The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship

by Stephen Potter

  A Note on Concentration

  Very often the opponent will show signs, just as he is beginning to lose, of being irritated by distractions. At golf, ‘somebody has moved’. At billiards, ‘somebody talked’. Take this opportunity of making him feel that he is not really a player at all by talking on these lines:

  ‘Somebody yelling, did you say? Do you know, I didn’t notice it. I’m a fool at games. Don’t seem to be able to be aware of anything outside them, when I’m playing the shot. I remember, once, Joyce Wethered was putting. 18th green – semi-final. An express train went by within fifteen feet of her nose.

  ‘ “How did you manage to sink that putt – with that train …?”

  ‘ “What train?” she said.’

  Always tell the same story to the same man, for your example. (See under ‘Story, constant repetition of, to the same person.’)

  When to Give Advice

  In my own view (but compare Motherwell) there is only one correct time when the gamesman can give advice: and that is when the gamesman has achieved a useful though not necessarily a winning lead. Say three up and nine to play at golf, or, in billiards, sixty-five to his opponent’s thirty. Most of the accepted methods are effective. E.g., in billiards, the old phrase serves. It runs like this:

  GAMESMAN: Look … may I say something?

  LAYMAN: What?

  GAMESMAN: Take it easy.

  LAYMAN: What do you mean?

  GAMESMAN: I mean – you know how to make the strokes, but you’re stretching yourself on the rack all the time. Look. Walk up to the ball. Look at the line. And make your stroke. Comfortable. Easy. It’s as simple as that.

  In other words, the advice must be vague, to make certain it is not helpful. But, in general, if properly managed, the mere giving of advice is sufficient to place the gamesman in a practically invincible position.

  Note. According to some authorities the advice should be quite genuine and perfectly practical.

  When to be Lucky

  The uses of the last of the three basic plays for winmanship are, I think, no less obvious, though I believe this gambit is less used than the other, no doubt because a certain real skill in play is involved, making it a little out of place in the gamesman world. I have worded the rule as follows. Let the Gamesman’s Advantage over an Opponent Appear to be the Result of Luck, Never of Play. Always sporting, the good gamesman will say:

  ‘I’m afraid I was a bit lucky there … the balls are running my way. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it, how once they start running one way, they go on running one way, all through an entire game. I know it’s impossible according to the law of averages …’

  and so on, till your opponent is forced to break in with a reply. Unless he sees through the gambit and counter-games, he is likely to feel an ebbing of confidence if he can be made to believe that it is not your play (which he knows is liable to collapse) but Fate, which is against him.

  Yet in spite of the ease with which most games-players can be persuaded that they are unlucky, I know the difficulties of this gambit: and as I have had many complaining letters from all parts of the country from gamesmen saying: ‘They can’t do it’, ‘What’s the point?’, ‘No good’, etc., I will end this chapter with a few notes:

  Note I. The best shot to practise with cue and ivories is undoubtedly the Imitation Fluke. E.g., in billiards, play for an in-off the red top left of a kind which will give colour to your apology that you meant to pot the red top right. A. Boult (the snooker player, not the conductor) demonstrates a shot, suitable for volunteer only, in which he pots the black while apparently framing up to hit a ball of inferior scoring value (e.g., the blue). (See Fig. 6.)

  Fig. 6. Diagram of billiards table to show Disguised Fluke play. Key: Black balls = red balls; shaded balls = coloured balls; white ball = white ball; end of cue = end of cue. Player has framed up as if to hit blue (on extreme right) but actually pots black (ball on extreme right but one). Straight line= path of white ball after impact (leaving an easy red). Dotted line = path of black into middle pocket.

  A good tip, says Boult, is to chalk the end of the cue ostentatiously, while apologizing after making the shot.

  Note II. In my pamphlet for the British Council I listed eighteen ways of saying ‘Bad luck’. I do not believe there are more.

