# Strictly legal by the letter of the rules, but a jerk move nonetheless **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [May 24, 2023, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489 "2023-05-24T02:34:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/61 "2023-05-24T16:06:55Z")
I tried looking up “dumping” but the explanation was even more confusing: > [@](#): > > The idea, again, is “spray, slide (or dump), get behind” so what you NEED to do is locate both the finish line and your opponents front tire and make sure HE gets to the finish line first, but you want to run as deep into the run as you can before slamming the brakes and feeding him the stripe, and hoping that he breaks out, or runs under the dial-in.By altering his idea of what should happen during the race, he’s likely thinking he was either late or he is running off the dial-in. Either way, he’s not 100% focused on driving the stripe, and he will be more likely to run out the back door, or simply lift off the gas when he sees you dump him, but by then, it’s almost always too late. Unless he’s dialed “hard” (or exactly what he expects to run) he’s going to break out, handing you the win light. Have you got a less jargon-filled explanation for us NASCAR novices, by any chance? ---
**Author:** ![flurb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/51bf81/32.png) [@flurb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flurb)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/62 "2023-05-24T16:20:23Z")
I generally don’t sweat “jerk moves” in pro and college sports, but I’ve unfortunately had to deal with plenty of coaches who pull jerk moves in junior and pee-wee level sports – e.g. having the most talented kid involved in every play, focusing all his attention and coaching on his kid, etc. The goal at these levels is as much to help kids develop as to win games, and these antics do a disservice to them. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Sensitive](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/58956e/32.png) [@Darth\_Sensitive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Sensitive)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/63 "2023-05-24T16:30:41Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > My strictly legal play I’ve seen a few times in high school football. It’s a trick play by the offense, where the quarterback “asks to see the ball” then acts like there’s something wrong with the ball and walks towards a sideline official holding the ball up until he sees a hole in the defense and runs for a big gain. Ha Ha, when the center gave the ball to the QB that’s when the play started you dumb Defense persons! Maybe next time something out of the ordinary happens, a Linebacker should just level the defenseless QB because “maybe there’s a play happening?” This isn’t legal, and plays of this type are specifically called out as illegal in the high school case book. It’s an unsportsmanlike conduct foul charged to the head coach. You see it on youtube because peewee refs aren’t always on the ball. > [@NFHS Football Casebook](#): > > \*9.9.1 SITUATION B: From a field goal formation, potential kicker A1 yells, “Where’s the tee?” A2 replies, “I’ll go get it” and goes legally in motion toward his team’s sideline. Ball is snapped to A1 who throws a touchdown pass to A2. RULING: Unsportsmanlike conduct prior to snap. The ball should be declared dead and the foul enforced as a dead-ball foul. > > COMMENT: Football has been and always will be a game of deception and trickery involving multiple shifts, unusual formations and creative plays. However, actions or verbiage designed to confuse the defense into believing there is problem and a snap isn’t imminent is beyond the scope of sportsmanship and is illegal. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/64 "2023-05-24T16:31:57Z")
One time I was in a game of Spades. My partner and I were dominating the other team, so they decided to bid Double-Blind No-Low every hand. Sure they lost, but we kept taking overtricks. Every time your team gets 10 overtricks, you get “bagged,” meaning your side’s score is deducted by 100 points. They were down in the negative thousands, but we couldn’t top 500 to win the game. I don’t think I’ve played Spades since. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/65 "2023-05-24T16:34:46Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Have you got a less jargon-filled explanation for us NASCAR novices, by any chance? - To bad Barbara Billingsley is no longer with us. ---
**Author:** ![racer72](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/racer72/32/3075_2.png) [@racer72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racer72)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/66 "2023-05-24T16:45:13Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Have you got a less jargon-filled explanation for us NASCAR novices, by any chance? What you describe is used in drag racing. In bracket racing, the idea is not to be the first to the finish line but the closest to your breakout time. If your breakout is 10.99 seconds, you want to get as close to that without going under. As described above, you go faster than you want to go then brake hard just before the finish line. Hopefully you opponent will not brake as quickly and go too fast, thus, breaking out. The risk is both drivers breaking out. In stock car racing, dumping someone means hitting them causing them to spin out or even worse, wreck. The “gentleman” way to get by someone with dumping them is to nudge them out of the way causing them to have to slow down without spinning or crashing. My favorite example of this was at Pocono back in the 90’s. With 10 laps to go, Jeremy Mayfield was leading Dale Earnhardt. Earnhardt gave Mayfield a gentle nudge in turn 3 causing him to slide up the track giving Earnhardt the lead. For 9 laps Mayfield ran down Earnhardt. On the last lap in turn 3 (Pocono is only a 3 turn race track), Mayfield returned the favor to Earnhardt. Earnhardt slid up the track and Mayfield went on to win the race. Earnhardt was angry, how dare anyone do something to the biggest star in NASCAR. