THE THEORY
AND PRACTICE OF
GAMESMANSHIP
OR
THE ART OF WINNING GAMES
WITHOUT ACTUALLY
CHEATING
BY
STEPHEN POTTER
ILLUSTRATED BY LT.-COL.
FRANK WILSON
To Francis Meynell
Contents
1. Introductory
Origins
8 June 1931
2. The Pre-Game
Clothesmanship
Counter-Gamesmanship
3. The Game Itself
Some Basic Plays
Sportsmanship Play
Playing-for-Fun Play
Nice Chapmanship
Audience Play
Ruggership and Ruggership Counter-play
Counterpoint
‘My Tomorrow’s Match’
Game Leg
Jack Rivers Opening
4. Winmanship
A Note on Concentration
When to Give Advice
When to be Lucky
5. Luncheonship
Drinkmanship
Guestmanship
6. Losemanship
The Primary Hamper
Potter’s Improvement on the Primitive Hamper
The Secondary Hamper
Hampettes
The Natural Hampette
7. Game By Game
Golf
Splitting
Caddie Play
An Isolated Instance
Simpson’s Statue
Billiards and Snooker
Snooker-player’s Drivel
Squash-Rackets
Bridge and Poker
Intimidation
Two Simple Bridge Exercises for Beginners
Split Bridge
Lawn Tennis
Home Games
Terminologics
‘My Man Over the Hill’
Chess
‘Regardez la Dame’ Play
Potter’s Opening
Chess and Parentship, or Gamesplay against Children
Basic Chess Play
Johnsonian Capture
Darts and Shove-Halfpenny
Cricket
8. Lost Game Play
Bookmanism
Use of Bookmanism in Opponent’s Putt-Play
9. Gamesmaniana
Random Jottings of an Old Gamesman
A Queer Match
Gamesmanship and Life
Appendices
I. The Köninck Portrait of Dr W. G. Grace
II. Note on Etiquette
III. Chapter Headings from ‘Origins and Early History of Gamesmanship’
IV. Diet
V. Some Extracts from the ‘Gamesman’s Handbook’ for 1949
Footnotes
A Note on the Author
1
Introductory
If I have been urged by my friends to take up my pen, for once, to write of this subject – so difficult in detail yet so simple in all its fundamental aspects – I do so on one condition. That I may be allowed to say as strongly as possible that although my name has been associated with this queer word ‘gamesmanship’, yet talk of priority in this kind of context is almost meaningless.
It is true that in the twenties certain notes passed between H. Farjeon and myself. But equally notes passed between H. Farjeon and F. Meynell. It is true that in March 1933 I conceived and wrote down the word ‘gamesmanship’ in a letter to Meynell. Speaking of a forthcoming lawn tennis match against two difficult opponents, I said ‘… we must employ gamesmanship’.
It is true also that I was the most regular visitor – ‘chairman’ would imply a formality which scarcely existed in those early days of argle-bargle and friendly disagreement – at the meetings which took place in pub parlour or empty billiard hall between G. Odoreida, Meynell, ‘Wayfarer’, and myself. It is true that it was in these discussions that we evolved a basis of tactic and even plotted out a first rough field of stratagem which determined the centres of development from which the new technique spread in ever-widening circles. Small beginnings, indeed, for a movement which has spread so far from the confines of the country, and has shown itself too big to be contained by the World of Games for which it was fashioned.
But after the first formulation the spade-work was certainly done as much by Meynell and a few other devoted collaborators as by myself. And how well – wise after the event – we realize, now, from his practice and example, that Farjeon had the gist of the thing under his nose – the essential factors, the actions and reactions of the whole problem, without having the luck to see the patterning alignment, the overall theory, which made them make sense.
And yet had it not been for the dogged spadework of Farjeon in the middle twenties, we should none of us now be enjoying the advantages of a theory which devolves as naturally from those meticulously collected data of his as Rutherford’s enunciation of atomic structure derived from the experiments of that once obscure chemist Mierff.
Origins
What is gamesmanship? Most difficult of questions to answer briefly. ‘The Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating’ – that is my personal ‘working definition’. What is its object? There have been five hundred books written on the subject of games. Five hundred books on play and the tactics of play. Not one on the art of winning.
I well remember the gritty floor and the damp roller-towels of the changing-room where the idea of writing this book came to me. Yet my approach to the thing had been gradual.
There had been much that had puzzled me – I am speaking now of 1928 – in the tension of our games of ping-pong at the Meynells’. Before that there had been the ardours and endurances of friendly lawn tennis at the Farjeons’ house near Forest Hill, where Farjeon had wrought such havoc among so many visitors, by his careful construction of a ‘home court’, by the use he made of the net with the unilateral sag, or with a back line at the hawthorn end so nearly, yet not exactly, six inches wider than the back line at the sticky end. There had been a great deal of hard thinking on both sides during the wavering tide of battle, ending slightly in my favour, of the prolonged series of golf games between E. Lansbury and myself.
