How to Win Games and Alienate People

Next to Learning how to lose, learning how to win is probably the most important thing in life. I, myself, was illtrained to win as a youth. I belonged to a boys' organization that displayed bravely, in glaring and garish colors, a motto: "He who plays the game straight and hard wins even though he loses."

Constantly seeing this statement emblazoned over the doorway to the gym did something to my soul so that when I was beaten in any game, which was tolerably often, I always smiled and assured my opponent that I had played the game straight and hard, so I won anyway.

It was only when I realized that when I lost I had to pay money to the winner that I decided winning was better than losing. It was, however, a long time before I realized something else; that winning technically was not enough. You had to take advantage of your victory and squeeze the juice out of it or the victory was not worth the effort.

For example: when I first became mature enough to win at anything I was so overjoyed with that knowledge that I became sickeningly gracious at moments of victory. As a result I nearly convinced myself, on many occasions, that I had not really won at all.

I recall the first chess game I ever won. I played calmly and intelligently and I mated my friend Arthur Busby in some 34 moves. Arthur was the freshman champion of Union College, as I remember, and not at all timid about letting the public in on the secret. When I asked him for a game he chuckled nastily and said, "It's really a waste of my time." This should have been a tip-off for me. Instead, when he was vanquished, I said gently, "Arthur, old boy, I was just lucky, I guess."

"You sure were," Arthur said. "I thought your queen was a pawn."

"You must have been thinking about your studies and not concentrating," I went on tenderly. Arthur smirked. "That seems very obvious."

I was still, you see, under the influence of my early training in winning; that training which bade me to win graciously and to make as little of my victory as possible.

The event between Arthur and me gave me thought. The more I dwelt on the statements made after the game, the more I began to think maybe Arthur should really have won, maybe I was lucky. It was even possible my queen did look like a pawn. Consequently, my winning was not satisfactory. It gave me no solid comfort.

The next time I defeated Arthur I used a completely different technique of consolidating my victory; a technique that gave me much psychological satisfaction. As I moved into checkmate, that is, into a position that mated Arthur, I looked up and smiled a little crooked smile. "Arthur," I said, "have you ever played this game before?"

He blushed and glared at me. "Of course I've played before. I've played a hundred times."

"I don't mean with your sister."

"What're you getting at?" Arthur snorted, flinging at me the 25 cents I had won.

I shrugged indifferently. "I suggest you go back and work your way up until you're competent enough to give me a decent game."

There was widespread laughter among the spectators. Arthur turned pale. He arose, fell over a chair, stumbled against the wall, stepped on his own hat and then, flinging open the door, fled down the corridor. A solid victory, indeed!

I admit a certain lack of finesse in this ploy, but it must be remembered that I was a mere beginner.

As time went by, I believe I improved. I became more subtle in the sense that my post-victory comments were the sort that took a moment to grasp. They had a sort of time-bomb action. They also seemed to be flattering my opponent. Here is an instance: I was playing golf with Shred Newbury, our local champ, and I beat him by five strokes. As we went to the clubhouse for an applejack flip, Shred remarked, "I was off my game today."

A good winner always recognizes this dodge. He knows from experience that if he lets the loser get away with it, there will follow a series of expanding lies that will eventually place the winner in the awkward position of being almost ashamed he won and of even wondering if he achieved his victory honestly. The correct defense is for the winner to attack the loser immediately. What I said to Shred was, "Not at all. I think you were at your peak today. I've never seen you play better."

For a second or two this pleased Shred. Of course he presently realized, without my saying so, that if he had played his best game I had played even better.

He coughed uneasily and went on, "I missed two easy putts."

"They weren't so easy," I hastily amended. "Not so easy as the three I missed."

"I had trouble with my drives."

I smiled vaguely. "Best drives I've ever seen you make. Mine just happened to be longer and a bit more accurate. That little difference, you know, between the run-of-the-mill player and the champ."

It all ended up with Shred not only losing the golf game but getting plastered besides.

Once winning properly and intelligently is understood, the next step is true pre-game winning. This can only be accomplished when one has acquired supreme confidence and unlimited gall. I vividly recall my first pre-game winning experience. I was engaged to play tennis against Phil Harrigan, a hairy Irishman who was rarely beaten. I was a newcomer to the club, woefully underweight and forced to wear bifocals while serving. Obviously I was an underdog. It is the underdog who must call on his courage and faith to be a pre-game winner.

A few minutes before the first set, Phil and I had a drink and chatted a bit. I observed casually, looking down at his shoes, "Don't you ever fall over your own feet, the way they turn in like that?"

Harrigan glanced at his feet. They did look, even to him I am sure, a little bent. He chuckled mirthlessly. I went on, "I don't mean to pretend to be a medical man, but I'm something of an amateur diagnostician." I pulled back his eyelid. "Have you ever had fits of any sort?" (concluded on page 87)How to Win(continued from page 41) "Heck, no," he said, but I know he was trying to remember.

"Hmnn," I murmured. "No anemia, or anything like that? The color of your skin, for instance ... well ... this is no time to talk like that. I mean it may throw you off your game."

After about 10 minutes of this, Phil was reduced to a hypochondriac pulp; beating him 6-1, 6-1 was simple. In fact, he would not have gotten a point if I hadn't been a bit off my game from talking too much. I developed a little laryngitis, too, crying out to him as he came up to the net, "Watch your ankle!"

Finally, a word of caution must be extended in reference to knowing how to win against women. I refer especially to individual contests. Men rarely engage women in team enterprises so we can eliminate those.

Now men are so gracious by nature when dealing with women, and women so inherently vindictive, that truly winning from a woman is the climax of the good male winner's efforts.

To achieve this summit, however, a man must abandon all sense of politesse, of graciousness and of gallantry. These effete characteristics have no place in a good winner's make-up. He must, furthermore, assume that his female opponent is filled with guile and likely to use any method of achieving victory both during and after the game.

For simplicity's sake, let us assume a game of two-handed poker with a 10 cent limit. Women are at their most difficult at poker and will engage in any amount of wriggling, dodging and backtracking to obtain their ends.

I assume that the good winner knows enough not to let a woman get away with such statements as, "Oh, I thought you could bet as many 10 cents as you liked as long as it was in 10 centses." (This, when she has four aces.) Or, "Somebody should have told me a flush doesn't beat four kings." Or, even, "I had three aces to open, but you see, I split them up."

When the game is done and the male is the winner, that is the time when strategy comes into its own. The woman will say, "I just wasn't lucky tonight."

A good winner must come back quickly with, "Poker is a game of intelligence."

As a final offering, the woman will try again with, "I know you have to get good cards to win anything."

The stopper for this is a firm "Not necessarily. But you do have to know what to do with the cards you get."

I admit there is a lack of male suaveness about such tactics, but we live in an era when ruthlessness must be our key word. The price of being a good winner is eternal vindictiveness.