  Note III (For advanced students only). Different from fluke play, though sometimes confused with it, is the demonstration of another kind of advantage over an opponent in which the gamesman tries to prove that he is favoured not by good luck but by a fortunate choice of instruments. To get away from text-book formulae, let me explain this by example.

  In golf, for instance. You find yourself two up at the fifth hole. You wish to make certain of your advantage.

  Supposing, for whatever reason, you hit your drive; and supposing you hit it five or preferably ten yards farther than your opponent. Procedure: walk off the tee with opponent, in the normal method of the two-up walk-off, conversing, and listening rather charmingly to what he says, etc. (See Number Twelve in my Twenty-five Methods of Tee-leaving: Scribners, August 1935.) As you approach the balls on the fairway, but before parting company (see Fig. 7) say, ‘Much of a muchness.’ Opponent will then say over his shoulder:

  ‘You’re ten yards farther at least’.

  ‘So I am,’ you say.

  Nearing the green you start thinking aloud in his presence.

  ‘Funny. I thought those drives were level. It’s that ball of mine’.

  ‘What are you using? Ordinary two-dot, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, no–no – that’s how it’s been repainted. Underneath it’s a Madfly’.

  ‘Madfly?’

  ‘Madfly. Pre-war only. It goes like sin. Really does put ten yards on to your shot. I’ll see if I can get you one. Honestly, I hardly feel it’s fair of me to play with it’.

  With proper management the gamesman can wreak far more havoc by suggesting that he has the advantage of a better ball, than by demonstrating that he has a better swing.

  Tennis rackets strung with a special gut giving out a particularly high ‘ping’, suggesting a tigerish resilience, are made by dealers who cater for this sort of thing. G. Odoreida, on his first appearance at St Ives, brought with him a racket in which a stretch of piano wire, tuned to high G, was substituted for one of the ordinary strings. When ‘testing his racket’ before play, he plucked the piano wire, adding smilingly: ‘I like something you can hit with’.

  À propos of this, an amusing correspondence followed with ‘Wagger’ – W.A.G.A., the West Australian Gamesmen’s Association – which august body considered this action ungamesmanlike.

  Fig. 7. Diagram of golf hole. A = point reached by gamesman’s drive. B=opponent’s drive. Z=point on arrival at which gamesman commences Gamesplay or ‘Parlette’.

  5

  Luncheonship

  For gamesmen work i’ th’ playtime,

  To pledge their souls away.

  Plainsong of Perkins, Gent.

  The way of the gamesman is hard, his training strict, his progress slow, his disappointments many. If he is to succeed, he must, for instance, read our next chapter on ‘Losemanship’, with something more than concentration. He must believe that the precepts it contains are effective, and trust that they make sense, and want to put them into action.

  So let us, as they say, ‘take a breather’. Let us turn for a moment to what I always consider to be the lighter side of the subject, even if in all earnest many a match is won by a knowledge of what to say during the meal interval, and how to say it.

  In golf, in the all-day lawn tennis or badminton tournament, in cricket or bowls, the luncheon interval is the ideal time in which to make up lost ground.

  Drinkmanship

  This huge subject, the notes for which I have been collecting for so many years that they threaten already to overstep the bounds of a single volume, can scarcely even be defined within the limits of a chapter. Put in the simplest possible words, t
he art of drinkmanship is the art of imparting uneasiness to your opponent by making a show of (1) readiness or (2) reluctance to ‘go shares’ in the hire of a court, payment for taxi, payment for meal, but above all in the matter of ‘standing your round’ of alcoholic drink; the art, moreover, of inseminating in the mind of your opponent, by this action, that he has paid more than his share, or, more rarely, less than his share; the whole gambit to be played with the object of setting up (by this action) a train of uneasiness in the mind, with subsequent bewilderment at the commencement or resumption of the game.

  The rarer form (‘Counter-drink Play’) is for use only in the following situation, where, however, it is a gambit of the first value.

