LJ Idol Season 10, Week 3: "Brushback Pitch"
Game Theory
Several years ago, during a National Scrabble Championship, I became a minor celebrity.
Not for my performance in the tournament, mind you--though I rallied from a 1-5 start to play my way into contention, a six-game losing streak ended that dream. No, I became a minor celebrity within the Scrabble community because of an obscure hole in the Official Tournament Rules. Quoting what is now section V.B.:
The game may also end [...] after a sixth consecutive zero-scoring play from passes, exchanges, challenges, or illegal plays.
This rule is designed to provide a means to end the game when neither player is capable of placing tiles on the board. But nothing in the rule says that it has to be at the end of the game. I knew this rule, my opponent momentarily forgot, and I won a prize for the lowest winning score of the tournament: 28-11.
Word spread rapidly, and I was being asked to retell the tale of this game several times an hour for the next day or two. In person, everyone seemed impressed with my knowledge of the rules, and with my willingness to take the sure win rather than try to play for a larger victory. (To which I responded: I was 4-7 at the time. A win is a win.)
When the discussion migrated to our online email forum, however, the reaction was quite different. You shouldn't be proud of that! It's unethical to win games that way! It goes against the spirit of the game! Prominent members of the community were lined up against me, though thankfully, they were outnumbered and eventually shouted down.
It got me thinking, however, about the phrase "spirit of the game". It's invoked anytime someone takes an action that treads the line between legality and ethics in a game or sport. How ruthless do we want our competitors to be? We want them to play hard, sure, but at what cost?
Baseball has tried to legislate throwing pitches at hitters out of the game, for obvious safety reasons. Hitting someone with a baseball, particularly in the head, can alter someone's life. Pitchers remind us (and quite rightly) that the inside pitch is also part of the game, and that if a hitter needs to be backed off the plate a bit in order to set up a future pitch, that's within the rules. Where it gets messy is when you throw inside just because someone celebrated a little too loudly when they hit that home run last time up.
It's the same in other sports; football wants to take head-hunting out of the game and make it safer, but how much can you really expect someone to run at full speed and hit specifically the chest and not the head? Soccer wants to reduce players diving to earn fouls against the opponent, but how do you judge precisely what is and isn't a foul when both players are working to deceive?
I struggle with this at times as well. In non-competitive environments, such as a casual board-game day, I'll work with others to understand the rules, and help correct people if they get things wrong. But there's still that competitive edge to me that says, "If I'm playing this game, I may as well try to win it." And when there's actually stakes involved? I'm going all-out.
But what does that mean, exactly? I'm not doing literally everything in my power to try to win; for one thing, I'm absolutely not going to cheat. (Not that I'd have the physical dexterity or poker face to pull it off anyway, even if I wanted to. Which I don't.) I'll play by the rules, and use them to my advantage where I can.
Does that mean trying to be a lawyer, nitpicking everything my opponent does to try and find somewhere they might have messed up? Not to me. Some might say, however, that I'm giving up chances to win by doing so...and while they may be right, I find it more productive to focus on my own play than on my opponent's. But to what extent? Where's the line between cutthroat, and ruthless, and (as someone who played with me once put it) vindictive?
That last word was in the context of a multi-player game where the move that gave me the best chance also specifically hurt another player's opportunities. The player in question accused me of targeting them, making it personal. Which it wasn't--I was simply being careful about protecting my own interests; the opponent just happened to be collateral damage. Unfortunately, they didn't see it that way.
To sum up: In my mind, the "spirit of the game" consists of following two simple creeds:
1. Play by the rules of the game.
2. Play to win the game.
That's it. Real simple. As a T-shirt I once bought (at a board game convention, ironically enough) put it: It's not whether you win or lose. It's whether I win or lose.
Several years ago, during a National Scrabble Championship, I became a minor celebrity.
Not for my performance in the tournament, mind you--though I rallied from a 1-5 start to play my way into contention, a six-game losing streak ended that dream. No, I became a minor celebrity within the Scrabble community because of an obscure hole in the Official Tournament Rules. Quoting what is now section V.B.:
The game may also end [...] after a sixth consecutive zero-scoring play from passes, exchanges, challenges, or illegal plays.
This rule is designed to provide a means to end the game when neither player is capable of placing tiles on the board. But nothing in the rule says that it has to be at the end of the game. I knew this rule, my opponent momentarily forgot, and I won a prize for the lowest winning score of the tournament: 28-11.
Word spread rapidly, and I was being asked to retell the tale of this game several times an hour for the next day or two. In person, everyone seemed impressed with my knowledge of the rules, and with my willingness to take the sure win rather than try to play for a larger victory. (To which I responded: I was 4-7 at the time. A win is a win.)
When the discussion migrated to our online email forum, however, the reaction was quite different. You shouldn't be proud of that! It's unethical to win games that way! It goes against the spirit of the game! Prominent members of the community were lined up against me, though thankfully, they were outnumbered and eventually shouted down.
It got me thinking, however, about the phrase "spirit of the game". It's invoked anytime someone takes an action that treads the line between legality and ethics in a game or sport. How ruthless do we want our competitors to be? We want them to play hard, sure, but at what cost?
Baseball has tried to legislate throwing pitches at hitters out of the game, for obvious safety reasons. Hitting someone with a baseball, particularly in the head, can alter someone's life. Pitchers remind us (and quite rightly) that the inside pitch is also part of the game, and that if a hitter needs to be backed off the plate a bit in order to set up a future pitch, that's within the rules. Where it gets messy is when you throw inside just because someone celebrated a little too loudly when they hit that home run last time up.
It's the same in other sports; football wants to take head-hunting out of the game and make it safer, but how much can you really expect someone to run at full speed and hit specifically the chest and not the head? Soccer wants to reduce players diving to earn fouls against the opponent, but how do you judge precisely what is and isn't a foul when both players are working to deceive?
I struggle with this at times as well. In non-competitive environments, such as a casual board-game day, I'll work with others to understand the rules, and help correct people if they get things wrong. But there's still that competitive edge to me that says, "If I'm playing this game, I may as well try to win it." And when there's actually stakes involved? I'm going all-out.
But what does that mean, exactly? I'm not doing literally everything in my power to try to win; for one thing, I'm absolutely not going to cheat. (Not that I'd have the physical dexterity or poker face to pull it off anyway, even if I wanted to. Which I don't.) I'll play by the rules, and use them to my advantage where I can.
Does that mean trying to be a lawyer, nitpicking everything my opponent does to try and find somewhere they might have messed up? Not to me. Some might say, however, that I'm giving up chances to win by doing so...and while they may be right, I find it more productive to focus on my own play than on my opponent's. But to what extent? Where's the line between cutthroat, and ruthless, and (as someone who played with me once put it) vindictive?
That last word was in the context of a multi-player game where the move that gave me the best chance also specifically hurt another player's opportunities. The player in question accused me of targeting them, making it personal. Which it wasn't--I was simply being careful about protecting my own interests; the opponent just happened to be collateral damage. Unfortunately, they didn't see it that way.
To sum up: In my mind, the "spirit of the game" consists of following two simple creeds:
1. Play by the rules of the game.
2. Play to win the game.
That's it. Real simple. As a T-shirt I once bought (at a board game convention, ironically enough) put it: It's not whether you win or lose. It's whether I win or lose.