In light of the baseball sign stealing scandal (backing my previous thread that baseball might be the most unsportsmanlike game of all) which game is the hardest to cheat at?
I nominate soccer. There’s no special equipment to tinker, there’s no signs to steal, about all you get away with is a cheap shot behind the referees back. I know refs make a lot of questionable arbitrary calls but that doesn’t necessarily constitute “cheating” on the teams part.
MAYBE you can have the groundskeeper play games with the field I suppose but both teams basically run all over the same pitch.
Hockey rarely if ever has cheating scandals as well.
What other sports? I’m not talking fixes, PEDs, illegal recruitment etc, just in game or game prep cheating.
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Broad jump. Everyone takes off from the same spot. The landing zone is raked by the officials between jumps, and your shoes are checked before you enter the box. The only thing you could do is doping, and of course that gets the same stringent testing as every other sport. Long jump you might take an extra step, triple jump you might alter the skip a little, but standing broad jump? That’s just you and your thighs, my friend.
I think that steroids make it possible to cheat at almost any physical game, if the use of them is prohibited by the rules; if there is a sport which doesn’t ban steroids, then that is the game with the least cheating. I assume pretty much anyone winning a gold medal at the Olympics is using steroids.
I guess I’d nominate competitive fly casting, which is about finesse, not strength. I believe the title is still held by 14 year Maxine McCormick. The Mozart of Fly Casting - The New York Times
Chess. There’s some cheating in the form of discreetly using chess computers to make one’s moves ; but cheating within the game itself ? Pretty difficult IMO.
Of course soccer has special equipment. Make your goal smaller than the opponent’s. Tamper with the ball in some way that changes how it performs, and then have your team practice with the tampered ball.
And if “not getting caught” disqualifies cheating from this discussion, as a failure of the officials rather than the players, then you could apply that to any form of cheating in any game.
Diplomacy maybe. The moves are adjudicated and executed by an independent party and lying to your allies and competitors is the officially approved route to success.