  Take a young opponent (optimum age: twenty-two). He must be pleasant, shy, and genuinely sporting. (The Fischer Test will tell you whether his apparent character is real or assumed – see ‘Nice Chapmanship’, p. 23.) Then (1) Place him by the bar and stand him a drink. (2) When he suggests ‘the other half,’ refuse in some such words as these, which should be preceded by a genuinely kindly laugh: ‘Another one? No thanks, old laddie.… No, I certainly won’t let you buy me one. No – I don’t want it.’ Then (3) a minute or two later, when his attention is distracted, buy him, and yourself, the second drink. The boy will feel bound to accept it, yet this enforced acceptance should cause him some confusion, and a growing thought, if the gambit has been properly managed and the after-play judicious, that he has been fractionally put in his place and decimally treated as if he was a juvenile, and more than partially forced into the position of being the object of generosity.

  Straight drinkmanship, of a kind, is known all over the world and, of course, long before Simpson and I incorporated it in gamesplay, the fellow who ‘was shy of his round’ was the menace of club and pub. But genuine drinkmanship is very different, if only because no true gamesman is, I hope, ever either mean or bad mannered.

  In my larger work I have planned twelve chapters for the twelve principal drink plays – and while I was working out the details of dialogue and positional play I often asked myself: ‘What is the true purpose of the tactic – what is it all about?’

  Whatever the details, remember the basic drill, (1) Remember always that (except in the case of the Nice Young Chap) ‘One Drink up is One Hole (or in Lawn Tennis One Game) Up’. But (2) Remember also that to achieve the best results your opponent should not realize that you have avoided paying for a drink at once. Optimum realization time: standing on the first tee, or, better still, when he makes his first bad shot. Therefore the ordinary escape tactics, e.g., (i) turning aside to ask ‘was that telephone call for me?’; (ii) going vague; (iii) producing a treasury note too big to be changed, etc. – these are not successful against an opposing drinkman of average recovering power.

  Note. After your opponent has lost the game, angered by the thought that he has been outwitted in the bar-room – then, after the game, make him still more annoyed by saying: ‘By the way, I owe you a drink – and a large one.’ You will thereby not only prepare the ground for the next match by obscurely irritating your man with Winner’s Heartiness: you will at the same time maintain the gamesman’s standard of hospitality and good manners.

  Guestmanship

  Elwyn Courthope – brother of G. L. – made a special study of ‘putting your man in the drink-drums’, as we used to say at Prince’s (the tie of which I still wear, though I was never a member1). But his one-sidedness enforced this penalty on his game: that it was only successful against opponents at his own club or in hotel or pub. As a guest, where drinks were going to be bought for him anyhow, he was lost.

  That is, of course, why G. L. Courthope – known from time immemorial as ‘Court’ – invented guestmanship, of which, in spite of the later experiments of Thomas and Riezenkühl, he can justly be called the Father.

  The object of guestmanship is difficult to achieve. The host is at an advantage. He is playing on his home ground. He knows the ropes. He has armies of friends. There are plenty of opportunities for making his guest feel out of it. But by the time Court had finished with him, an average host would wonder whether he was a host in any valid sense except the unpleasant one of having to pay: indeed, he would begin to wonder whether he was really a member of his own club.

  G. L. used to start, very quietly, (A) by some such question as this: (1) ‘Have you got a card-room here?’ (knowing that, as a matter of fact, they hadn’t). Or (2) (In the Wash-place): ‘Do you find you manage all right with two showers, in the summer?’ He would then (B) find some member whom he knew, but his host didn’t, and carry on an animated conversation with this man. Discover ‘at the last moment’ that his host had never met him. Introduce them, with surprised apologies, and tell the host later that he really must get to know this fellow – his interest and influence, etc. At luncheon, Court would always know some special ale, or even only a special mustard, the existence of which in the club, after fifteen years use of it, the host had rather lamely to explain he knew nothing about. Court then would ask why X was on the Committee, and why Y wasn’t, and make use of a host of facts which he had been able to pick up from a lightning study of lists, menus, pictures of former captains, etc., which he had studied during his host’s temporary absence paying some bill.

