Inner line rules
I know this probably is not the best place to post this but i could not find another place that would have fit better. In Florida inner lines are considered between the squares, and whoever can get to the ball easier hits the ball to continue. However your rules state that the lines in between squares is out, which does not make sense to me. Because, if someone hits a ball across the court, for example from square 1, and gets it between two squares, 3 and 4, that would not be even close to a os (own square).
Can you please explain to me why this rule is so?
- 1995 reads
To make play order explicitly clear we had to make the inside lines out of bounds. Each time a ball lands in your square, you have to go for it. If it lands on two squares at the same time, who should go for it? Was the ball more in square 1 or more in square 2? What if no one goes for it, who then is out? What if the ball lands on the very center, effectively hitting all the squares, who plays it next? And how long are you willing to listen to two people argue over who is supposed to be out?
So to answer all these ambiguities in play, we just made the out of bounds rules apply to inside lines. It's each player's responsibility to hit the ball into another square, without hitting it out of bounds.
We dealt with this problem by making it so that if a ball bounces on the line, it is the higher square's responsibility, as we reasoned that the higher the square, the more there is at stake. Either square can hit it though, so long as it isn't clearly in one or another. So, ball hits the inside line, either square may play it, although if no one plays it and it heads out, the player in the higher square is eliminated.
If for some reason both players try to play it and there is some sort of dispute over who is out or who infringed on who's square, we resort to sudden death twosquare, although this is actually pretty rare.
This rule has made the game flow a little better, and has led to some pretty well played points on balls hitting the inside lines.
But again, the beauty of foursquare is the customization of the rules. This is just our variation.
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