Also when he had to pull his goalie near the end of the game he had the goalie lay his stick across the crease before he went to the bench. The rules had to be changed to disallow leaving behind any equipment.
The definition of “unlawful combatant” with respect to incarcerations wthin Guantanamo is pretty much the most worrying and prominent rules lawyering there has been in the past few decades, if I comprehend the term correctly.
Exactly. The trouble is that most people use the Monopoly board and pieces to play a game that’s sort of like Monopoly without actually being Monopoly. If you want to play chess under some kind of house rule under which a Knight can’t take a Queen, then you’ll never have to put up with the humiliation of seeing your Queen taken by a Knight - but what you’re playing isn’t chess any more.
It hasn’t happened, but, in theory, there can be ways in baseball where deliberately making an error could be good for your teammates.
For instance, consider the situation where it’s the top of the ninth, none on, two outs, and your pitcher is one strikeout away from the record of strikeouts in a game (and your team is seven runs ahead). If the batter hits an easy grounder, and you deliberately bobbled the ball for an error, your pitcher would get another chance to break the record.
Similarly, if the pitcher needs, say, two strikeouts to break the record (which is 21, by the way), and there are two outs in the ninth, and the pitcher strikes out the last batter, the catcher could drop the ball, allowing the batter to reach base. The strikeout still counts, even though it’s not an out, and the pitcher gets his shot at the record.
Brian Rose, captaining his county Somerset in a one-day match, took the unusual step of ending his side’s innings after one over in order to lose the match quickly and deny the opposition a chance to improve their net run-rate in the competition, which was the only way they could conceivably keep Somerset out of the knock-out stages. He was warned in advance that, while this was strictly legal, there were likely to be “repercussions”, and there were: Somerset were thrown out of the competition. No matter what was down in black and white, the zeroth Law of Cricket is “No side shall deliberately throw the match.” 
Once upon a time, the Laws obliged the side batting second to take its second innings immediately after its first if it was more than a certain number of runs behind. (This, the “follow on”, is now selectively enforced on the decision of the side with the better score.) There was an occasion where the fielding side, seeing that the pitch was deteriorating rapidly, wanted to avoid having to bat last on it, and seeing that the follow-on was about to be mandatorily enforced, began bowling wides (each worth a penalty run to the batting side). However, the batsman, realizing what was in the wind, deliberately knocked his own stumps over in order to end the innings.
Something similar to Jackelope’s example happened over the weekend in the France - New Zealand encounter in the Rugby World Cup. In this case, the clock had just run out, but the game doesn’t end while the ball’s in play, so when France recovered the ball they had to get it off the field. Normally this would be done just by kicking it, but the Frenchman in possession, to minimise the chance that his punt would be blocked, ran towards his own corner-flag to stay as far away from the All Blacks as possible, and kicked the ball diagonally backwards over the touch-line. That’s not rules-lawyering, but it’s an unusual sight as you’re normally looking to make ground (or at least not lose it) with a punt to touch.
Rules-lawyering in chess: In a postal game, White mailed off 1. d4, and Black, to save postage, replied “1. … g6; 2. Any, Bg7” meaning that his second move was to be played no matter what White’s second move was. So White unsportingly posted “2. Bh6, Bg7; 3. Bxg7” and also picked up the Rook on h8 as well. Of course no-one would have played 2. Bh6 over the board (except perhaps in one-minute chess gambling that the opponent would reflexively be halfway through playing some other move before noticing that the White Bishop was en prise) but Black was obliged to play the move he had written down instead of taking the Bishop.
Several years ago, my sister played in an indoor soccer league. It was pretty much a “just for fun” league, with no team being particularly good, and no real stakes (the champions just got a cheap trophy). My sister’s team was the worst in the league. The two best teams in the league had developed a rather nasty (and stupid, given the nature of the thing) rivalry, and each really didn’t want the other to win.
The championship was decided in a round robin tournament with number of goals as the tiebreaker in the case of two teams with the same record. My sister’s team managed to win their first game. One of the two best teams won both of their games; it came down to the last game, with the second of the rivals having lost one game, and therefore out of the running. They were playing my sister’s team. They decided that since they couldn’t win it, they’d be damned if their rivals would win, so they decided to give it to my sister’s team on goals. They basically stopped playing, except to occasionally kick the ball into their own goal. The guy who ran the league was massively pissed; he awarded the trophy to the other team (the one that should have won), which then pissed off the team that had just tried so hard to lose. My sister’s team didn’t really care.
I’m hardly an Ender but, back in the day, my friend and I played a laser-tag variant at some pizza place on a regular basis. One part of how the game worked was that, once shot, you had to go ‘recharge’ your life at some terminal before you could fire your gun again. So I’d get shot at some point but then, rather than recharging, I’d act as a human shield for my friend with him walking behind me and me heedless of whether or not I was shot since it wouldn’t register against my score until I was “alive” again. We got into the enemy base quite a few times this way, partially because my friend was sheltered and partially because it was hard to see the “Dead” light on the vests so they’d waste a lot of shots trying to register a hit on me.
