Why are all (almost all?) contact sports played with exactly 2 teams? Why not 3 or 4+ different teams?
In: 1
Mainly because of teaming up.
Consider three teams on the field, each team trying to score. If team A is currently in the lead, team B and C would cooperate more to prevent team A from scoring – even possibly leading to team B helping team C. It could be especially problematic if one of the teams had no chance of winning on their own, but by making deals with one of the other teams, arranges to come in second by playing “kingmaker” – Team A (weak) helps keep Team C from doing anything while Team B scores, and then Team B allows Team A to score some points; all while Team C has no chance of getting anything done because they are outnumbered the entire game.
This is not just a problem with sports, but any game. Board games like Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Risk, and especially Diplomacy are all at some level based on players forming alliances and teaming up. For this reason, there is an open question among board game players how much of these games are skill, and how much they can be just shortcut with pre-arranged alliances.
Latest Answers