beat someone at their own game
Use someone’s own methods to outdo them in their chosen activity: we can compete against our trading rivals and beat them at their own game...- This and many other books and newspaper and magazine articles recommended that European industry and commerce should learn from the methods of the Americans and try to beat them at their own game.
- Some of his fellow activists are less than sanguine about the shift from a strategy of opposing corporations to one of beating them at their own game.
- There is a certain pleasure in beating them at their own game, which very nearly matches a shopping buzz.
See parent entry: game