Playing to win vs. playing for meaningful victories

Abstract

John Laumakis has offered a thought-provoking, but ultimately unpersuasive argument in favor of playing to your opponent’s strength(s) (PTS) instead of playing to their weakness(es) (PTW). In the course of this reply, we hope to show (1) that the idea of PTS not only undermines the real goal of athletic competition, but it also (2) rests upon a confusion between matters of morality and the aims of sports, as well as (3) equivocations on the kind of ‘excellence’ one pursues, and the nature of the ‘challenge’ involved in sport. We also (4) plan to raise a serious objection against the logical consistency of PTS and (5) note its incompatibility with real-world game smarts and tactics. Finally, we (6) offer our own explanation for why ‘it is improbable that many coaches and athletes will shift their strategy from PTW to PTS.’

Keywords:

• Laumakis
• competition
• strategy
• victory
• constitutive rules

Acknowledgements

The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and careful recommendations on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. In the interests of transparency and full disclosure, let us begin by noting that John is our youngest brother who, for better or for worse, learned to play various sports by competing against his four older brothers. While all four of us would readily admit that he is the best athlete in the family, none of us is sure where he learned his philosophy of sports and, more importantly, where his PTS strategy comes from. We are absolutely sure that none of us ever adopted such a strategy when we played with and against one another.

2. See, for example, the excellent collection of readings in Philosophy of Sport: Core Readings edited by Holt (2014). These include representative selections from the works of Johan Huizinga, Bernard Suits, John W. Loy, Jr., and Klaus V. Meier. See, also, the cogent discussion in Part II of Heather L. Reid’s Introduction to the Philosophy of Sports (2012).

3. We recognize that there are various philosophical views about these skills and strategies, and how borderline tactics, such as gamesmanship, trash talking, strategic fouling, and other activities that are not explicitly violations of the constitutive rules, are conceived and related to the broader concept of athletic excellence and its relationship to winning. For an excellent discussion of some of these topics and issues, see Nicholas Dixon’s ‘On Winning and Athletic Superiority,’ in Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, (1999).

4. We also note that we are not aware of any set of constitutive rules that include a discussion of ‘meaningful’ or ‘most meaningful’ ways of winning.

5. This is not to deny or recognize that there are a whole host of factors that might influence and even causally determine the outcomes of games, including: poor officiating, cheating, gamesmanship, bad luck, and other unfortunate events, like weather conditions, and even being sick.

6. Obviously, people may ‘play sports’ for lots of different reasons, such as, exercise, entertainment, to pass time, to acquire new skills, relaxation, or just to blow off steam. In these cases, we would argue that they are not, properly speaking, ‘playing the game,’ but merely exercising, entertaining themselves, passing time, relaxing, or just blowing offsteam. On our view, one is not, strictly speaking, ‘playing the game’, unless one is both playing by the rules and intentionally trying to achieve victory as specified by the rules.

7. One cannot help but be reminded here of Aquinas’ common practice of distinguishing what something is in itself and what it is to or for someone. As a result, in the case of meaningful victories, then, we can distinguish an objective (O) and subjective (S) sense of the term, or ‘meaningful victories’(O) and ‘meaningful victories’(S).

8. The relationships between objective and subjective meaning and how and whether these are related to the internal and external features of sports raise interesting philosophical questions that are, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this paper.

9. For a more detailed defense of the importance and value of winning, see R. Scott Kretchmar’s ‘In Defense of Winning’ in Sports Ethics: An Anthology (2003).

10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uTLtBGgSAM.

11. We think there is an important difference/distinction between ‘playing to win’ and ‘victory.’ Victory (and defeat, or even a tie, as in soccer) is a result or outcome of a game. Playing to win, on the other hand, is just one among many different kinds of strategies and tactics. More precisely, it is an attitude that one could use to pursue victory. It does not, in and of itself, guarantee victory, but it is, on our view, what separates real competitors from pretenders.