I wish I could offer you some insight in to DHB's decisions on this, but they are as much of a mystery to me as they are to you.
Ion Udan wrote:In regards to your reply about the rules of AT "If nobody had an illegitimate incentive to throw a match, then the very question of match throwing can be put to bed"
That is a very subjective statement, what drives player A may not drive player B. The whole purpose of a tournament is to have a winner. If player A is focussed on ISK, and the AT has a massive ISK reward, then he has motivation. However if player B is not motivated by ISK, but eHonor and winning, then he has motivation no what the "reward" is. Just winning is his motivation.
It doesn't matter if the person is driven by isk, e-honor or the desire to be the best of the best.
If throwing matches doesn't help them win, then they can gain no riches, e-honor or other accolades from doing it.
Double elimination tournaments allow a team to lose a match/series and still continue to compete. They can throw matches and still win.
Single elimination tournaments do not have the same dynamic. If you lose a match/series then you are out and cannot then go on to benefit from your loss later in that tournament.
You can certainly throw one match in a series, in order to fake out your opponents or gain some information advantage, but I don't think that's the kind of match throw that anyone wants to prevent.
You can certainly throw matches in order to win big on eve-bet, but that's outside of the scope of the tournament rules and probably not as big a deal either.
So my point is that tournament structure has a massive effect on what kind of metagaming is viable. Choosing double elimination makes the kind of match fixing that Warlords and Camel are accused of viable and also offers a significant incentive to field two teams in the tournament, since those two teams facing eachother before the finals isn't a problem.
Choosing double elimination and making these metagaming options viable also means that when accusations start flying around CCP have to spend time investigating it and suffer the PR problems associated with it. If that metagaming is not viable then they don't have that unwarranted extra workload and unwanted controversy to deal with.