There’s winning ugly and winning dirty. One is effort. The other is a choice.

Ugly is about quality and dirty is about rules, and the two get blurred by people wanting credit for being tough. Scrapping through a bad game, taking the unglamorous route, surviving on effort: that is ugly, and it is admirable. Breaking something on purpose and calling it competitive is decided in advance, and everybody present knows which one they watched.

Be willing to win ugly more often than you do, which means doing the dull work nobody claps for. Draw the other line in your head before a game, not during one. Where you cannot tell which side something falls on, ask whether you would explain it to them.