Quidditch makes no effing sense.

[muldoonthief]

@asterion

Except Harry didn’t play that game, Ron did. And Rowling, to her credit, did mention a couple times that Ron played wizard chess fairly well and enjoyed the game.

If you really want to fanwank it, there’s also the fact that to play the game, you had to become one of the pieces. It could easily have been that the controlling intellect wasn’t playing a perfect chess game to win - it was playing in a manner requiring the other side to sacrifice an actual person to win, as Ron did.

There’s a Kurt Vonnegut story where a southeast Asian warlord captures a downed plane, with a General & his family & the crew. He forces them to play human chess (giant chessboard & everything) against him, with the general as the king and everyone else, including his family members, as other pieces. Whenever one of the human pieces is lost, he shoots the victim.

In the end, after he’s lost a few crewmembers, the general realizes that to win, he’s got to sacrifice one of his young sons - the warlord’s bloodthirst will (and does) lead him into a trap.

[KKKK]

@WhyNot

Didn’t Harry *lose *a game once, because he caught the snitch when the other team was way ahead in points? His catching the snitch ended the game, but the other guys won.

No. Harry only lost once, in HP3, when the Dementors caused him to fall off his broom

[KKKK]

@Double_Foolscap

That’s what Twenty20 cricket was designed for - 20 overs each, and a game lasts around three and a half hours.

I’ve always thought that Quidditch makes more sense over a series of games, where the total number of points is more important than win/lose. In the 3rd book, Griffindor need to win by 200 points to get the title, suggesting that it’s the points difference that gets recorded. That adds a bit more strategy to games; a team might want to rely on their Seeker finishing the game quickly if their Catchers aren’t up to scratch, whereas a good all-round team might take the risk of letting their Seeker occupy himself with distracting the other team’s Seeker with moves like the Wronski Feint, allowing the Catchers to build up a decent lead before finishing the game.

The World Cup, which seems to be decided on the outcopme of one match, makes much less sense. Really, it should be decided over a series - five games, say, and then tally up the points.

The points tally only mattered in the 3rd book, because the teams were level on wins. After Gryffindor beat Slytherin, the match standings were Hufflepuff 1-2, Ravenclaw 1-2, Slytherin 2-1, Gryffindor 2-1. Hence the importance of the total points!

[Double_Foolscap]

@KKKK

The points tally only mattered in the 3rd book, because the teams were level on wins. After Gryffindor beat Slytherin, the match standings were Hufflepuff 1-2, Ravenclaw 1-2, Slytherin 2-1, Gryffindor 2-1. Hence the importance of the total points!

Oh yeah, now I remember Wood trying to work out the combination of wins & losses needed.

In that case I’m going to join the legions of the “Makes no sense” crowd, with a smattering of “Games used to last much longer”. Everybody gets excited and/or worried about the prospect of matches lasting for hours, days and weeks, but we never see one. I guess it would be a challenge to keep the World Cup interesting in a narrative sense over several days, but it could have been a background to the action rather than the key focus.

That’s assuming Rowling meant us to think that much about it, which I doubt - knowing that games could last for ages is enough.