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/67 "2023-05-24T16:50:19Z")
Here’s another supremely jerk move I remember not-so-fondly. I used to run a Shadowrun campaign back in the day. They had excellent adventure modules, and I bought a campaign book to run. Unfortunately, this came out after they came out with a new magic supplement. It allowed magic users to pool their dice together in a ritual. The players decided to create an all-magic team called SHAM: Society for the Heinous Abuse of Magic. In the first session, they decided they wanted to avoid all the preliminary story-telling parts of the campaign and go straight to the final stage. I don’t recall the exact details, but they had to reach a really high target number that was considered impossible to reach with the normal rules. Six players with 6 dice magic pools, where rolls of 6 give you a bonus die, overcame all the penalties and they destroyed the campaign in 5 minutes. I said “Thanks for wasting my investment” and never played Shadowrun again. Please, no advice on what I should have done, and how I could have invoked such-and-such rule to prevent that from happening. It was 30 years ago, and they were determined to fuck me over for the LULz. It was a poison situation from the start. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/68 "2023-05-24T16:54:59Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > One time I was in a game of Spades. My partner and I were dominating the other team, so they decided to bid Double-Blind No-Low every hand. Sure they lost, but we kept taking overtricks. Every time your team gets 10 overtricks, you get “bagged,” meaning your side’s score is deducted by 100 points. They were down in the negative thousands, but we couldn’t top 500 to win the game. I don’t know about official rules, but in these sorts of games, when we had “500 to win”, that meant reaching an absolute 500 yourselves or a relative 500 over the competition. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/69 "2023-05-24T17:08:15Z")
How about baseball’s hidden ball trick? Is that considered jerky? mmm ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/70 "2023-05-24T17:10:40Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > Please, no advice on what I should have done, and how I could have invoked such-and-such rule to prevent that from happening. It was 30 years ago, and they were determined to fuck me over for the LULz. It was a poison situation from the start. No advice, just sympathy. When the players deliberately choose not to play the campaign there’s not much you can do. I’ve had a lot of campaigns that never got off the ground because one player just didn’t want to play ball with the rest of us. Like a GURPS Martial Arts campaign where one of the players insisted that his character would be the guy with the gun and the rest of the players would support him. Yeah, his character was technically legal, but ruined the game for everyone else. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/71 "2023-05-24T17:23:19Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > How about baseball’s hidden ball trick? Is that considered jerky? > > mmm - What I find jerky is that the runner isn’t even allowed to regain their feet from an awkward position without ever losing contact with the base and the fielder is standing there holding the ball on his back. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/72 "2023-05-24T18:30:37Z")
In football, or soccer if you prefer, when an attacker is running towards an empty goal, with no defender or the goalie having any chance at all to stop him, it is considered very bad taste to stop the ball on the goal line, get on your hands and knees and head the ball in. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/73 "2023-05-24T19:10:25Z")
hehehe, a jerk move maybe, but it takes guts to do it, the other team’s players are all running full tilt towards the goal. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/74 "2023-05-24T19:31:38Z")
I wonder whether the referee could sanction this with a yellow card for _comportamiento antideportivo_. Have you ever seen it done in an official game? I only remember it from school. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/75 "2023-05-24T19:34:22Z")
I don’t think they could, I definitively think they _shouldn’t_, the player was a bit of a jerk may be, but nothing like that is deserving of a yellow. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/76 "2023-05-24T19:42:39Z")
I had a disagreement with a friend once, over which of us was being a jerk. In big strategy games like Diplomacy, he had a rule: break only one deal per game, the one that would win you the game. He expected everyone to play this way and was open that he wouldn’t keep a deal if he could win by breaking it. Hearing his strategy and thinking it kind of jerkish, I declared my own (which I have, ever since, kept): I keep all my deals. You get one chance _ever_ to break a deal with me in a game, after which I just won’t make any deals with you ever again in any competitive game. If you don’t like that, negotiate deals with me with natural end-points. He thought that was kind of jerkish. Both of our approaches were perfectly legal, but neither of us cared for the other’s approach. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/77 "2023-05-24T19:44:32Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > In football, coaches who call a timeout a split-second before the opposing kicker kicks a field goal, thus nullifying the field goal attempt. It’s doubtful that’s any more effective than "icing the kicker’ in general, which is arguably jerkish.\* > **[Does icing NFL kickers actually work? Nope](https://www.sbnation.com/2017/11/27/16707624/chris-boswell-icing-the-kicker-nfl-coaches-timeout)** > > Icing the kicker doesn’t work, but coaches keep on doing it anyway. \*if the kicker misses in that situation just after a last-second timeout is called, he has a chance to correct for wind or other factor(s) on the next try. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/78 "2023-05-24T19:48:10Z")
None of you was being a jerk IMHO, but your friend was very wrong about Diplomacy, it’s in the essence of the game itself that deals can and will be broken. ---
**Author:** ![colinfred](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colinfred/32/21338_2.png) [@colinfred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colinfred)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/79 "2023-05-24T19:51:10Z")
Yes, in that story LHoD’s friend was wrong, LHoD himself was extremely wrong. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489/80 "2023-05-24T19:52:03Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > What I find jerky is that the runner isn’t even allowed to regain their feet from an awkward position without ever losing contact with the base and the fielder is standing there holding the ball on his back. The runner need only ask for time. They can only get caught by this if they’re inattentive or have a brain sprain. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/strictly-legal-by-the-letter-of-the-rules-but-a-jerk-move-nonetheless/984489.md?page=5)