“Business is a game, played for fantastic stakes, and you're in competition with experts. If you want to win, you have to learn to be a master of the game.”

Madrid, Spain September 1992
1990s

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 19, The Successful Politician Does Not Drink

An abbreviated version of a quote by California politician Dianne Feinstein, from an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine in October 1985 https://books.google.com/books?id=zmxNAQAAIAAJ&dq=You+have+to+learn+the+rules+of+the+game+and+then+you+have+to+play+better+than+anyone+else&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22rules+of+the+game%22, on the topic of women running for public office. The original was: "... I really do have staying power. That's important for women who run for office. When you get in there and push for a lot of new things all at once and don't get them, you don't just leave. You have to commit, be a team player, learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play it better than anyone else."
Misattributed

Source: Invisible Man

Source: Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

[Judy, Batista, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E7D91338F93AA15752C0A9629C8B63&n=Top/News/Sports/Pro%20Football/National%20Football%20League/Green%20Bay%20Packers, PRO FOOTBALL: NOTEBOOK; Favre Knows That Time Is Quickly Running Out, The New York Times, January 29, 2004, 2007-11-12]

The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Context: Under the shifting hegemony of now this, now that science or art, the Game of games had developed into a kind of universal language through which the players could express values and set these in relation to one another. Throughout its history the Game was closely allied with music, and usually proceeded according to musical and mathematical rules. One theme, two themes, or three themes were stated, elaborated, varied, and underwent a development quite similar to that of the theme in a Bach fugue or a concerto movement. A Game, for example, might start from a given astronomical configuration, or from the actual theme of a Bach fugue, or from a sentence out of Leibniz or the Upanishads, and from this theme, depending on the intentions and talents of the player, it could either further explore and elaborate the initial motif or else enrich its expressiveness by allusions to kindred concepts. Beginners learned how to establish parallels, by means of the Game's symbols, between a piece of classical music and the formula for some law of nature. Experts and Masters of the Game freely wove the initial theme into unlimited combinations.