The Maddux Gambit is a strategic move used to gain a long-term
advantage, by taking a short-term loss.

The Maddux Gambit is so named because one of the first descriptions of
the strategy refers to a pair of situations in which San Diego Padres
baseball pitcher Greg Maddux pitched to Jeff Bagwell. These are the
events as described by George Will:

    "Leading 8-0 in a regular-season game against the Astros, Maddux
    threw what he had said he would never throw to Jeff Bagwell-a
    fastball in. Bagwell did what Maddux wanted him to do: he homered.
    So two weeks later, when Maddux was facing Bagwell in a close game,
    Bagwell was looking for a fastball in, and Maddux fanned him on a
    change-up away."

In chess, a gambit is the sacrifice of a piece (such as a pawn) in order
to gain another type of advantage in the game (such as checkmate).

This strategy is also used in sports, where a player or coach may
allowing one or more 'points' to score in order to run time off the
clock or otherwise hasten the end of the game, thus to ultimately win.

Examples

A simple example occurs frequently in baseball when there are
baserunners on first and third with no outs and a hard ground ball is
hit to the shortstop. The shortstop will often let the runner on third
score, and choose instead to turn the double play. Although a
preventable run is allowed to score, the team on defense has gained a
positional advantage in that they have recorded two outs and eliminated
a runner from the basepaths.

In another example, a sacrifice in one game in order to achieve an
advantage in a game played at a later date might be done in a situation
with a lopsided score, or when the later game has more importance than
the current game (for example, it occurs during the playoffs).