A lame duck, in the context of a
game
A game is a structured form of play (activity), play, usually undertaken for enjoyment, entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator s ...
, is a player who remains in the game but has no chance of winning. It must be literally impossible – not merely highly ''improbable'' – for a player to win for it to constitute a lame-duck scenario.
Lame ducks are often found in
sport. The teams that are eliminated from
playoff contention are lame ducks, and have nothing remaining to play for, often with several weeks of games remaining on the schedule. In some cases, ''losing'' the remaining games can be more favorable than attempting to win them, due to more favorable positioning in a
draft and the ability to land more talented players. Teams in Europe (especially those without drafts) discourage "losing out" by imposing a
relegation system that expels the lowest teams from the league. A draft lottery is used in some North American professional leagues to discourage losing out by randomizing who gets the top draft picks, while still assuring the less talented teams have access to the players necessary to compete. (See:
elimination from possibility of reaching postseason
Elimination from postseason contention, or being eliminated from playoff contention, refers to the point when it is no longer mathematically possible for a team in a sports league to qualify for the postseason, including if they win every remaini ...
)
A
kingmaker is a lame duck who retains the ability to influence (sometimes decisively) who, among other players, will win the game. In sports, the ''
spoiler
Spoiler is a security vulnerability on modern computer central processing units that use speculative execution. It exploits side-effects of speculative execution to improve the efficiency of Rowhammer and other related memory and cache attacks. Ac ...
'' plays a similar role.
Game design
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