That’s how it’s intended to work. If you had a 61% chance to sign, you were likely beating your rival ~56-44 in terms of actual effort credit accumulated. The game is designed to assign recruits based on probability. WIS has already given you extra credit for being “in the lead” on effort credit, so your chances were already improved. But 50.1 doesn’t win 100% of the time anymore, now it’s closer to 52% of the time. At 61%, you are going to lose ~2 of every 5 battles.