During a recent Liverpool vs Everton game, Phil Neville deliberately gave away a penalty by saving the ball with his hands.
It was an instant red card for the player, and a penalty to Liverpool, but that’s still better than an definate goal from the original shot.
You then take a chance that your team can 1) save the penalty and 2) keep playing with 10 men.
One enterprising player for the Washington Senators (ETA for foreigners: baseball) leaps immediately to mind. I can’t recall his name, but anyway, he started stealing bases backwards and forwards–ie, stealing first base when he was already on second, then stealing second again, etc. He was such a good baserunner that nobody could get him out either way, and the shenanigans did a great job of unnerving the pitcher and the entire defense, making it that much more likely that the pitcher will throw a hanging curveball and the outfielder will drop the resultant fly ball. Eventually, MLB put a stop to it by adding a rule that you had to run either (a) the right way or (b) not at all. Of course, because of the nature of baseball, there’s no penalty per se–but if someone tried to (say) steal first base from second today, they simply would not have the base; the catcher could then just ignore him entirely and lob a leisurely throw to second, where the second baseman would be waiting to tag the runner out when he realized that his only recourse was to go back from whence he came.
The Yankees are known for having mucked about with the official game ball in all kinds of strange ways throughout history, until MLB added a rule specifying every detail of the game ball to be used, including color, storage, material, etc. Most of those alterations were publicity stunts, but one of them was instituted for the express purpose of letting Babe Ruth hit more home runs. When the Babe came into his stride, the home run leader in any given season generally hit only a handful of homers, most of which were inside the park. When the Yankees realized that fans loved the longball, they started substituting “live” balls that left the park more easily. Of course, that made it easier for everyone to hit home runs, but the Babe in particular really cleaned up, and the fans went crazy over him. MLB eventually realized that fans everywhere would be excited by home runs, so they replaced the old “dead” baseballs with the new “live” ones. AIUI today’s game ball is not too different from that one.
Similarly, a St. Louis Cardinals (I think? maybe Browns) pitcher specialized in “moonballs”–lofty underhand pitches that would go way up in the air and come down across home plate at just the right angle to register as a strike while being almost completely unhittable. MLB had to make underhanded pitching illegal as a result, although “sidewinder” pitchers today come very close to breaking that rule on every pitch, I’m sure.
This isn’t really “rules lawyering” as far as I know, but I remember it fondly because of the look of consternation on the GM’s face. We were gaming under a novice GM being guided by a more experienced GM who was playing as a character. At one point a Wish ring was introduced into the game and it fell into my possession. After thinking for a moment about what I could possibly Wish for, I said:
“I wish I had the most powerful non-evil, non-cursed weapon that I can wield”.
The GM stared blankly at me for a moment. The advisor GM said with a big grin “He can do that”.
Out comes the game manual. Much flipping through pages. The GM says “Give me the exact wording of that wish again!”
“I wish. I had. The most powerful. Non-evil, non-cursed weapon. That I can wield”.
More flipping through pages. Finally I get a sword. A “Honkin’ powerful” sword as the GM put it. So powerful that anything I hit with it just ceased to exist. (Good thing I never rolled a critical miss with it!) It so effortlessly dispatched everything we came across that the GM had to dump the entire campaign he’d planned and start over from scratch.
I think he was a little more careful with letting Wish come into play after that. 
The DM I play with would probably just make the sword so powerful that it attracted the attention of a deity, who would make the sword and most probably you cease to exist. He does not like rules lawyering, unbalanced games, or smarty-pants players. 
That reminds me of the time, in a World of Darkness game set in 1950s Las Vegas, when my character was in a jam and uttered a quick silent prayer in Latin to “whoever was listening up there”.
Ended up summoning a furry, demonic hair-metal god from the future, who basically Godzilla’d all over the place. Yeeeaaah.
No discussion about rules lawyering is really complete without Pun-Pun.
This was the theme of a humorous cricket story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - a slow bowler lobbing extremely high balls to descend almost vertically on the stumps so as to be impossible to hit by conventional means. It’s an agreeable read. 
Replacing the glass with Pyrex was just a way to save weight. Running the engine backwards helped plant the outside tire so that the driver could accelerate sooner. The torque sent through the driveshaft is transmitted to the rear end. In a standard RWD car,this causes a weight transfer to the left rear tire (IIRC, it’s been a while since I thought about it.) Running the engine backwards put the weight on the right rear.
“…Alabama lost to Rice, 28-6.”
Boy, times have changed! :dubious:
–robby (Rice alum)
underarm bowling was at one time the norm in cricket. Only in the 19th c. did the overarm action become common
Did anyone else see this: 15 laterals in one football play? Perfectly legal, but really over-using the lateral pass. Amazing.
I think they just re-invented rugby!
Though rugby doesn’t include running right into the marching band… 
There’s some tricks in chess that require a good practical knowledge to avoid. If you’re using a clock that has two analogue faces, a technique is to hit the clock REALLY HARD near the end of the game. It can make the opponent’s flag bounce off the minute hand, go backwards and fall, even though he had time left. Flag’s down=time’s up. They lose. Solution=insist on a digital clock.
