Re: The "swap rule" in chess...

David Richerby wrote:
> The Doctor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > And define 'boring'.
>
>
> Boring, adj.: of a situation that, in the majority opinion of the players,
>   the spectators and the rulemakers, is uninteresting.

Well, no majority seems to think of basketball as boring, and they score 
approximately 50 times per side per match. I doubt the audience would 
mind seeing more scores in football. And since they number up to (and 
over) 50.000 people at a big Champions League(Europe) or Premier 
League(UK) or Eredivisie(NL) match, they vastly outnumber players and 
rulemakers.

I think a majority wants to see more scoring in football.

I think it would help a lot if someone at the side of the field would 
keep time, and just let the teams play 2x30 minutes absolute playing 
time, stopping the time everytime a ref whistles or a ball goes out of 
bounds (like basketball). THen also, keep track of the fouls a person 
makes, and get them out of there (for at least a time-penalty) after 
comitting X foulds. (again like basketball, or perhaps ice hockey)
Thirdly, add time rules for how long an attack may last(5 minutes? 
less?), and once the ball has crossed onto the opponents half, disallow 
it to be played back onto the other half (at the penalty of losing the 
ball to the opponent in a free kick, and yes, again like basketball)

This would speed up the game, and make comitting fouls less interesting, 
since it does not stall time, and only makes you lose players if you do 
them often enough.
To speed up things even more, substitutions should be unlimited, thus 
keeping fresh players in the game all the time, and giving a coach more 
possibilities to send players into the field with amended tactical views.

Maybe add 1 time out(3 minutes) per team so the coaches get more 
influence on the game, but I doubt they'd need that much.

Yeah, I've thought about it, and basically what it comes down to is 
football is a stupid slow game as it is, and it need a lot of juicing 
up. There is great football indoors though, there's an indoor variant 
where they play 4vs4 with boarding on the sides of the field. It plays 
very fast, and eventhough the goals are MUCH smaller, scoring is 
frequent and the game fast and pleasing to look at.

RIght. So back to chess :)

//Doc.

--
"Wees jezelf, er zijn al zoveel anderen." - Loesje

Kom spelen, 28 Maart 2004, Noorderspel, Groningen. www.noorderspel.nl