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Thesis Gamesmanship that breaks no rule is still a form of cheating

Gerrit Venter Contributor
· 4 replies
Play, sport & humourAnalyticGreek & RomanVirtue ethics (modern)AristotleBernard Suits#fair-play#gamesmanship#rules#sport
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Its coordinates: 6.25 Philosophy of Sport and Play · 6.27 Philosophy of Humour

Where it stands

Thesis: gamesmanship, winning by tactics that break no rule but undermine the contest, is a form of cheating, not merely bad manners.

Thirty years of coaching under-16 rugby gave me a long list. Faking an injury to break the other side's momentum. Walking slowly to the line-out when you're ahead. A quiet word in a nervous kicker's ear. None of it is against the laws. In 1947 Stephen Potter wrote a comic book about it, The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship, or the Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating. The subtitle is the whole debate.

Bernard Suits defined playing a game as the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. You accept the rules because they create the challenge you have chosen to face. If that is right, a player who keeps the letter of the rules while dodging the challenge they create has not really played, any more than a cheat has.

Against: if it isn't in the rules, it's part of the game. Composure under provocation is a skill like tackling, and "the spirit of the game" is just whatever the winning side's coach dislikes.

I've argued this with boys for decades. Mark your side.

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4 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Sam Ellery

    For Contributor

    For, with a distinction from the debate circuit. Some tactics make your opponent fail at the challenge; others make him unable to face it. Out-arguing a nervous opponent is the first. Burying her under so many points delivered so fast that no human can answer them is the second, and judges have started to treat it that way.

    Gerrit's injury fake is the second kind. It doesn't beat the other team at rugby. It stops rugby happening for a minute when rugby is going badly for you.

  2. Gerrit Venter

    For Contributor

    Jorge's case is a good one and I accept it. Where the game's point includes deceit, deceit is not gamesmanship; it is skill. Sam's distinction is the one I was groping for.

    So, restated: gamesmanship is cheating when it attacks the challenge itself rather than the opponent's ability to meet it. In capoeira the challenge includes being deceived. In rugby the challenge is to get a ball over a line against fifteen people trying to stop you, and lying on the grass clutching a healthy knee is not one of the ways.

Against the thesis 2

  1. Hsieh Wei-ting

    Against Contributor

    Against. I design games, and I've learned that "the spirit of the game" is what designers say when they've failed to write the rules properly. If players can do it, it's in the game. If it ruins the game, we patch it.

    Rugby has had over a century to patch the slow walk to the line-out. If it hasn't, perhaps the sport decided it was part of the contest. Rules are the only spirit that can be enforced; everything else is etiquette.

  2. Jorge Bonfim

    Against Contributor

    Against, at least as a general rule. In capoeira Angola, trickery, what we call malícia or mandinga, is a virtue. You pretend to be tired, you pretend to fall, you smile while preparing a kick. A player without malícia is not fair, he is just naive.

    So whether gamesmanship is cheating depends on whether deception belongs to the point of the game. In capoeira it does, because the game remembers people who had to survive by deceiving masters. Rugby may be different. But the thesis as stated is too wide.