Gamesmanship is the use of dubious (although not technically illegal) methods to win a game

Game

A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...

. It has been described as "Pushing the rules to the limit without getting caught, using whatever dubious methods possible to achieve the desired end" (Lumpkin, Stoll and Beller, 1994:92). It may be inferred that the term derives from the idea of playing for the game (i.e., to win at any cost) as opposed to sportsmanship

Sportsmanship

Sportsmanship is an aspiration or ethos that a sport or activity will be enjoyed for its own sake, with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one's competitors...

, which derives from the idea of playing for sport. The term originates from Stephen Potter

Stephen Potter

Stephen Meredith Potter was a British author best known for his mocking self-help books, and film and television derivatives from them....

's humorous 1947 book, The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship (or the Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating).

Origins

Potter cites the origin of gamesmanship to be a tennis match in which he and the philosopher C. E. M. Joad

C. E. M. Joad

Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad was an English philosopher and broadcasting personality. He is most famous for his appearance on The Brains Trust, an extremely popular BBC Radio wartime discussion programme...

 competed against two younger and fitter men who were outplaying them fairly comfortably. On returning a serve, Joad hit the ball straight into the back-netting twelve feet behind the back-line. While the opponents were preparing for the next serve

Serve (tennis)

A serve in tennis is a shot to start a point. A player begins a serve by tossing the ball into the air and hitting it into the diagonally opposite backside box without being stopped by the net. The ball can only touch the net on a return and will be considered good if it falls on the opposite side...

, Joad 'called across the net, in an even tone: "Kindly state clearly, please, whether the ball was in or out"'. Being young, polite university students, their opponents offered to replay the point, but Joad declined. Because they were young and polite, the slight suggestion by Joad that their etiquette and sportsmanship were in question was extremely off-putting, and distracted them for the rest of contest. Potter and Joad went on to win the match.

Techniques

Common techniques of gamesmanship include:

1. Breaking the flow of an opponent's play (Potter insisted 'There is only one rule; BREAK THE FLOW.')
2. Causing an opponent to take the game less seriously or to overthink his or her position
3. Intentionally making a "mistake" which gains an advantage over an opponent

While the first method is more common at higher levels of sports, the last two are more powerful in amateur games.

Breaking the flow

Examples of "flow-breaking" methods include:

• In darts
  Darts
  Darts is a form of throwing game where darts are thrown at a circular target fixed to a wall. Though various boards and games have been used in the past, the term "darts" usually now refers to a standardised game involving a specific board design and set of rules...
  
  , a player intentionally taking a long time to take their darts out of the dartboard
• Feigning injury to delay the game, or to imply you will not be playing at your best. The skilled gamesman can counter this tactic by waiting until the game has been in play for some time, before revealing that he or she suffers from a far more serious condition, such as a heart defect
  Heart disease
  Heart disease, cardiac disease or cardiopathy is an umbrella term for a variety of diseases affecting the heart. , it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, accounting for 25.4% of the total deaths in the United States.-Types:-Coronary heart disease:Coronary...
  
  
• In billiards
  Billiards
  Cue sports , also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber .Historically, the umbrella term was billiards...
  
   or snooker
  Snooker
  Snooker is a cue sport that is played on a green baize-covered table with pockets in each of the four corners and in the middle of each of the long side cushions. A regular table is . It is played using a cue and snooker balls: one white , 15 worth one point each, and six balls of different :...
  
  , intentionally standing in your opponent's line of sight, and then suddenly moving when you "realise" you are in the wrong place, and "more or less at the last moment, leap into the correct position with exaggerated agility, and stand rigidly with head bowed."
• Distracting your opponent by complaining about other people who might be (but were not) distracting your opponent. Potter, who always insisted that the good gamesman must give the appearance of being a good sportsman
  Sportsmanship
  Sportsmanship is an aspiration or ethos that a sport or activity will be enjoyed for its own sake, with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one's competitors...
  
  , recommended this approach.For example, if an opponent is about to take a shot at billiards, it is bad gamesmanship to fidget and whistle but good gamesmanship to distract him by loudly requesting silence from spectators: 'Simulate annoyance, on your opponent's behalf, with the onlookers'.
• When winning a point you should look directly at the opponent, but when losing one always avoid eye contact.
• In cricket
  Cricket
  Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
  
  , coming out to bat with two right-handed gloves and then wasting time sorting it out.
• In baseball
  Baseball
  Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
  
  , a batter disrupting a pitcher
  Pitcher
  In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throwsthe baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw a walk. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the...
  
  's flow by calling time just before he delivers the pitch.
• When losing an outdoor game, feigning a deep, informed and more than amateur interest in e.g. botany
  Botany
  Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
  
   or ornithology
  Ornithology
  Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...
  
