hello
lefty here,
how the f*** im supposed to prevent a scoop without mallet operations? 
btw. everyone should read this first, the rules are ‘already there’
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No specific action you’ve described stands out to me as particularly annoying other than egregious slashing which is already disallowed.
I’m mainly frustrated by the locking of two mallets whereby one person is using their mallet head to grip and hold the shaft of another. I think this can result from most of the mallet interactions you list. This is what slows play and destroys movement. I think the effectiveness of mallet play would be significantly reduced if one weren’t able to grip the shaft of another using the acute angle made where the head meets the shaft.
Perhaps my answer falls under number 6 then. I’m definitely against number 7 but I think that 7 wouldn’t happen nearly as often if the mallets didn’t interlock given the shaft/head junction angle.
So you dislike using the mallet as a hook for an extended time and when players get stuck in the process. Now let’s assume we ban all hooking attempts 4-6 because this automatically removes many situations where players get stuck, intended or unintended. I think it is not so hard to recognize for the ref if a mallet is used as a hook. Especially when it were banned and it becomes a rare thing. This I think can be tried in a tournament. Also 7 can easily be defined as a mallet trapping.
This leaves 1-3 and 8 Any problem with tapping at the mallet of the ball carrier? I think banning this as well will have huge impact on the game. Right now ball carriers have to be very careful and position the ball, their mallet, their bike and body carefully and balance the risk of not losing the ball because of a mallet contact. Ball handling has even evolved to this day due to the threat of mallet to mallet play. If there were not any mallet contact allowed without playing the ball, it will become remarkably easier to protect the ball for the ball carrier. If you add scooping and ball jointing to this equation even more so. This will change the dynamics of the game. It will also change the good old bike vs. bike, mallet vs. mallet, body vs. body philosophy. I don’t think this would be a good idea, but anyone is free to try and see.
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I think there is a place for mallet hooking, like @teeo said there are basically two kinds, One that impedes the offensive players ability to control the ball, and another that impedes the the offensive players ability to move.
While I don’t have any love for the later, as it’s mostly a play of desperation after you’ve been beat, and can cause crashes, I’m for the former hooking, but think that we definitely need to make better rules to reflect the spirit of the game.
What annoys me most about hooking is when the person doing makes no attempt at the ball, while that is the draw of the “technique” it just doesn’t seem to follow the idea of playing the ball that is reinforced throughout the ruleset. It’s especially egregious to me when your mallet is hooked and held while another defensive player snipes the ball. It might very well be “good” defense, but it just feels dirty to me.
I think the counter play to hooking as some have stated is also something to think about, it’s a lot easier to get hooked than get out of a hook, and feels a lot more like grappling than fencing, A situation that happens often enough is hooking a players mallet into their own wheel, which under current ruleset is legal, but obviously is a danger and feel like tripping a person by kicking their legs.
I think a max of 2sec rule would be good to try out and see if it solves the issues people are having.
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I think tapping an opponent’s mallet is fine and should remain legal for the reasons you allude to.
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I think my belief that a rule will be ineffective in this domain comes from my desire to outlaw hooking/mallet interactions as an impediment to player movement while keeping them as a spoiling technique used against the ball handler. That’s not because some hooks aren’t unequivocally identifiable as attempts to impede movement but rather that many hooks that begin at a reasonable proximity to the ball end up as impediments at a sufficient distance from the ball so as to fall outside the initial categorisation as “reasonable” in any meaningful way. This is because one of the best ways to escape a hook is to ride away from the opponent trying to hook you. In an ideal world there would be a bright dividing line between these two instances and it would therefore be easy to detect when one kind of hooking becomes the other. I don’t think this is the case or rather, I don’t think that there is an easy way to linguistically delineate between them in a sufficiently fine-grained manner so as to ensure consistency between each referees interpretation. I don’t think a time limit will help here as it’s not a matter of duration but a matter of type.
It’s why I argue for an equipment modification to reduce the efficacy of hooking by filling in the perpendicular junction between head and shaft. IMO this would greatly reduce how many reasonable hooking situations turn into unreasonable ones with the added bonus of needing no language to delineate the two kinds. I also think it will have the desired effect of making desperate long-distance fishing almost useless as the grip on the shaft at a distance requires that the surface gripping be perpendicular/orthogonal to the thing gripped. Even if 50% of the mallet shaft junction were filled it would have a significant effect.
