What got me interested in researching match-fixing was that I thought too many people would research concussions. After reading an article about tennis match-fixing, I saw that it was a well-known problem and found some interesting things in the first article. My research does not reflect my values other than the general emotions of anger when people cheat. The reason why people have a problem with fixing of games, is when they are watching a sporting event they believe that any team can win any day. Fixing the games takes this away from the event and they have also been cheated and conned because that feeling has been taken away from them. I really wouldn't call match-fixing cheating in the regular sense because the person that throws the event doesn't want to win or has other ulterior motives, or financial reasons to not play at the best of their ability. Personally, I have not encountered anything that has to deal with match-fixing directly. Although this could have happened without me knowing, with bogus calls in football or basketball. I am not qualified to write about this topic at the moment, but by the end of the semester when I have fully researched match-fixing in all the major sports and have spent hours writing and rewriting to formulate a spectacular paper, I believe I will be well versed in match-fixing and will become somewhat of an expert in the topic.

Ben Rothenberg and James Glanz article, "Match-Fixing Suspicions Raised at Australian Open After Site Stops Bets on Match" major points are how Pinnacle sports, one of the largest online betting sites, discontinued bets on a mixed doubles match of Lara Arruabarrena and David Marrero against Andrea Hlavackova and Lukasz Kubot. Hlavackova and Kubot were heavily favored which caused some conversation about the match being fixed. The major values at stake for the article are that if there is a chance that the Australian Open has been fixed, then tennis has been corrupted at the highest levels and there will need to be sanctions brought down in order to combat corruption and match-fixing. The authors are not biased because the piece was just informational and does not address how they feel about the allegations. They are both credible reporters for the New York Times since they have been published, and it seems that their objective is to just provide an informational article about the games being allegedly fixed and how tennis has been in a dark spot for the last two decades because of these numerous allegations.

David Lucy's, a lecturer in statistics from Lancaster University, article "Can you spot match-fixing by looking at the numbers?" takes a look at the mathematical side of match-fixing in various sports from cricket to soccer. Lucy begins by stating the various scandals since the early 2000's that have involved match-fixing and the sanctions brought down by the leagues they are organized in. The major values at stake are that it is very probable to find a way to tell if a player has thrown the game because there are countless times where upsets occur in sports and where some players just don't show up at the right moment. Lucy says that the area in statistics where they could find out if someone threw the game on purpose is based on the nurse problem. The nurse problem tries to analyze when a medical professional has been suspected of harming their patients instead of providing treatment.  Lucy says that it is very improbable to calculate if a nurse harmed her patients or if a player threw a game, but when you look at two calculations of if a match was deliberately lost or if it was accidently lost, then calculate the ratios of the two propositions, and finally decide if the player was not playing up to his ability or if the player lost on purpose. David Lucy holds credibility because he is a lecturer and professor of statistics at Lancaster University and knows probability and likely outcomes of various things in daily life.

Paul Newman, a tennis correspondent for Independent website's article "Four tennis umpires suspended in anti-corruption investigation" tells the story of umpires Denis Pitner of Croatia, Kirill Parfenov of Kazakhstan, and Morgan Lamri of France. Pitner was suspended for twelve months on the allegations that he was sending information about the physical well-being of players to coaches during tournaments, as well as regularly checking gambling sites for bets on tennis matches. Parfenov has been banned from the sport for contacting other officials on Facebook in an attempt to manipulate matches. While Morgan Lamri, who was banned from umpiring for life from the TIU two years ago, gives a detailed account on how bad corruption is in tennis. Lamri goes on to state that he took bets to manipulate the live box scores that the umpires have to input after each point. He would input the box scores after up to a sixty-second delay so the betters would already know who got the point before betting on it. Also, there is evidence of "court-siding," where there is a delay in the live score being relayed and on-site gamblers relay the information to gamblers around the globe. Newman is the tennis correspondent for Independent website, so he has a vast knowledge of tennis and that what he only reports on. There is no bias in the article, it is just informational.

My research question is arguable to a certain extent, I believe you could argue on many ways you could abolish match-fixing and how to identify it also. Between the sources I have found, they all believe that there isn't really one way to figure out if a player is intentionally throwing a game or if he is just having an off day. One things that all my sources do agree on is that there is match-fixing in tennis, soccer, and cricket. It has become a huge problem in the competitive conferences and needs to be abolished to keep the integrity of the sport. The sources really don't impact my preferences because I have never knowingly encountered match-fixing and have never been a part of it. I need to revise my research question to formulate something that is a little more specific and might have an answer to it, rather than just talking about how we can rid it from sports altogether. Also, I will need to focus on one sport, so that I can find an answer that best fixes the problems in that sport because what might work for one might not for the other.
