> > So, chess could only be considered a sport *if*...
> >
> > 1) The pieces were magnetically attached to the board giving them a virtual weight of one hundred fifty pounds apiece;
> >
> > 2) The board was situated atop a hair-trigger land mine that had a chance of exploding whenever touched;
>
> WHOA. YES. I *want* to see that.
>
> Mostly unrelated to the "sport or game" question, I must say I like the current trend of changing existing ones to make them more exciting. (It doesn't mean people have to stop playing the *original* sport, of course, but it adds a whole new one which might appeal to other people.) I've heard of extreme golf, for example. They might call it speed golf or some other name elsewhere, I don't know. You only get one club, one ball and a stopwatch, and you have to run like hell between shots and finish the course faster than your opponent.
>
> Brunnen-"of course, this means you have to rent out an entire golf course, or possibly play by night"G


All right, then, who wants to help me start up an Extreme Darts Tournament?

Well, it seems to me that darts already has most of the elements required of a sport (required skill, required physical exertion, a random element), but not to the required degree, because it lacks that crucial element in rule 2); DANGER. So let's make darts dangerous...

First, in order to add a chance of serious injury, we'll change it from a one-player game (who ever heard of one-player sports, anyhow?) and make *another* player the target. And to make it impossible to stand around and drink beer, we'll allow both this player and the dart-throwing player to move around in quite a large area, say, the size of one tropical island. And to increase the "sweat" factor we'll make the darts more dangerous, say, making them solid metal and fired out of an artificial device, like, I don't know, a high-powered hunting rifle. And we'll give the dart-thrower (who now needs a new name, I don't know, the "hunter") extra equipment, like knives, a compass, provisions, and a team of killer attack dogs, and to increase the sweat factor some more we'll give the target (or "prey", for short) a one-day head start to run away. Is that dangerous enough yet?...

We can work out other details, but so far, it looks like with some fairly minor tweaks darts really can be the most dangerous game of all. Oops, I mean sport.

Ar"funny, I read something like that in a book once"thur