The Gladiator by Harry Turtledove

that. You weren’t especially lucky, either. You know what you’re doing, all right.”
    â€œI gave it my best shot. I really wanted it,” Gianfranco said. “But you’re good. I knew going in you were. You didn’t make any mistakes I could latch on to. Good luck in the finals. I bet you win.”
    â€œIf you were in the other bracket, I’d probably see you there instead of here,” Alfredo said. “When the next tournament starts, you’ll be somebody to watch out for.”
    Gianfranco shrugged. “We’ll see what happens, that’s all. Some of it’s skill, but some of it’s luck, too. That’s part of what makes it fun, because you can’t be sure ahead of time what’ll happen.”
    â€œI think so, too.” Alfredo sent him a curious look. “I don’t want to make you mad or anything, but you are just a kid. I thought you’d be more disappointed if you lost.”
    â€œPart of me is. I wanted to win,” Gianfranco said. “But I played as well as I could, so what’s the point of getting all upset? And I showed myself I could play in your league even if I didn’t win.”

    â€œI’m not going to tell you you’re wrong, because you’re right,” Alfredo said. “That was quite a game, and I could see it was no fluke. You’ve got the right attitude to be a good player, too. You don’t get too high when things go well, and you don’t get too mad if they don’t.”
    Gianfranco climbed to his feet. Several joints in his back popped like knuckles. He’d been sitting hunched over in a hard chair for a long time. He hadn’t noticed till he stood up. Stretching and twisting felt good. “Let’s go tell Eduardo,” he said.
    The clerk eyed both of them when they came out of the back room. “Who won?” he asked. “I can’t tell by looking at you.”
    â€œHe got me,” Gianfranco said. “I made him work for it, but he got me.”
    â€œHe gave me a big scare,” Alfredo said. “With a little more luck, he would have beaten me.”
    Eduardo wrote the results on the tournament chart. “Cheer up, Gianfranco,” he said. “You’ve still got the third-place game. You win that, you get a little trophy and a free book.”
    â€œI’m not down,” Gianfranco said. “It’s like I told Alfredo—I gave it my best shot, and it was pretty good. I know which book I want if I do win the third-place game, too—that one about the way the Prussian Army organized their railroads for war. I bet I can get a lot of ideas out of it.”
    Eduardo glanced over at Alfredo. “He is going to be dangerous.”
    â€œHe sure is,” Alfredo said. “I’ve got a copy of that one myself. He’s right. It gives you all sorts of notions about the best way to put your rail net together.”
    â€œSo you’ve read it?” Gianfranco asked. Alfredo nodded. Gianfranco winked at him. “One more reason for me to want to get my hands on it, then.”

    â€œYou sure don’t act like somebody who just lost a big game,” Eduardo said.
    â€œI told him the same thing,” Alfredo put in.
    â€œOh, I wish I’d won,” Gianfranco said. “But playing against Alfredo helped me take my game up a notch. I’ve never seen anybody who makes as good a capitalist as he does—in the game, of course.” He didn’t want to insult the older man.
    And he didn’t. “I understood you, ragazzo ,” Alfredo said. “Where else can we be capitalists except in games? If we tried to do it for real … Well, we’d get in trouble, so we don’t.”
    â€œHere, look—I have to be a capitalist,” Eduardo said. “I have to take money from both of you for sitting at a table in my shop and playing.”
    â€œI don’t think you’re being a