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I guess I’m not sure why one would be motivated to make or keep rules that disproportionately reward a lack of skill. Perhaps the word disproportionately is doing a lot of work here. I think that the interests of more skilled players, far from being a priority per se, just represent the aspirations of the sport writ large as they signify what is possible in terms of creativity and the speed of play. But I concede that as a political exercise we must balance the interests of participants. I’m personally neutral on the increased skill divide. I was merely stating that it would be a point of contention for some players who see mallet play as something that contributes significantly to their efficacy against players of much greater skill. When I think about making and altering rules I have in mind only the objective of increasing the enjoyment and aesthetic nature of games in which the teams in question are of similar skill. I believe with this view in mind we can see how a rule like obstruction/interference got off the ground despite it having the very effect that you are railing against, leaving aside how dangerous off ball checks had become prior to it’s introduction. I think the introduction of the crease falls within this category also. I can’t think of a single rule in any sport that improves the game because it decreases the skill hierarchy but I stand to be corrected. I can think of many rules that flatten the hierarchy for other reasons such as physical disparity but not skill all other things being equal. I just can’t imagine conceding that a rule isn’t worth introducing from an objective standpoint based purely on the contention that it increases the skill divide if there are other reasons to accept it. I could imagine believing that it isn’t worth introducing at some point in time given some extant skill disparity perhaps as it would stimie the growth of the sport. Perhpas that’s what you mean. I’ll have to think more as my initial intuition is that from an impartial standpoint it should not be a consideration but I have some competing intuitions that I’d have to consider.
Perhaps I wasn’t sufficiently clear but I don’t want t a rule change. In an ideal world I’d like an equipment change. I’m very aware of the challenges this sport presents to referees.
I take your point about mallet length being adjacent to the desire to hook everyone to death. I think you are being a little anecdotal but I concede that I’m not 100% certain that a world without hooking would be a world with shorter mallets on average. I’d put my money on it but I wouldn’t bet the house.
I’m also not convinced that people with longer mallets pay a sufficiently high price with regard to the increased likelihood of being hooked to counteract the hooking advantage. What I mean is that longer mallets aren’t harder to hook in ways that offset how much easier it makes reaching an opponent to hook. I think the argument about arm fatigue and diminished accuracy is stronger in this regard.
I have very little desire to obliterate anyone. Nobody has a general desire to obliterate people in my experience. I relish those super close games but I wouldn’t go as far as suggesting that rule changes should be judged good if they increase the closeness of games on average. That would lead to some very weird rules. ; )
FYI hooking was banned in London Open 2014.
Was super easy to ref. Teams adjusted to the rule quickly. Gameplay improved (imo).
Im a big fan of getting rid of it. Mallet play makes for lazy defending and creates situation that look more like a sword fight than polo. Plus I reckon there would be a lot fewer face injuries etc
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gva bypass the hook and go straight for the hack 
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Maybe maybe… i’m definitly not a “hooker” (well i’m not really sure of the wording here…) but i’m a “tapper” (hacker?).
Which never result with a face injurie.
also #facecage and #nofacecageneeded
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I feel like more trials would illuminate the difference from what we think to what actually would flow. Theory is only useful if practiced. I know it’s not a perfect solution, but compromise is a good place to start. You can still obstruct you just can’t be moving. Maybe have a traveling type restriction on movement for hooking.
I think the equipment route is good too, but I’d be hard pressed to make my mallet heavier 
and the hot topic of face cages shows how hard it can be to gain support for those kind of rules.
#mandatefacecage
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@Cleftintwain Can you show us the last prototype of your “un-hookable” mallet ?
Still not a topic to me but i like to see stuff.
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I thought you’d never ask! : P
I made a series of prototypes using string as a proof of concept.
And I made a solid prototype out of foam.
I played with them for a few months and as expected they made hooking someone else’s shaft for any longer than a brief moment almost impossible.
In my mind it proved beyond doubt that such a change would fix what I see to be the problem but then the pandemic happened and I shelved it.
I’d like to make another prototype as I have an idea for how one could be constructed at around 2g or less that would fit universally by clipping into the alternate shaft/screw holes. The problem is that I’m quite bad at surface modelling in Fusion360… The idea was to make something that could easily be printed and tested in ABS or polycarbonate and injection moulded at scale for a few cents each. Even if it made pickup games more fun I’d be into making them. Perhaps it might even satisfy the desires of players who want to decrease skill disparity in their social games if the standout players used them.
