Learning patterns: What’s difference between games and sports?

I was looking around the web for some videos/info regarding that playful event i went to a few weeks ago (my last post was about this) and found a link for Kars Alfrink's whole transcript/speech, one of the speakers from the event: Here is the link if anyone is interested:
http://leapfrog.nl/blog/archives/2008/11/17/a-playful-stance-my-game-design-london-2008-talk/
Here is good point he made in his speech if you don't fancy reading the whole thing:

“ The Z-Boys were trying to figure out what the limits were of the combination of their equipment, their bodies, and their environment. Why were they doing this? For the sheer enjoyment of it. They weren’t doing it because it had some outside purpose. In fact, in my opinion, they were doing it exactly for the sake of its uselessness. Play is an end in itself. Later on in the film you see how, for some of the Z-Boys, skateboarding looses its charm when competition and money get involved. (For those of you who are familiar with Roger Caillois’ classification of games — I think skateboarding started out firmly in ilinx territory, which is all about physical thrills, and only later moved towards agôn, which is about competition.)”

I think its interesting how something playful can become competitive leading it to become a type of sport. This is caused when a player has mastered and learned the rules of the game competing for mastery of skills not necessarily fun, although gaining pleasure via alternative means such as battling for status enhancement. In other words, these players have learned all lessons and patterns that game has to offer and play for game for test of their skill with pure concentration on the task at hand. Whereas when you look at the beginning of skateboarding, it was new unexplored activity where people were discovering and learning new patterns behind the use of the skateboard (tool of fun) and the fun of breaking the boundaries of velocity within our surroundings. You could argue that any game could be considered as a form of sport as its down to how individual players grasp the patterns of the game and their reasons for playing it, but certain games have certain factors that are more deemed as competitive or worthy of sportsmanship. For an example, American football could be considered just tactical as Chess but Chess wouldn't be deemed as a sport, why is this? Despite the obvious things such as the lack of physical activity, in terms of player psychology, does American Football provide fewer patterns so players can grasp the game easier, to truly master it as a sport than Chess? Or do the variables behind the patterns encourage a certain player's mentality and attitude towards the game deeming it competitive?

I think our perspectives and attitudes as players change to particular game variables as time goes on when we are exposed to new alternative aspects which itself creates new patterns and playing styles from old games. For an example, “Mario kart” on Nintendo DS, would anyone be using snaking if it wasn't for the online play? Or without other players exposing such exploits within previous popular online games, would this exploit be discovered? The video below is example or this:

Nintendo has underestimated players’ current knowledge and ability of breaking game systems and willingness to grasp the game fully, knowing every nook and cranny as players are learning patterns quicker than new patterns being developed. You could argue that “Mario Kart” hasn't changed with the times and wasn't designed with online competitive nature in mind as multiplayer gaming has enabled us gamers to learn gaming patterns at incredible rate, as we learn and share game tactics and exploits together, learning with other people is more fun and easier than doing it solo. Looking at Mario Kart's previous history 11 years ago with “Mario kart 64”, famed for it's split-screen, multiplayer never had such aspects of intervention, have people evolved the gaming infrastructure? In other words, are players changing the way how we interact with games and how we perceive or learn from them?

With this perspective in the future, as football is a sport with huge following, we may see it evolve as fans demand expansion becoming bored of the traditional rule set. Who knows maybe we will see football players with chainsaws within next 20 years becoming a “gladiator” sport. Maybe this is why Chess is considered trivial among competitive game players as Chess hasn't evolved to teach us new unexplored patterns that we currently seek. A good way to conclude this topic would be to quote from my favorite games design book “A Theory of Fun” written by “Raph Koster” which sums up this topic perfectly.

“The lesson for designers is simple: A game is destined to become boring, automated, cheated, and exploited. Your sole responsibility is to know what the game is about and to ensure that the game teaches that thing. That one thing, the theme, the core, the heart of the game, might require many systems or it might require few. But no system should be in the game that does not contribute toward that lesson. It is the cynosure of all the systems; it is the moral of the story; it is the point.”