Why is smurfing allowed?*
Smurfing is not the same as boosting. Boosting involves 2 parties, where one less skilled player gets impersonated by a more skilled player. The more skilled player earns a higher rank/rewards for the less skilled player and in the long run the less skilled player handicaps their future teammates by being less skilled than their rank would indicate because they never earned that rank, it was given to them. Typically the booster gets compensation for their effort while the boostee gets the ingame rewards/bragging rights. In short, both parties cheated.
Smurfing is one skilled individual playing on an account they started up from scratch where they do not benefit financially or otherwise from making the account. Some smurfs make an account simply for the easier competition (the evil smurfs) and other smurfs make the account in order to help teach a friend the basics of the game (the good smurfs). The evil smurfs are usually motivated by the urge to beat up on someone weaker than them, which is a bad thing for both the smurf and the smurfs opponents because the evil smurf's opponents suffer a harder competition and the evil smurf does not improve their game play. The good smurf tries to bring a new player into the community and tries to give that new player guidance on how to succeed in the game. Their presence typically is meant to offset the inexperience of their friend. The newbie player often is an exploitable weakness and the smurf now has to employ their superior game knowledge/mechanics to offset this. The good smurfs don't do it for fun, they do it because they want their friend to have a positive experience in this game so they stick around longer. And this community is notorious for its toxicity.
And as a smurf I have seen more good smurfs than evil smurfs. And even then the evil smurfs are usually bronze ranked half the time anyway so they really aren't that great. They may have superior mechanics but they make poor decision making which can be exploited.
And the reason why smurfing is not illegal because there is no real way to police it. Ban a smurf account and that person will simply make another account since most smurfs are under level 20 so the time investment in a smurf account is much less than that of a primary/alternate account. Riot could ban the ISP and ban that person from the game entirely... but that would mean that the banned person will stop paying Riot money, and Riot needs that money so they just let it go.
Most low leveled games do have smurfs in them by the way. Usually the winner is who has the most smurfs rather than who has a smurf on their team since both typically have at least one.
As for me, I am smurfing from the least impactful position (support) and on what is arguably one of the weakest champions in the game (Taric). I handicap myself when I smurf, so I am not trying to steam roll my opponents, I am trying to give a close to level playing field for my opponents while also being a reliable and non-rage-infused teammate to my newbie friends.