I design weird shit in my head all the time. It’s a compulsive behaviour that is perhaps part of my ADHD. My brain just sees what it thinks are problems and tries to solve them. I concede however that in most cases I’m trying to solve a problem that doesn’t really exist. ; )
Kneecups for life though…
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@Cleftintwain- I’d be curious to see how this mallet shape actually affects play, and I’m very intrigued RE: mallet heads for a few cents each.
Keep us posted!
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I’m trying to make something that can easily be fitted to a mallet so people can try it for themselves. I’m hoping to 3d print something that is sufficiently strong and universal. This is my first mockup. It needs to tie into at least one of the screw holes so I’ll have to add a tab with a slot and find a t-nut that is the right size. Hoping it is less than 2g when done but that could be overly optimistic.
With regard to heads, I doubt that the production cost will ever drop significantly so long as the material is UHMWPE. It’s not a cheap material. I was merely pointing to a possible reduction in cost for more complex designs over time when the machine time of a 5 axis mill becomes more reasonable. I believe that if a serious sporting company like easton or similar ever had sufficient reason to design a mallet then all bets are off in terms of what they would come up with. The low hanging fruit would most certainly be lightening the head by milling the inside surface of the face and walls. Roger have already gone in this direction by milling the back of the face which is cool. My assumption is that composite materials could be integrated into the face and scoop. Delrin rings like that of Roger would pale in comparison to what could be achieved with carbon and I assume you could press a carbon disk into a recess behind a wafer-thin face. Anyway, just spitballin’.
It’s all about making a viable product given the cost to the consumer and at this point the necessary economy of scale is just not there. If only we could grow this thing…
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Do you have video footage of how these mallets affect play? Can you in the next pick up give this mallet to your most notorious sword knight and tell them for any mallet they are able to legally hook for more than 2s they will earn e.g. a free beer and film it?
I can see how they make it harder to get stuck and to hook, but there is still the possibility to impede movement for a prolonged time with the right angle of pressure applied to the other shaft. And that is imho already the key of hooking efficiently now. Maybe it reduces the efficiency by 50% maybe by 80%, but the “worst” hooking strategy, which is to hook as hard as possible, applying pressure in the direction of the player’s bike/body, aiming to confine their mallet between your mallet and their bike/body is going to be the most efficient one. I have doubts if this update can replace changes in the rules if the “bad” hooking is the target.
Design wise, I think you would have to fill/round the corner all the way to the edge of the mallet head and the angle from there towards that shaft should be steeper. The 2nd picture you show is the only one which has an angle that makes ma confident it could work. I would scale up the foam prototype to that larger footprint. Those Eiffel Tower like strings look nice, but they would not last a test in Paris. I would definitely propose to test the foam thingy under harsh conditions.
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I am inclined to agree with Django here. I don’t know that the benefit of these fins would justify the additional cost and effort.
I think the most frustrating types of MOMP (mallet on mallet play) are pinning and downward slashing.
It seems like both of these moves would still be pretty easy to execute with a finned mallet.
a rule about those specific behaviors may be the more elegant solution.
Maybe a rule like: “mallet on mallet contact may only be initiated on the ball carrier’s mallet, and must be safe, brief (<1 second), and without backswing.
This could be used to eliminate:
sustained contact (pushing, pulling, or holding a mallet for 1 second or longer)
slashing (without backswing, it’s hard to damage equipment),
and any MOMP that is otherwise deemed dangerous (such as pushing or pulling a mallet into a body or bike).
I don’t think It would take long for players to acclimate to something like this, and it would probably make the game more fun for new players.
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Thank you for these interesting suggestions, but mostly thank you for my new favourite acronym 
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I think that filming someone trying to hook someone else in a worst-case scenario is a great idea. I propose to do 100 hooks and look at the average difference in the time held in place. My question is which position is optimal to execute the strongest pin against body/bike? I think that the “reach-around” behind the seat post is pretty strong but I’m open suggestions here as I’ve already said that we don’t have a strong hooking culture and we also don’t play on a full-height board court, which perhaps adds another level of pinning possibility. On top of this, another dimension of difficulty is a added when the player being hooked is being blocked from moving forward by an obstacle, be it another player, the boards or the goals.