There’s also what a club in pittsburgh has dubbed the Murphy [can’t remember the real name] gambit. Say you’re in a drawn position like rook and king vs rook and king. You have the move. You check him multiple times rapidly. Then you quickly move your rook to attack his rook, and say “Check”. He’ll hopefully be in the habit of moving out of check that he’ll touch his king before realizing what you’ve done. You hopefully can take his rook for free. If it fails, you might lose your rook. Not rules lawyering, but funny nonetheless.
The player was Germany Schaefer, who attempted it either once or twice, depending on whom you believe. There is indeed a penalty under the modern rule; Rule 7.08 holds that a runner is out when “he runs the bases in reverse order for the purpose of confusing the defense or making a travesty of the game”.
There is no rule against underhand pitching. The best-known pitcher to throw an “eephus pitch” was Rip Sewell.
True - and overarm (even round-arm) bowling was originally deemed “throwing” and hence illegal.
Earlier still, underarm bowling originally did consist of rolling the ball along the ground skittles fashion, and the bat was shaped more like a hockey stick in consequence. Then it dawned on bowlers that if you lobbed the ball through the air so it pitched just out of the batsman’s reach, he had to try to improvise a stroke against the bouncing ball with a bat ill-suited to the task. “Length” bowling went through cricket like a dose of salts, and the very design of the bat had to be changed to counter it.
I’ve always wanted a meerkat
I did a bicycle race this past summer where I unintentionally played the rules to help a team mate take the win. It was at the Tour de Bowness criterium where we were racing on a circuit about 1 km in length. I was racing with 3 other team mates: A, B, and C.
Before the race begun, I had told team mate A that I would work for him in the race and give him the lead out in a sprint since he was clearly the strongest member on the team. We had also agreed to break away from the field with the other 2 members of our team and try to lap everyone so that we could take the maximum number of prizes.
Early on in the race, team mate A and I repeatedly accelerated off the front of the race pack but our other two team mates were no where to be found. Having burnt enough matches trying to execute our plan, I drifted back into the pack of racers to get more shelter from the wind and try to recover. Then, on a corner, someone’s rear tire blew out causing several others and me to crash.
The rest of the racers continue on riding. I got up as quickly as I could and had to adjust my chain since it had fallen off the gears. In this race, if you are involved in a crash, you get a free lap so you can rejoin the race. Thinking that I would invoke this rule, I slowly continue riding so I could wait for the racers to come around the course again.
However, I did not see the whole pack of racers come around. Team mate A had actually broken away from the pack with another unknown racer. I latch on to the two and did by predetermined duties, thinking that I could still get 3rd place if we stayed away from the other racers. I rode as hard as I could and eventually gave team mate A the lead out that we had planned. He won with a pretty sizable gap over the other rider in our break away. I wound up finishing 4th since another rider passed me after I gave the lead out.
After the race, I learned that I hadn’t finished 4th, but rather in near last place since I did not in fact correctly invoke the free lap rule. I actually was required to go to the finish line after I crashed and wait for the officials to reinsert me into the race. Therefore, they counted me as a lap down versus everyone else. If the rest of the racers had caught up to me, I would have been pulled from the race.
I realized that I had bent the rules a bit because riders that are a lap down don’t usually figure in the top placings of a race and its not normal for them to be helping other riders stay away from the pack. However, it greatly benefited team mate A because I was there to ensure he stayed away to take the win.
There really isn’t - anything like that will simply lose the point for you. About the only thing that might happen in tennis is a player doing something for psychological advantage (like tossing the ball but not serving many times), and there could be the case of intentionally delaying when it looks like rain, but that sort of thing happens in baseball as well, and it’s not a case using the rules against themselves.
There are the freak shots that can win a point oddly. If the ball hits the post, it’s still good as long as it lands in the opposite court. Since if it does go in, it will often bounce in the opposite direction it was hit, such a thing will save the point for a player since the opponent is not expecting it. Since such a hit is headed out and the accuracy required is insane, no player would try to do that intentionally - it’s more of a lucky break.
Chasing Dreams - what happens if you kept a really slow pace and let yourself get lapped in order to accomplish the same thing? Could you do a push to help your teammate win, and then rush to finish respectably with the rest of the pack?
I would have to plan it just right so that when I slow down, I don’t get caught by EVERYONE and be a lap down that way. If that happens, then I would be pulled out of the race immediately and the results sheet would say that I didn’t finish.
However, it is very tantalizing to do this again.
If a lone racer tries to accelerate away from the pack of racers, they will often get a good initial gap because lone riders usually get caught in a few laps. Everyone else will just be content to let the lone rider tire out. If near the end of the race, I slow down so that I’m about 3/4 of a lap down and a team mate from the pack accelerates up to me, then it would be very beneficial because I could then pull him as hard as I could until I get exhausted. My team mate would then have a much larger gap than if he went solo. There is nothing in the rule books preventing this.
The only downside is that I would sacrifice virtually any chance of me getting a good placing in the finish since I would still have to make up the ground I gave up initially. There is also a good chance that I would get lapped by EVERYONE since I would be totally exhausted from working for my team mate.
BTW, in a race, you can’t physically push or pull your team mate along. What I was doing in the race was sheltering my team mate from the wind, which decreases the effort he has to put out by 30%.