"It is alot like Diplomacy. You want to be honorable/nice until you are playing for the final outcome of your career, then you stop playing nice." This sentence correlates exactly with the climax of that article.
I don’t want to hurt the other players just to get that win, he had always thought. Additionally, by always being a trustworthy ally who plays honorably, Haver had built up a reputation as someone who was good to work with in tournaments. “That’s why it was easy for people on my board to say, ‘He’s not going to stab his ally.’
“And that’s what allowed me to do it when I did.”