known to violate strategy-proofness. It is proved that a team could be better off by exerting a lower effort: it might be optimal to concede some goals in order to achieve a better position among runners-up, and hence avoid a hazardous play-off. We show that it is...

UEFA Euro 1996 qualifying is known to violate strategy-proofness. It is proved that a team could be better off by exerting a lower effort: it might be optimal to concede some goals in order to achieve a better position among runners-up, and hence avoid a hazardous play-off. We show that it is...

We discuss the strategy-proofness of multistage tournaments. In a tournament with subsequent group stages, players are divided into groups in the preliminary and main rounds, where they play pairwise matches against each other. The higher ranked players qualify to the next stage such that...

Tournament organizers supposedly design rules such that a team cannot be better off by exerting a lower effort. It is shown that the European qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup are not strategy-proof in this sense: a team might be eliminated if it wins its last match in the group stage, while...