“Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.”
A winning move repeated becomes expected and loses; vary with the situation endlessly.
Chapter 6’s psychological close begins: do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory — let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances. The verse follows the water imagery deliberately: the flow that found the low ground once will not find it again, because the enemy has watched it flow. Success publishes your pattern; repetition is how the enemy reads it.
A startup wins its first enterprise accounts with a brilliant tactic — the founder-led "reverse demo," building the client’s own use case live. It becomes the company’s signature, requested in every deal. By the twentieth run, procurement teams have a prepared counter and competitors run the same format. The tactic is still executed beautifully. It now loses reliably, because its success is exactly what taught everyone to defend it.
Variety is not novelty-chasing — the verse regulates methods by circumstances, not by fashion. A tactic should repeat when the ground still rewards it; the discipline is checking whether it still does. And principles never rotate: honesty with the ledger, concentration of force, knowing the ground. Only the tactical layer is forbidden from becoming tradition.