8 June 1931
But it was in that changing-room after a certain game of lawn tennis in 1931 that the curtain was lifted, and I began to see. In those days I used to play lawn tennis for a small but progressive London College – Birkbeck, where I lectured. It happened that my partner at that time was C. Joad, the celebrated gamesman, who in his own sphere is known as metaphysician and educationist. Our opponents were usually young men from the larger colleges, competing against us not only with the advantage of age but also with a decisive advantage in style. They would throw the service ball very high in the modern manner: the back-hands, instead of being played from the navel, were played, in fact, on the back-hand, weight on right foot, in the exaggerated copy-book style of the time – a method of play which tends to reduce all games, as I believe, to a barrack-square drill by numbers; but, nevertheless, of acknowledged effectiveness.
In one match we found ourselves opposite a couple of particularly tall and athletic young men of this type from University College. We will call them Smith and Brown. The knock-up showed that, so far as play was concerned, Joad and I, playing for Birkbeck, had no chance. U. C. won the toss. It was Smith’s service, and he cracked down a cannon-ball to Joad which moved so fast that Joad, while making some effort to suggest by his attitude that he had thought the ball was going to be a fault, nevertheless was unable to get near with his racket, which he did not even attempt to move. Score: fifteen-love. Service to me. I
had had time to gauge the speed of this serve, and the next one did, in fact, graze the edge of my racket-frame. Thirty-love. Now Smith was serving again to Joad – who this time, as the ball came straight towards him, was able, by grasping the racket firmly with both hands, to receive the ball on the strings, whereupon the ball shot back to the other side and volleyed into the stop-netting near the ground behind Brown’s feet.
Now here comes the moment on which not only this match, but so much of the future of British sport was to turn. Score: forty-love. Smith at S1 (see Fig. 1) is about to cross over to serve to me (at P). When Smith gets to a point (K) not less than one foot and not more than two feet beyond the centre of the court (I know now what I only felt then – that timing is everything in this gambit), Joad (standing at J2) called across the net in an even tone:
Fig. 1. Key: P=Potter, J=Joad, S=Smith, B=Brown. The dotted line represents Smith’s path from S1 to S2. K represents the point he has reached on the cross-over when Joad has moved along the line (dot and dash) J1 (where he had tried to return Smith’s service) to J2. Smith having arrived at, but not further than, the point K on the line S1_S2, J (Joad) speaks.
‘Kindly say clearly, please, whether the ball was in or out.’
Crude to our ears, perhaps. A Stone-Age implement. But beautifully accurate gamesmanship for 1931. For the student must realize that these two young men were both in the highest degree charming, well-mannered young men, perfect in their sportsmanship and behaviour. Smith (at point K) stopped dead.
SMITH: I’m so sorry – I thought it was out. (The ball had hit the back netting twelve feet behind him before touching the ground.) But what did you think, Brown?
BROWN: I thought it was out – but do let’s have it again.
JOAD: No, I don’t want to have it again. I only want you to say clearly, if you will, whether the ball is in or out.
There is nothing more putting off to young university players than a slight suggestion that their etiquette or sportsmanship is in question. How well we know this fact, yet how often we forget to make use of it. Smith sent a double fault to me, and another double fault to Joad. He did not get in another ace service till halfway through the third set of a match which incidentally we won.
That night I thought hard and long. Could not this simple gambit of Joad’s be extended to include other aspects of the game – to include all games? For me, it was the birth of gamesmanship.
2
The Pre-Game
And now they smile at Paradine,
Who but would smile at Paradine?
(That man of games, called Paradine)
For the Gamesman came his way.
Paradine
For the evolution of gamesmanship I must refer the reader to my larger work on origins and history (see Appendix III). But I do not propose to enlarge on the historical aspects here.
Let us start with a few simple exercises for beginners: and let us begin with the pre-game, for much of the most important gamesmanship play takes place before the game has started. Yet if mistakes are made, there is plenty of time to recover.
The great second axiom of gamesmanship is now worded as follows: THE FIRST MUSCLE STIFFENED (in his opponent by the Gamesman) IS THE FIRST POINT GAINED. Let us consider some of the processes of Defeat by Tension.
The standard method is known as the ‘flurry’.
The ‘flurry’ is for use when changing in the locker-room before a rackets match, perhaps, or leaving home in your opponent’s car for, say, a game of lawn tennis. The object is to create a state of anxiety, to build up an atmosphere of muddled fluster.
Supposing, for instance, that your opponent has a small car. He kindly comes along to pick you up before the game. Your procedure should be as follows: (1) Be late in answering the bell. (2) Don’t have your things ready. Appearing at last, (3) call in an anxious or ‘rattled’ voice to wife (who need not, of course, be there at all) some taut last-minute questions about dinner. Walk down path and (4) realize you have forgotten shoe. Return with shoes; then just before getting into car pause (5) a certain length of time (see any threepenny edition of Bonn’s Tables) and wonder (i) whether racket is at the club or (ii) whether you have left it ‘in the bath-room at top of the house’.
Like the first hint of paralysis, a scarcely observable fixing of your opponent’s expression should now be visible. Now is the time to redouble the attack. Map-play can be brought to bear. On the journey let it be known that you ‘think you know a better way’, which should turn out, when followed, to be incorrect and should if possible lead to a blind alley. (See Fig. 2.)
