Editing Gamesmanship (section)

===Causing the opponent to overthink===
Examples of methods designed to cause the opponent to overthink or to not take the game seriously enough include:

* Giving intentionally vague advice in the hope of making the opponent focus on their play. In such "Advicemanship", 'the advice ''must be vague'', to make certain it is not helpful', although Potter also noted that 'according to some authorities the advice should be quite genuine and perfectly practical'.<ref>Potter, p. 45 and 123</ref>
* Asking one's opponent's advice for a (fictitious) match the following day, against an implied stronger opponent.
* Claiming that the game being played "just isn't my sport", or claiming less expertise than the player actually possesses (a mild form of [[hustling]]).
* The converse approach, suggesting a level of expertise far higher than the player actually possesses, can also be effective.  For example, although gamesmanship frowns on simple distractions like whistling loudly while an opponent takes a shot, it is good gamesmanship to do so when taking a shot oneself, suggesting as it does a level of carefree detachment which the opponent does not possess.
* In [[American football]], the very common practice of taking one or more timeouts to give an opposing kicker an excessive amount of time to think about a critical kick; most often a field goal or extra point but sometimes a potential on-side kick.  The intent is to cause the kicker to get overly stressed about making a mistake and hopefully create a self-fulfilling prophecy.  This is commonly referred to as "[[icing the kicker]]." A common variant of this strategy is to attempt to call the timeout right before the ball is snapped, so that there is not enough time to stop the play and the opposing kicker has to attempt the same kick twice.
* "Icing" is also used, albeit less frequently, in [[basketball]].  In late-game situations with a player shooting free throws, it is not uncommon for the opposing team to take a timeout.  This is commonly referred to as "icing the shooter".