always up for a challenge, I am.
They don't help matters by going and carving each other up on a personal basis every day," Mr. Davis said. "Kerns and Buyer are gaming this in an inappropriate fashion. Each one of them has come to me to try to get the other guy out. It ain't going to work that way." we don't have the entire context, but it seems clear that Kerns and Buyer are each trying to *manipulate the outcome of the situation. thus we could eschew obfuscation by saying: "Burns and Keyer are maneuvering in an inapropriate fashion." gaming makes it sound (at best, benefit of doubt) like they're involved in some Think Tank which is tooled (:-Þ) with Gaming Theory.
if I really felt the need to make a games analogy, I might go for "jockeying" or "finessing" or (taking a closer look at the context) "end-running".
