Earlier quoted context omitted.
My TKD teacher once told us that he always looks for "cheaters" within the rules or out-of-the-box thinkers, because that's the right mindset to be succesful at competitions. When you play by the rules, you are limited to your abilities. But if you can squeeze advantages here and there, you can climb some extra spots, maybe to the top.
Hey! Fellow TKD practitioner here. I'm just curious if you found ways to "cheat the rules" so to speak. Mind sharing them? I know that with the direction the sport has taken in the last decade or so, there are probably a hell lot of hacks right now. I even heard that players would change tactics (ie., rely on certain kicks/strikes more) depending on the hogu brand in use. But I competed before the advent of e-hogus a…
Just one example:
He noticed one ref gave verbal warnings only the first two times someone stepped out of bounds, so he had me bait the opponent into throwing a bunch of kicks as I retreated until I had two verbal warnings. My opponent was rather pissed off before I threw a single kick, upped the aggression and fell right into a counter.
He was good at all the regular tactics too; my only TKO was accomplished by starting out round 2 with exactly what he told me to do.
Re: the hogu thing, I did see someone do a push-kick on the hogu, then drag the foot down, pulling the hogu with it until there was no padding over the collar bone and punch there. He broke two people's collar bones and the ref was oblivious. The second opponent retaliated and it escalated with the match ending -3 to -2 (yes negative for both people). The guy who initiated the dirty stuff won, but had a broken instep (his opponent caught a roundhouse by raising his thigh and dropped an elbow directly onto the instep).