If life is a great Game, we are all familiar with the Players. They are the self-assured success stories always looking out for their own interests. They do business with a slick handshake and a smooth tongue. They write the rules, and we have to live by them. For these Players, losing is not an option. Which begs the question, what about the rest of us?

At first glance, the Players seem to have an absolute hold on the Game they created. They are the majority; they hold the higher ground and with it a permanent, built in advantage in. What then is the outsider to do against such insuperable odds?

We need to find a strategy that allows us to play the game from a weaker position. The Players' strategies are premised upon having the higher ground, having the advantage of leverage. This is at once the strength and weakness of the status quo. On a day-to-day basis it affords them the luxury of being able to win consistently with relatively little risk or effort.

Meanwhile, they become dependent upon this advantageous position; and when the trump is removed from their hand, they really have no idea of how to cope with the situation they find themselves in. They will usually resort to what they know; bluff and bluster, which only serve to worsen their predicament, as they amplify the downward spiral in which they find themselves. The outsider, on the other hand, has no such advantage. Therefore, we must rely upon intelligence and stealth, to create our good fortune.

Most Players are anything but versatile. They have a personal play and they make it, time and again, to great effect. They never expect to be faced with their own tactics turned against them, for two reasons in particular.

The first is that the Players to a man view the rest of us as foolish and incompetent. The second is that they do not credit ordinary people with the capacity for cunning which is required to undermine their plays.

Our task, then, is to seduce the Players one by one, lulling them into a false calm which will allow us to better achieve our goal. To do this we must first target specific Players, distinguish between them and play to each one's particular weaknesses. Finally, it is up to us to study them, to find out what their game-plan is and discover their hidden tactics.

Since the Player thinks of himself as infallible he cannot learn from his mistakes, for he denies even the possibility that he has made any. Since he is also concerned only with himself and his own self-interest he will pay no heed to opportunities which do not affect him directly. As a result, when they do fall upon hard times, Players are notoriously under-prepared for coping with them.

The fact that a Player cannot engage in a situation in which the odds are not stacked overwhelmingly in his favour makes him a coward at heart, further limiting what he can and will do in his own defence. Small wonder, given all of this, that the Players created The Game: without it, they would have little going for them indeed.