I propose to make a knife-fight style court that is just big enough to fit two players that doesn’t allow any forward movement of either player. The player being hooked starts in a tripod on the right side of the player hooking in the “reach-around” position. Stopwatch starts when the mallet of the person hooking first touches the tripoding mallet. Time stops when the person being hooked lifts their mallet vertically above their head with an outstretched arm.
How does that sound?
Also, the ultimate strength of the weakest string I used to construct my “eiffel tower” is 300kg (the yellow stuff) . Short of cutting it somehow with a sharp edge, there is almost no practical likelihood that it would break from being hit by a round shaft. I think you’d deform the head and shaft before you’d break the string. It’s linear core Dyneema with a very tightly braided sheath so I guess there is some small risk of melting however the properties of polyethylene make it pretty slippery so this seems unlikely. I’m definitely not proposing the Eiffel tower as a solution though. It requires a stopper in the shaft to work and this required drilling a small hole and gluing in a carbon rod so that the string had something to grip at the point of the Eiffel. This hole made the shaft super weak. I’m just here to defend polyethylene as it’s quite literally my fave material and should be yours too! ; )
The foam one was just to help me measure out the dimensions of a solid version. I never used it for this reason. I was going to 3d scan it but then I just bit the bullet and learned how to surface in fusion3d. I still suck at it if you look carefully at the above screenshot…
Like you, I had the initial belief that running the string right to the edge of the mallet would have a much more significant effect than merely cutting out the internal angle with a radius. Surprisingly, my experiments suggest that while it would be ideal to run to the very edge of the head, there was still a significant effect even when the smallest radius was applied. This is intuitive if you imagine that when a hook is executed by a mallet with a small radius applied and the shaft is perfectly placed outside the radius on the remaining flat part of the head any change in the system has the chance of moving the shaft being hooked to a place on the radius. Especially given the forces involved in pinning the mallet to the body or bike. Once this change of position happens and the shaft lands on the radius then any resultant pulling force by the person hooking or opposite force by the person being hooked generates angular momentum. Any sharp tug when the shaft rests on the radius sends it skating toward the edge of the head. Its a very dynamic interaction but without the radius in there to generate the angular momentum its hard to escape the hook as pulling against the hook just adds friction at best and at worst sends the hook deeper in the case of an hourglass mallet. I hope that makes sense.
TL;DR - I think a little radius goes may go a long way to solving this problem.
Also, MOMP… Great!
“That game was a bit mompy.”
the first solution as a easy rule to enforce as a ref is to allow mallet to mallet contact only on a mallet directly in contact with the ball
- you can tap / hook someone mallet who s balljointing/ scooping
- if he is just “dribbling” your only move will be to poke at the ball
- you cant put any part of your mallet to prevent the shooting motion of someone , rather you can dive and put your mallet head/ shaft in front of the ball to deflect the ball trajectory .
honnestly i find this more realistic and less ugly than the lil cord thing cleftin is suggesting.
im sure no one has any juice left to read this so i ll sum up in a list:
I HATE feeling like my mallet arm is about to snap because playing polo is so draining so hooking could be removed i wouldnt mind !
also HATE when , as i approach a ball carrier to get in front of him with two hands on my bars , he decide to tap my mallet because , you know, within 3 m rule, you can do it…
i love to pass early so i dont have to deal with hooking
i hate small NARROW courts (35 x 18 is very small)cuz passing early becomes harder ( few empty space to go for) usually thats when i m massively hooked . i think additional rules should be implemented if we are forced to play in small courts like playing half court in basket ball
i love big courts (40x 25 should be the minimum required) because it reward passes more because the distance created by the pass is bigger
conclusion/ i think the way we see bike polo should evolve as after 20 years the sport went from scraps to higly competitive sports + dedicated equipment. to me the rules are hard to enforce not because of their complexity but by the lack of content explaining them ( video reviews ) even this whole discussion was a headache ie django request to break down which exact situation are we talking about.
this poloverse platform is a big oportunity for us as a comunity to step up and put in the work in to shape polo a bit more efficiently but i think we have to walk away from these inconsistent chats and replace them with more visually accurate content, REAL POLO SCIENCE
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