You see someone’s real character when they’re tired, hungry and losing.

Politeness is cheap when the day is going well. Strip away sleep, food and a decent scoreline and what is left is not a different person, it is the person with the padding gone. Managing yourself takes energy, and in a deficit you spend what you have on whatever matters most to you. That is useful to know about other people and less comfortable to know about yourself.

Pay attention to yourself at the ninth hour of a long day, after a loss, before dinner. You cannot be at your best there, but you can pick one thing to hold: no snapping at family, no blaming a teammate.