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Thesis A deliberate foul that accepts its penalty is still a move within the game

Hsieh Wei-ting Fellow
· 6 replies
Play, sport & humourAnalyticBernard Suits#constitutive-rules#formalism#gamesmanship#tactical-foul
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Where it stands

Here is a thesis from someone who builds rule systems for a living: a tactical foul, committed openly and paid for with the stated penalty, is part of playing the game, not a break from it.

The strict formalist reading of Suits says that any rule broken means you are no longer playing. But look at how real rulebooks are written. Basketball doesn't just say ‘do not foul’. It says what happens when you do: free throws, possession, fouls counted toward disqualification. The penalty is itself a rule. A team that fouls deliberately in the last minute to stop the clock is choosing among options the rulebook has priced.

In my own games I write constraints two ways. Some are walls: you literally cannot walk through them, and if you hack the code to do so you've left the game. Others are tolls: you can cross, but it costs you. Players who pay tolls are playing. Players who hack walls are not.

So I think the formalist conflates two kinds of rule. Constitutive rules (what counts as a goal, what the pieces are) cannot be broken without leaving the game. Penalty-bearing rules are designed to be broken at a price, and strategy around them is part of the skill.

What I'm less sure of: is there still something wrong with the professional foul even if it is ‘in the game’? Push back.

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6 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Tomasz Szewczak

    For Fellow

    For, mostly. Wei-ting's wall-and-toll distinction is roughly the distinction between constitutive and regulative rules that Searle made famous, and it does real work here. Moving a bishop like a knight is not a bad chess move, it is not chess. Holding a shirt is a bad football move that is still football. Suits's definition needs ‘means permitted by rules’ to be read with the constitutive rules in mind.

    But Gerrit's point survives in a weaker form: escalating penalties show the rule-makers' intentions, and maybe the ethos of a game is part of what it is.

  2. Ethan Mercer

    For Fellow

    For, on economic grounds, which I realise is a provocative place to come from. If you design a penalty and players respond to it, you have priced the behaviour. Complaining that they treat it as a price is complaining that your mechanism worked. If the community thinks the foul is wrong, raise the price until nobody pays it.

    Helpful · 2
    1. Gerrit Venter

      Against Fellow

      Ethan, you would get on very well with some of my old opponents. The trouble with ‘raise the price’ is that the young players watching learn the habit before the law-makers catch up.

      Helpful · 3

Against the thesis 3

  1. Gerrit Venter

    Against Fellow

    Against, from the touchline. A penalty is not a price list, it is a sanction. The rulebook punishes the deliberate trip because it is not meant to happen. If the law-makers thought it was a legitimate option they wouldn't add yellow cards for cynical fouls on top of the penalty kick. Rugby escalates the punishment exactly because the cost-benefit reasoning you describe is the problem.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Sam Ellery

    Against Fellow

    There's a name in the sports literature for what Tomasz is gesturing at: the idea that a game includes its ethos, its shared conventions about how the rules are to be applied, not just the written rules. On that view the tactical foul can be legal-ish and still wrong, because it trades on the conventions everyone else is honouring. I'm against the thesis for that reason. ‘It's in the rulebook’ is the debater's excuse for every dirty trick I see.

    Helpful · 1

Other replies

  1. Hsieh Wei-ting

    Fellow

    I'll concede something. My wall/toll distinction works for my games because I write them and I decide which rules are tolls. In sport the rules were written with an intention, and Gerrit's escalation point is evidence of that intention. So I'll revise: a tactical foul is within the game, but it can still be a failure of the attitude that makes the game worth playing. Suits's lusory attitude may need to include accepting the spirit of the penalties, not just their letter. Which is a messier definition than he wanted.