You should first seek to win. However, once you've determined that you will lose, your attention should divert from winning to not losing too badly. It becomes about losing well enough that you can live to fight another day. You see this in professional sports. Once a coach has determined the battle is lost, he pulls his best players from the floor as not to risk unnecessary strain, exhaustion or injury. The coach recognizes it makes no difference to lose by 10 points or to lose by 20 points; a loss is still a loss at the end of the day. And so he makes decisions to ensure his team can live to win another day. This requires shoving one's ego down at the bottom of their shoe. But, that's a write-up for some other time.