http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IAmNotLeftHanded

Superman had always figured that he and the Flash had the same level of Super Speed — until the Flash decided to stop powerwalking.

Inigo: I admit it: you are better than I am!

Man in Black: Then why are you smiling?

Inigo: Because I know something you don't know.

Man in Black: And what is that?

Inigo: I am not left-handed! [switches the sword to his right hand and starts driving him back] The Princess Bride I admit it: you are better than I am!Then why are you smiling?Because I know something you don't know.And what is that?I am not left-handed! [switches the sword to his right hand and starts driving him back]

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When someone fights dirty by holding back, but now decides it's time to take it up a notch.

The situation varies from example to example. A common example is for a character to fight with their non-dominant hand, as in the trope-naming example, only to switch back to their dominant hand to gain an edge. Similar to this is pretending that they have a serious handicap, then deciding to stop the charade. It can also go so far as a character revealing that they have always had a superpower which they now decide to exploit, or a Dangerous Forbidden Technique which they now have no option but to utilize. The most common subversions are for the other character to also be not left-handed, or for the character to remark, "Yes I am," after he switches hands. (Or if the writer is being subtle about doubling up on this trope, that the character is later revealed as ambidextrous a.k.a "both-handed".)

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Villains can invoke this trope, as well. For more information on that, see our Analysis page.

Has a couple of sub-tropes:

Heroic Examples:

Neutral Examples:

Villainous Examples:

May be preceded by a "World of Cardboard" Speech. Use of this trope, especially in sequence, can result in transfer of the Advantage Ball. See also: The Gloves Come Off, Restraining Bolt, Power Limiter, Willfully Weak, Just Toying with Them, Cherry Tapping, and Fake Weakness. Also compare Let's Get Dangerous!. Note that Forgot About His Powers is not this trope, as it has nothing to do with deliberately holding back for calculated reasons.

May contain unmarked spoilers.

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Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Comic Books

Comic Strips

Fan Works

Films  Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Video Games

Visual Novels

Gilgamesh of Fate/stay night is easily capable of defeating any of the Servants simply by raining an endless number of Noble Phantasms down on them. However, he does not subscribe to overkill theory; even though he uses overwhelming force in battle, he could easily use even more, but chooses not to. Most notable is his refusal to bring out Ea, a sword capable of destroying worlds, unless very impressed or in significant danger. Even then he never uses more than a small fraction of Ea's true power, since destroying the planet he's standing on would be a very stupid thing to do.

In Sharin no Kuni when Kenichi fights Houzuki, he finds out that Houzuki's leg is actually completely fine, and promptly loses the fight as a result.

Web Animation

RWBY: Vernal is the Spring Maiden, one of the most powerful entities in the world, capable of summoning incredible Elemental Powers that no one but another Maiden can hope to match. Before her fight with Weiss, her boss Raven tells her not to bother using her powers; Weiss isn't worth it. Vernal wins, but it later turns out this was a Red Herring . Vernal is just a decoy, and Raven the real Spring Maiden; Raven made sure to give that order where everyone could hear it so that they wouldn't question why Vernal wasn't using her powers

In Death Battle, since these fights are duels to the death, character limitations such as Thou Shalt Not Kill and Willfully Weak are thrown out the window to determine who would win. By doing this, one character's potential could easily skyrocket to surpass their opponents.

Web Comics

Web Videos

The New Adventures of Captain S: In the final showdown between Captain S and the Game Genie, Captain S seems to have the Genie's number before the Genie proclaimed "We're not *snort* left-handed." and proceeded to transform into his true form

After failing to do any damage to Malachite in Suburban Knights using their costumed weapons (which makes sense since they were mostly just props) everyone abandons their "characters" (Lupa stops acting princessy, Linkara starts using his magic gun, Angry Joe gets out his weapon arsenal, etc.) It still doesn't work though since Malachite is a dark mage while everyone else are mostly un-powered nerds.

Atop the Fourth Wall: On the subject of Linkara's magic gun a.k.a. Margaret, she has been holding back her full strength most of the time. There are a couple of sneak peeks of it in the "Silent Hill: Dead/Alive" and "Silent Hill: The Grinning Man]]" reviews, but we don't really properly see the gun cut loose until Star Wars 3D #1.

has been holding back full strength most of the time. There are a couple of sneak peeks of it in the "Silent Hill: Dead/Alive" and "Silent Hill: The Grinning Man]]" reviews, but we don't really properly see the gun cut loose until Star Wars 3D #1. In Noob, Gaea is a notable hoarder of both money and precious items and a Dirty Coward when it comes to combat. However, if she's cornered into combat and has her mind set on winning, she does NOT consider her most powerful items to be Too Awesome to Use .

Western Animation

Real Life

Rafael Nadal, a 19-time Grand Slam champion in tennis, is right-handed, but he learned to play left-handed for purely strategic reasons; there are not too many lefties in tennis so opponents can find it difficult to adjust to playing against. In particular, it helped him become the only player to consistently beat Roger Federer (arguably the greatest player of all time) because Federer's one-handed backhand is vulnerable to Nadal's lefty forehand.

In a boxing match on November 4, 1947, left-handed fighter Mike Collins emerged from his corner in a right-handed stance and then shifted into a left-handed stance, flooring his opponent and winning the match in four seconds.

It's common knowledge that professional wrestling is largely a staged fight but what isn't common knowledge is that a large part of the training is learning how to hold back so as to not seriously injure the opponent, and for the wrestlers to willingly cooperate in order to reduce injury. In essence, every match has the wrestlers fighting "left-handed". While professional wrestling moves are meant more for show than for actual practical application, often telegraphing most severely, it's safe to say that if some of those moves were performed in earnest, they would hurt. A lot. To further illustrate this point, a lot of old school wrestlers-turned-trainers (such as Stu Hart) were legit amateur wrestlers and made a point of training their students to really wrestle and grapple fight.

