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Comment by noelchurchill | Hacker News Reader

Modify the rules so scoring in your own goal doesn't count?

Without modifying the rules, you could effectively reverse the game into a race to score goals in your own goal. Goal keepers would be the strikers (much more effective strikers since they can use their hands). Most players would be just trying to control the ball and move it towards their goalie/striker

Awesome. I wish more opportunities for exploits like this would open in sports, the games would take some interesting intellectual twists. Oh wait, we're playing calvinball.

Ultimate frisbee captains can, I believe, agree on any subset of rules before a game begins. The inclusion and use of dodgeballs on the field was one modification of note.

There are lots of them. One enterprising swim coach figured out that you could swim breaststroke much faster if you brought your hands forward above the water instead of under it. This'hack' gave birth to the Butterfly Stroke.

Another figured out that swimming upside-down under water was faster than back-stroking above the water. Alas, this innovation was banned. And so it goes.

Politics gets into it, as anyone who followed the UCI's wars with Graeme Obree would remember:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree

Slight technicality--goalkeepers can't use their hands if the ball is passed back to them by their own team.

This league would be better off modifying the rules so that every team finishes undefeated by default.

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