  6

  Losemanship

  … For the glory of the gamesman who’s a loseman in the game.

  The reader who has thoroughly absorbed the first four chapters will know something of the fundamentals. He will be prepared, I believe, now, to take that little extra step which will put him on the way to being a gamesman. And he will realize that he cannot comprehend the thing itself, unless he knows how to turn the tide of defeat, and, with alertness and courage, with humour and goodwill, learn to play for the fun and glory of the gamesplay.

  Straight now to the underlying principle of winning the losing game. What is the chief danger from the opponent who is getting the better of you? Over and above the advantage in score comes the fact that he is in the winning vein. He is playing at his best. Yet this is but one end of a balance. It is your job to turn the winning vein into a losing streak.

  The Primary Hamper

  There is only one rule: BREAK THE FLOW. This act – for it must be thought of as a positive action, dynamic not static – may bear directly on the game itself (Primary Hamper) or the net may be cast wider, in a direction apparently far removed from the main target, in an attempt to entangle the character, or even to bring forces to bear from your knowledge of the private life and intimate circumstances of your opponent’s everyday existence (Secondary Hamper).

  To take the simplest example of a Primary, let us begin with an illustration from golf (the ‘gamesgame of garnesgames’).

  This is the rule.

  Rule I:1 CONSCIOUS FLOW IS BROKEN FLOW. To break the flow of the golfer who is three up at the turn, select a moment during the playing of the tenth in the following way. This moment must be prepared for by not less than three suggestions that he is ‘playing well’, ‘hitting the ball grandly’, etc., made at, say, the second, fifth, and ninth holes. Then as opponent walks up to play his shot from fairway, speak as follows:

  GAMESMAN: I believe I know what it is.

  LAYMAN: What do you mean?

  GAMESMAN: I believe I know what you’re doing.

  LAYMAN: What?

  GAMESMAN: Yes. Why you’re hitting them. Straight left arm at the moment of impact.

  LAYMAN (pleased): I know what you mean. Oh, God, yes! If the left arm isn’t coming down straight like a flail –

  GAMESMAN: Rather.

  LAYMAN: Like a whip –

  GAMESMAN: It’s centrifugal force.

  LAYMAN: Well, I don’t know. Yes, I suppose it is. But if there’s the least suggestion of – of –

  GAMESMAN: A crooked elbow – (L. is framing up to play his shot). Half a sec. Do you mind if I come round to this side of you? I want to see you play that shot … (L. hits it) … Beauty. (Pause.)


  LAYMAN: Good Lord, yes! You’ve got to have a straight left arm.

  GAMESMAN: Yes. And even that one wasn’t as clean as some of the shots you’ve been hitting.…

  LAYMAN (pleased): Wasn’t it? (Doubtful.) Wasn’t it? (He begins to think about it.)

  There is nothing rigid about the last few lines of this dialogue, which are capable of some modification. But the shape – Praise-Dissection-Discussion-Doubt – is the same for all shots and for all games. I often think the possibilities of this gambit alone prove the superiority of games to sports, such as, for instance, rowing, where self-conscious analysis of the stroke can be of actual benefit to the stroke maker.

  Potter’s Improvement on the Primitive Hamper

  The superiority of Primary Hamper over Primitive Hamper needs no elaboration. But it is worth remembering that some of the earliest tentative ploys in what Toynbee calls, in an amusing essay, the Palaeogamesman period, were directed to this essential breaking of the flow. They consisted of such naive devices as tying up a shoe-lace in a prolonged manner, after the opponent at squash or lawn tennis had served two or three aces running; the extended, noseblow, with subsequent mopping up not only of the nose and surrounding surfaces, but of imaginary sweat from the forehead and neck as well; leaving your driver on the tee and going back for it, etc., etc.