Billiards and particularly snooker players sometimes switch hands to avoid awkward stretching across the table; some even actively train to become near-ambidextrous. However, only superstar Ronnie O'Sullivan will sometimes play entire frames left-handed just to mess with his opponent's head. Opinions differ on whether this is pure awesome or just jerkassery. O'Sullivan once received a formal complaint about being disrespectful after playing left-handed. In response, he claimed that he could play left-handed better than his opponent could play right-handed. He wasn't disciplined because he proceeded to play three games in a row against a professional, left-handed, and won all three.

Many left-handed people will have found themselves in situations where the opposite applies. For whatever reason you will be forced to do something with your right hand and because of this will generally be pretty bad at it, but then when you get the chance to use your left hand you will surprise everyone at how much better you are. A common example is using something designed for right-handed people, then switching to something that can be used by either hand.

A famous example is the "Rumble in the Jungle" fight between heavyweight boxers Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. While everyone knows the story now, back then, people had no idea Ali was intentionally holding back and letting Foreman pound him on the ropes. He told everybody who would listen that he was going to dance and make Foreman look silly, but he was bluffing. He knew Foreman was too powerful to stick and move because all it would take was one good shot by the big man to seriously hurt him. So he laid on the ropes until Foreman punched himself into exhaustion, then he knocked him out. Ali, afterwards, called the tactic the "rope-a-dope".

Justified in the case of Károly Takács, an Olympic pistol shooter. He was already a world-class marksman when he suffered injuries to his right hand whilst handling a faulty grenade, whilst serving in the Hungarian Army. Determined to continue his shooting career, however, he trained using his left hand and eventually went on to win two gold medals in the 1948 and 1952 Olympic Games.

A similar case to this is the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in World War I, but continued his pianist career by commissioning works for the left hand alone by many prominent composers of the day, most notably Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.

Also this talent show performance.

Common when nations with a superior technologically advanced military attack a nation with an inferior and primitive military to keep civilian casualties low or avoid total destruction of the country's limited infrastructure. Sometimes an objective becomes so important to neutralize that they unleash their full might to achieve it (innocent bystanders and collateral damage be damned), showing they could actually annihilate everything if they really wanted to. Moreover, they never seriously consider using a Nuke 'em to just end the conflict in 15 minutes.

Used in Cricket. While a batsman's handedness is usually known to everyone by the time they get to top level, sufficiently nimble ones can switch stances while the bowler is in mid-bowl (mid-pitch). Since players on the field in cricket are positioned asymmetrically, this completely throws off the attempted formation.

Golf, a sport in which left-handed play is pretty rare at the top level, has some illustrations of this trope. Played straight by Phil Mickelson, probably the most successful left-handed player in history; in golf circles, if you make a reference to "Lefty", everyone knows you're talking about him. Mickelson does everything else right-handed — he learned to play golf as a child by mirroring what his father did while facing him; his father played right-handed. An inversion: All-time great Ben Hogan was actually left-handed, but played right-handed. Both played straight and averted by 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir. Like Mickelson, he's a natural righty but learned to play golf as a lefty. In Weir's case, it was largely because he was a left-handed shot in his first sport of (ice) hockey (he's Canadian). note Handedness in ice hockey is based on the side from which a player normally shoots. Most Canada-trained players are taught to play with their dominant hand on top of the stick, meaning that forehand shots will come from the side opposite their dominant hand. This is thought to be the main reason why left-handed golf play is much more common in Canada than in almost any other country. While he enjoyed considerable junior golf success as a lefty, he had people telling him that he might be an even better player if he switched to right-handed play. He decided to write a letter to a pretty well-known golfer whom he had met at an exhibition when he was 11... none other than Jack Nicklaus. The Golden Bear quickly wrote back, telling Weir that if he felt comfortable playing left-handed, he should stick with it. Weir plays left-handed to this day.

As part of a prank, a nerdy girl asked two new Muay Thai trainers at a gym to spar with her . She goes a few rounds letting them think she's an unskilled newbie before proceeding to school them since that nerdy girl is actually Germaine Yeap, a professional Muay Thai fighter.

. She goes a few rounds letting them think she's an unskilled newbie before proceeding to school them since that nerdy girl is actually Germaine Yeap, a professional Muay Thai fighter. Michael Vick, considered one of the most athletic quarterbacks in the history of the NFL, and one of the biggest What Could Have Beens, throws left-handed, despite being right-handed. He was so good as a child, the neighborhood kids made him throw with his left hand, and it stuck.

This is a common strategy used by chess hustlers. They'll play a few games with someone with no money at stake, and play deliberately poorly to make the opponent think they're weak. Then they'll get them to make a bet on the next game, and start playing for real.

On a broader sense, few military powers respond with the full strength of their arsenal to threats anymore, least of all the nuclear ones. The reason is that doing so would result in a lot of neutral civilian casualties. Perhaps one of the greatest illustrations of this trope comes from Fallujah when over a hundred insurgents barricaded themselves in a booby-trapped three-story apartment building. The US Army's response was to simply blow the whole thing up using a single tank since there was no risk to civilians. In less than an hour, all the insurgents were dead with no other casualties. This is also the case because should one country start using nuclear weapons, the rest will probably do so also, and, well, good night, world. Another reason for a military to hold back is to prevent other militaries from learning the full extent of their capability until it's absolutely necessary. This has included the Allies refusing to act on intelligence from captured German and Japanese transmissions because they didn't want the enemy to know they'd broken their codes, instead waiting for a sufficiently valuable opportunity to present itself.

