The problem with Quidditch

Don't know if you ever meet up with JK Rowling you should ask her since she is the one that rote the books which I would believe you already aware of.

Glad you brought this up because I'm wondering the same thing. The game seems kind of pointless. Yeah you can score goal after goal, but no one wins until the snitch is caught. Doesn't really make sense.

I gotta go feed that thing in Room 33.

It is weird. I would imagine that the team catching the snitch wins 99% of the games. But... Ireland beat Bulgaria in the World Cup finals when Krum caught the thing trailing by 160 points.

It is a very illogical game.

Like you said, the biggest problem is that catching the snitch is a side contest that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the game and in most instances can invalidate everything that's going on.

It would be like a football game where, in addition to the stuff going on the field, there is also a chess match between representatives of each team on the sidelines. The chess match replaces the game clock and the winner of the chess match gets 35 points and ends the game.

And here is where we come to the real problem with Quidditch: Unlike conventional sports, it doesn't rely on a fixed time limit or a score ceiling to end, but rather an arbitrary contest between two players which doesn't really interact with anything else. If it were a real sport, game theory strategists would break it inside of a year. There is nothing that can prevent a team from maintaining a game indefinitely through snitch-protection systematics, and that is indeed what they would do if they knew they were outmatched. Teams losing badly employing strategies of obstruction, delay, and defense to ensure that the game doesn't end. If the opposing team's Seeker is not very good and the obstruction strategy is sound, conceivably you could have Quidditch matches that go on forever with no end in sight, because the snitch will never be caught (winning team can't and losing team won't).

Really, if you are losing badly, then the best strategy is to drag out a stalemate. Attack the opposing Seeker, play not to lose, so the game endures indefinitely. It would frustrate the hell out of your opponents because they have a huge lead and can't complete the victory. Such strategy has successfully worked before in contests with no ceiling or time limit (like, for instance, war).

Can you imagine a game where a team might have a lead in the tens of thousands but they can't end it because the opposing team won't let their Seeker catch the snitch?

The scoring makes no sense either. Since all scores are multiples of 10, why have a goal be 10 points? What purpose does that serve? And what does a blowout mean in a sport with no time limit and no score ceiling? 10 minutes is nothing if they play for days. 150 points is miniscule if you can score as often as you want with no limits, no restraints and no handicaps.

That, and JK Rowling doesn't know ANYTHING about sports and her description of Quidditch and Quidditch culture just sounds like stuff she ripped off soccer fans as an ignorant observer of the World Cup every four years. Like she's trying to make a social commentary (or more likely a shallow parody) of something she doesn't fully understand, and as far as we can tell it just looks like a busy bee free-for-all (there doesn't even seem to be any kind of penalties or fouls).

But all of this is irrelevant. The whole point behind Quidditch is to be an excuse to make Harry the sole hero of every game. So we're okay with Quidditch being illogical nonsense since it's just a plot device in a series of young adult fantasy novels birthed from the sputtering imagination of a twice-betrothed middle-aged English housewife who's never seen, played or examined a real sport before in her entire life.

God forbid anyone try to take this sport into the real world.

I kinda like it because there are two games going on. It’s like WW3. The first part could be conventional but once nukes start flying little of the conventional part matters.

I was just thinking about this. quidditch is totally fucking stupid. what's the point of traditional scoring with a ball thru a goal if catching the snitch wins you the game instantly? it should have been one or the other. or, maybe the snitch is something that appears by chance once every 10 games? or maybe the snitch is just worth 100 points, but the game still continues on a typical time limit. i dont know, it's really dumb. imagine playing basketball, but one person is in charge of chasing around a insect on the court that will win them the game instantly, no matter who's leading in goals. jk rowling was clearly just some nerd with zero understanding of sports.