Stephen Potter (1900 – 1969)
English scholar, critic, broadcaster and humorist.
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"Yes, but not in the South", with slight adjustments, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person.
The theory and practice of gamesmanship; or, The art of winning games without actually cheating.
A good general rule is to state that the bouquet is better than the taste, and vice versa.
There are those who believe that the sole duty of the poker gamesman is to build up his reputation for impenetrability and toughness by suggesting that he last played poker by the light of a moon made more brilliant by the snows of the Yukon, and that his opponents were two white slave traffickers, a ticket-of-leave man and a deserter from the Foreign Legion. To me this is ridiculously far-fetched, but I do believe that a trace of American accent – West Coast – casts a small shadow of apprehension over the minds of English players.
Talk of the "imperial decay" of your invalid port. "Its gracious withdrawal from perfection, keeping a hint of former majesty withal, as it hovers between oblivion and the divine Untergang of infinite recession."
How to be one up - how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly.
In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me.
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