Tricks of the game

New project management software was recently implemented, and it was difficult to understand. One colleague said he was having great success once he started using it, and that one just has to learn “the tricks of the game”. Meaning, one will have better success once one understands all features and shortcuts the software offers. This is a nice conflation of “rules of the game” (general standards, guidelines, or governing principles of how something is done) and “tricks of the trade” (certain clever techniques used to do something more easily or efficiently). Perhaps the speaker was thinking of taking tricks in a card game. A big thanks to Verbatim for reporting this one to Malaphor Central!