Basic Trope: The losing player in a best-of-N match — one where the winner is the first to win more than N/2 games — keeps increasing N when they would have lost.
- Straight: Those Two Guys are playing rock-paper-scissors for the last piece of pie, and the loser asks to make it best of three, best of five, best of seven...
- Exaggerated: ... best of six hundred and seventeen, best of six hundred and nineteen, best of six hundred and twenty-one... At some point you start to wonder how they could lose so many times.
- Downplayed: The loser gives up after arguing his way up to best-of-five.
- Justified:
- The loser had been distracted during the first round, and got the rematch as a compromise.
- They're both too proud to give in.
- Inverted:
- The winner is trying to throw the match and failing.
- Alternatively: The winner of the first game in a best-of-five match tries to negotiate it down to a best-of-three to improve their odds.
- Subverted: "I'm not being a sore loser — the rules say you have to win by two!"
- Double Subverted: "Ha, six to four!" "Aw, come on — first to seven?"
- Parodied:
- "Damn! Best of fifty-seven?" "Don't you mean, 'best of three'?" "I'm saving time."
- Two mathematcians do this in a mathematical proof race. Savvy viewers will realize there are infinite ones in this area.
- Zig Zagged: Playing to best of three, Player A loses two matches to Player B. Player B then asks, "Are you sure you don't want to play to best of five?" A declines, but B insists on it, as a reward for A's honorable and graceful loss. Reluctantly, A agrees, and surprisingly manages three wins, making A the new winner. Inevitably, B then says, "... best of seven?"
- Averted: The loser accepts the result of the first round.
- Enforced: The rest of the episode wasn't long enough, so the writers needed an excuse to pad out the scene.
- Lampshaded: "Pity, Alice. You would have won if you hadn't kept letting me change the rules on you".
- Invoked: To make the game less random, the designer writes in the rules that the winner must win by two.
- Exploited: The Lancer starts a series of these against the king, knowing that this will mean he is distracted long enough to allow The Captain to execute the plan.
- Defied: "No rematches, all right?"
- Discussed: "How far's Bob managed to extend the game now? It was best to seventy nine last time I was here!"
- Conversed: "You ever notice how people playing games in movies never accept their losses?"
- Deconstructed: The king is a sore loser, so it's understood that he must always be allowed to keep playing until he wins.
- Reconstructed: Both players are enjoying the game so much that they make up excuses to keep playing.
- Played For Laughs: The Failure Montage reaches the loser calling out "best out of six hundred!" and most of the losses the audience sees are complete fiascos.
- Played For Drama: The loser keeps asking for additional rounds because he claims the earlier ones was either luck or not fair in some way. As the rounds get higher, it become apparent that whatever they're playing for has been surpassed by the loser's inability to accept defeat and perhaps willful ignorance of the fact that maybe they're just not as good as the other player.
- Played For Horror: Bob the loser takes Jim the winner hostage and makes clear that they will play as many times as it takes for Bob to finally win or he will kill Jim. He is too far gone to think of the obvious "solution" of hurting Jim in revenge for the losses, and Jim really hopes Bob won't...
Aw, c'mon! Best Out of Infinity?