Eventually, the referees started saying in the pre-game that you had to head for a terminal as soon as you were hit. Spoil sports 
I wanted to address this quickly as an avid bowler. There are, unfortunately, lots of league bowlers who cause themselves temporary disadvantages in order to gain a greater long-term advantage. I’ll try to do this without rambling too much. I think, by the way, that this might also work with golf, but I’m not a golfer, so I have no idea how prevalent this might be.
Many bowling leagues are “handicap” leagues. For example, the league I bowl in currently has a handicap of 90% of 200. What this means is that for every individual who has an average below 200, 90% of the difference between their average and 200 is automatically added to their score every game. For example, if a bowler carries an average of 150, the difference between their average and 200 is 50 pins. 90% of 50 is 45, so for every game that bowler rolls, 45 pins is added to his score. The purpose of this is to level the playing field so that lower average bowlers and teams are still able to compete with those who have higher averages.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of high-average bowlers out there who aren’t so much interested in their team doing well as much as they’re interested in winning a lot of money at the end of the season. Most leagues have a mini-tournament called “sweepers” at the end of the season where you bowl three games and can win a lot of money. Your average from the “regular season” carries over into this tournament. So you’ll get guys who can easily average 210 who will intentionally bowl well below their capability throughout the season in order to gain extra handicap. Then, when they get into the sweepers tournament, they’ll bowl well AND get the benefit of extra pins they shouldn’t have, making it very easy for them to dominate the tournament and take all the money.
These folks are called sandbaggers, and they are despised.
It occurs to me that the infield-fly rule was developed in order to prevent a similar occurrence of fielders deliberately dropping the ball in order to force two outs rather than a single out.
While the baseball example that RealityChuck provided is interesting, it doesn’t do anything to help the team win the game, does it?
In basketball, if you foul a guy so that he gets foul shots instead of the possibility to shoot the winning three-pointer, you have helped the team possibly win that game.
In football, if you facemask a guy in order to stop the clock so your team can regroup and get ready for a hail mary, you’ve helped the team possibly win that game.
Dropping a grounder and letting a guy get to first just so a pitcher can win the league strikeout record…???
Asimovian - thanks, that is a good example for bowling and I totally forgot that. I used to be on a bowling team and I in bemoaned the fact that my teammates had 2 of the 3 highest averages in the league because our handicap was so shitty. Of course, my teammates being the pros that they were, thought I was nutty 
Absolutely. Read the rules and learn the strategy.
An example of bad Monopoly is when a married couple sell certificates to each other, ignoring higher bids from other players.
My teammates start bitching whenever we find out we’re bowling a low-average team. “Oh God, we have to make up SO much handicap, geez!” I’ve realized over the years that trying to point out to them that the lower average team still has to work harder is futile.
I once played in a D&D campaign where the dungeonmaster had a house rule that ANY projectile that hit a target would due a minimum of one point of damage.
So the players starting carrying bags of sand and throwing handfuls of it at monsters … .
Not sure this applies either, and I don’t know if it’s ever happened: with one runner on, who happens to be a speedster at first base, a fielder could intentionally let a high pop fly drop and then throw to second - so now the slower runner is on instead of the fast one. Obviously risky, since you could end up with two runners on if you muck it up.
I went and wiki’d Infield Fly Rule, which apparently only applies if there’s a force play on third (who knew?).
It seems there’s also a separate rule that prevents fielders from intentionally dropping a caught ball in order to force an out, if the infield fly rule doesn’t apply. In all cases, you’re still allowed to let a ball drop to the ground and then try to catch it.
In sport judo, you have to attack almost continuously or get penalized for stalling. I actually attended a clinic where the clinician demonstrated how to make a “proper false attack” - an attack that was realistic to keep you from getting penalized, but not realistic enough that you might get countered.
A Brazilian fighter won the Olympics by playing this game. He scored not one ippon in the whole tournament. All he did was grip fight and do “proper” false attacks, until his opponents got penalized for stalling.
Regards,
Shodan
You want rule lawyering?
May I present Smokey Yunick
My favorite Smokey story was about him and a NACAR race in the 1950s. Racers back then took a torch and cut out the wheel wells on their cars to allow for quick tire changes. Smokey shows up for qualifying with the stock fenders in place. This gives him a huge aerodynamic advantage.
The other racers protest. Smokey points out that the rules say that the wheel wells may be cut, not that they have to be cut.
Protest denied.
Smokey’s car qualifies on the pole.
Smokey then proceeds to cut the wheel wells out.
Other racers protest. Smokey points out that the rules do not say when the fenders may be cut.
Protest denied.
In game 5 of the 1976 NBA Finals between the Celtics and Phoenix Suns, the Suns were down by 1 in overtime after John Havlicek of the Celtics scored a basket with one second left to play and the clock about to run out. The Suns were out of time outs but Paul Westphal of the Suns called one anyway, because the penalty at the time was only a one shot technical foul. Boston scored the technical foul shot to be up by 2, but then the Suns were able to inbound the ball at halfcourt after their “illegal” timeout. The Suns’ Garfield Heard managed to hit a shot to tie the game and send it to another overtime, where the Celtics finally won. This game is considered one of the best in NBA history.
Nowadays, when a team calls a time out when it doesn’t have any left the penalty is a technical foul and loss of the ball.