  , in order to convey the breadth of your interests and suggest to opponent that you are not really concerned about losing. This can cause them to relax their attention, or at any rate rob them of the satisfaction of beating you. Potter termed this 'the natural hampette...See Gardens for Gamesmen, or When to be Fond of Flowers(15s.)'.
• In amateur ice hockey
  Ice hockey
  Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...
  
  , intentionally icing the puck, lining up at the wrong face-off dot, or shooting the puck over the glass (in professional hockey, the team that ices the puck is not allowed a line change, while shooting the puck over the glass leads to a two-minute penalty).
• In tennis
  Tennis
  Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
  
   (when serving) taking a long time between your own serves and making the receiver wait.
• In American football
  American football
  American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
  
  , calling a time out the instant before a game-winning or game-tying field goal or PAT to break the normal flow of play.

Causing your opponent to overthink

Examples of methods designed to cause your opponent to overthink or to not take the game seriously enough include:

• Giving intentionally vague advice in the hope of making your opponent focus on his play. In such "Advicemanship", 'the advice must be vague, to make certain it is not helpful', although Potter also noted that 'according to some authorities the advice should be quite genuine and perfectly practical'.
• Asking one's opponent's advice for a (fictitious) match the following day, against an implied stronger opponent.
• Claiming that the game you are playing "just isn't my sport", or claiming less expertise than you actually possess (a mild form of hustling
  Hustling
  Hustling is the deceptive act of disguising one's skill in a sport or game with the intent of luring someone of probably lesser skill into gambling with the hustler, as a form of confidence trick...
  
  ).
• In American football
  American football
  American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
  
  , the very common practice of taking one or more timeouts to give an opposing kicker an excessive amount of time to think about a critical kick; most often a field goal or extra point but sometimes a potential on-side kick. The intent is to cause the kicker to get overly stressed about making a mistake and hopefully create a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is commonly referred to as "icing the kicker
  Icing the kicker
  In the sport of American football or Canadian football, the art of icing the kicker or freezing the kicker is a tactic employed by defending teams to disrupt the process of kicking a field goal just prior to the snap. Typically, either a player or a coach on the defending team will call time out...
  
  "
• "Icing" is also used, albeit less frequently, in basketball
  Basketball
  Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
  
  . In late-game situations with a player shooting free throws, it is not uncommon for the opposing team to take a timeout. This is commonly referred to as "icing the shooter".
• The converse approach, suggesting a level of expertise far higher than you actually possess, can also be effective. For example, although gamesmanship frowns on simple distractions like whistling loudly while an opponent takes a shot, it is good gamesmanship to do so when taking a shot oneself, suggesting as it does a level of carefree detachment which your opponent does not possess.

Intentional "mistakes"

Examples of intentional "mistakes" designed to gain an advantage:

• In bridge
  Contract bridge
  Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard deck of 52 playing cards played by four players in two competing partnerships with partners sitting opposite each other around a small table...
  
  , intentionally misdealing and then engaging in chaotic bidding, knowing that the hand will be void anyway, in the hope that 'your opponents will...be unable to form a working judgement of your bidding form'.
• In poker
  Poker
  Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern poker...
  
  , intentionally raising out of turn, to induce players to give you a free card.

All of the above are considered very close to cheating

Cheating

Cheating refers to the breaking of rules to gain advantage in a competitive situation. The rules infringed may be explicit, or they may be from an unwritten code of conduct based on morality, ethics or custom, making the identification of cheating a subjective process. Cheating can refer...

, and the abuser of gamesmanship techniques will find himself penalized in most serious sports and games tournaments, as well as being deemed (if caught) a "bad sport".

Football/soccer

In association football (soccer)

Football (soccer)

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

, it is considered good sportsmanship to kick the ball out of play if a player on the opposing side is injured; when the ball is to be thrown in, it is also considered to be good sportsmanship in this situation to kick it (or throw it) back to the other team who had intentionally kicked it out. Gamesmanship arises in this situation when, rather than passing the ball back to the side who kicked the ball out, the injured player's teammates keep the ball after the throw-in. Whilst not illegal or against the rules of the sport, it is heavily frowned upon (A high-profile example occurred during the game Portugal vs. Netherlands

Battle of Nuremberg

The Battle of Nuremberg is the nickname of a football match played in Round 2 of the 2006 FIFA World Cup between Portugal and the Netherlands at the Frankenstadion in Nuremberg on 25 June 2006...

 in round 16 of FIFA World Cup 2006, where the game, already marred by numerous cautions and even red cards, further deteriorated because of such an incident). Feigning injury to cause the ball to be kicked out is another example of gamesmanship intended to break the flow of play
When a free kick is awarded, members of the defending team will often pick up the ball and drop it back behind them as they retreat. Whilst not throwing the ball away, which would be an infringement, the purpose is to prevent a swiftly taken free kick.