Meanwhile, time is getting on. Opponent’s tension should have increased. Psychological tendency, if not temporal necessity, will cause him to drive faster, and – behold! now the gamesman can widen his field and bring in carmanship by suggesting, with the minutest stiffening of the legs at corners, an unconscious tendency to put on the brakes, indicating an unexpressed desire to tell his opponent that he is driving not very well, and cornering rather too fast.
Fig. 2. Sketch plan to show specimen Wrong Route from Maide Vale to Dulwich Covered Courts.
Note I. The ‘flurry’ is best used before still-ball games, especially golf, croquet, or snooker. Anxious car-driving may actually improve opponent’s execution in fast games, such as rackets or ping-pong.
Note II. Beginners must not rush things. The smooth working of a ‘flurry’ sequence depends on practice. The motions of pausing on the doorstep (‘Have I got my gym shoes?’), hesitating on the running-board, etc., are exercises which I give my own students; but I always recommend that they practise the motions for at least six weeks, positions only, before trying it out with the car, suitcase and shoes.
Clothesmanship
The ‘flurry’ is a simple example. Simpler still, but leading to the most important subdivision of our subject, is the question of clothesmanship, or the ‘Togman’, as he used to be called.
The keen observer of the tennis-court incident described above would have noticed a marked disparity in clothes. The trousers of the young undergraduate players were well creased and clean, with flannel of correct colour, etc, etc. C. Joad, on the other hand, wore a shirt of deep yellow, an orange scarf to hold up his crumpled trousers, and – standing out very strongly, as I remember, in the hot June sunlight – socks of deep black.
Instinctively, Joad had demonstrated in action what was to become the famous ‘Second Rule’ of gamesmanship, now formulated as follows:
IF THE OPPONENT WEARS, OR ATTEMPTS TO WEAR, CLOTHES CORRECT AND SUITABLE FOR THE GAME, BY AS MUCH AS HIS CLOTHES SUCCEED IN THIS FUNCTION, BY SO MUCH SHOULD THE GAMESMAN’S CLOTHES FAIL.
Corollary: Conversely, if the opponent wears the wrong clothes, the gamesman should wear the right.
‘If you can’t volley, wear velvet socks,’ we Old Gamesmen used to say. The good-looking young athlete, perfectly dressed, is made to feel a fool if his bad shot is returned by a man who looks as if he has never been on a tennis-court before. His good clothes become a handicap by virtue of their very suitability.
Fig. 3. Clothesmanship: Wrong clothes in which Miss E. Watson beat Mrs de Greim in Finals of the Waterloo Cup Croquet Tourney, 18 August 1902.
It is true that against the new golf-club member, inclined to be modest and nervous, a professional turn-out can be effective. A well-worn but well-cut golf jacket and a good pair of mackintosh trousers can, in this situation, be of real value. (My own tip here is to take an ordinary left-hand glove, cut the thumb off, make a diamond-shaped hole on the back, and say, ‘Henry Cotton made this for me – he never plays with any other.’)
Counter-Gamesmanship
But the average gamesman must beware, at this point, of counter-gamesmanship. He may find himself up against an experienced hand, such as J. K. C. Dalziel, who, when going out to golf, used to keep two changes in the dickey of his car – one correct and the other incorrect. One golf-bag covered in zipps and with five woods, twelve irons, and a left-han
ded cleek; a second bag containing only three irons and one wood, each with an appearance of string-ends tied round their necks. I always remember Jimmy Dalziel’s ‘bent pin’ outfit, as he used to call it. (‘The little boy with the bent pin always catches more than the professional angler’.) Many is the time I have scoured London with him to find a pair of odd shoe-laces. His plan was simple. If he found, at the club-house, that his opponent was rather humbly dressed, he would wear the smart outfit. If the conditions were reversed, out would come the frayed pin-stripe trousers, the stringy clubs, and the fair-isle sweater.
‘And I don’t want a caddie,’ he would say.
Of course, in his correct clothes, he would automatically order a caddie, calling for ‘Bob’, and mumbling something about ‘Must have Bob. He knows my game. Caddied for me in the Northern Amateur’.
3
The Game Itself
East wind dhu blëow
En-tont-cas dhu gëow.
Essex Saying
Some Basic Plays
‘How to Win Games Without Being Able to Play Them’. Reduced to the simplest terms, that is the formula, and the student must not at first try flights too far away from this basic thought.
To begin with, let him, say, carry on the ‘flurry’ motive. Let him aim at tension. Let him, for instance, invent some ‘train which he would rather like to catch if the game was over by then’, but ‘doesn’t want to hurry’.
Sportsmanship Play
Remember the slogan: ‘The Good Gamesman is the Good Sportsman’. The use of sportsmanship is, of course, most important. In general, with the athletic but stupid player, ex-rowing or ex-boxing, perhaps, who is going to take it out of you, by God, if he suspects you of being unsporting, extreme sportingness is the thing, and the instant waiving of any rule which works in your favour is the procedure.
The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship Page 1