Another less used tactic in association football is to "take out the opposition by means of harming them with the ball by direct aim". This is, however, both bad sportsmanship and entirely against the original spirit of gamesmanship.

Another example is when tackling a player from behind to stop them from approaching the goal, thereby ruining their chances, while receiving inadequate punishment (a.k.a. cheating).

Usage outside of games

The term "gamesmanship" is also used for similar techniques used in non-game situations, such as negotiation

Negotiation

Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties, intended to reach an understanding, resolve point of difference, or gain advantage in outcome of dialogue, to produce an agreement upon courses of action, to bargain for individual or collective advantage, to craft outcomes to satisfy...

s and election

Election

An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...

s.

Each form is frequently used as a means of describing dubious methods of winning and/or psychological tricks used to intimidate or confuse one's opponent. Technically speaking, these tactics are One-upmanship

One-upmanship

One-upmanship is the art or practice of successively outdoing a competitor.The term originated as the title of a book by Stephen Potter, published in 1952 as a follow-up to The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship and Lifemanship titles in his series of tongue-in-cheek self-help books, and film ...

, defined in a later book by Potter as the art of being one-up on somebody else.

The term also appears in art theory to mean playfulness, as in "literary gamesmanship". http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/ugresicd/jaws.htm http://www.mcsweeneys.net/authorpages/eggers/eggers15.html

The gamesman versus the pure player

Potter's double-edged ironies did not spare the gamesman himself (he slyly named one prominent protagonist 'Bzo, U., holder (1947) Yugo-Slav Gamesmanship Championship', for example). Potter acknowledged repeatedly that 'the way of the gamesman is hard, his training stricty, his progress slow, his disappointments many', and recognised that as a result 'the assiduous student of gamesmanship has little time for the minutiae of the game itself - little opportunity for learning how to play the shots, for instance'. Yet one of his "correspondents" owlishly admits, 'there is no doubt that a knowledge of the game itself sometimes helps the gamesman'.

Hence 'perhaps the most difficult type for the gamesman to play is the man who indulges in pure play. He gets down to it, he gets on with it, he plays each shot according to its merits, and his own powers, without a trace of exhibitionism, and no by-play whatever'. The book gloomily concludes, 'we amateurs have to fight against the growing menace of young people who insist on playing their various games for the fun of the thing...indulging rather too freely, if the truth were known, in pure play'.

See also

• Cheating
  Cheating
  Cheating refers to the breaking of rules to gain advantage in a competitive situation. The rules infringed may be explicit, or they may be from an unwritten code of conduct based on morality, ethics or custom, making the identification of cheating a subjective process. Cheating can refer...
  
  
• Gaming the system‎
• Sportsmanship
  Sportsmanship
  Sportsmanship is an aspiration or ethos that a sport or activity will be enjoyed for its own sake, with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one's competitors...
  
  
• Diving (football)
  Diving (football)
  In association football, diving is an attempt by a player to gain an unfair advantage by diving to the ground and possibly feigning an injury, to appear as if a foul has been committed. Dives are often used to exaggerate the amount of contact present in a challenge...
  
  
• Flop (basketball)
  Flop (basketball)
  In basketball, flop is a pejorative term that refers to a defensive player intentionally falling backward to the floor upon physical contact with an offensive player. The hope is that it will appear to the official that the defensive player was knocked off of his feet by the offensive player's...
  
  
• Unsportsmanlike conduct
  Unsportsmanlike conduct
  Unsportsmanlike conduct is a foul or offense in many sports that is not necessarily a violation of the respective sport's rules of play, but violates the sport's generally accepted rules of sportsmanship and/or participant conduct...
  
  
• School for Scoundrels
  School for Scoundrels (1960 film)
  School for Scoundrels is a 1960 British comedy film inspired by the "Gamesmanship" series of books by Stephen Potter. The main character, Henry Palfrey , is a failure in sport and love, and victim of conmen. He enrols at the "School of Lifemanship" in Yeovil, run by Dr...
  
  
• Supermac
  Supermac (cartoon)
  "Super-Mac" was the subject of a cartoon - "Introducing Super-Mac" - by "Vicky" in the Evening Standard in London, England, on 6 November 1958....
  
  
• Infield Fly Rule
  Infield Fly Rule
  The infield fly rule is a baseball rule that is intended to prevent infielders from intentionally dropping pop-ups in order to turn double plays . Without this rule, a defense could easily turn a pop-up into a double play when there are runners at first and second base...
  
  
• Justine Henin

Books extending Potter's theories of gamesmanship

• Raffles and the Match-Fixing Syndicate, by Adam Corres, concerning the principles of gamesmanship in cricket.