@juergen_hubert anyone (caught) trying your "second best" strategy would be immediately fired if it was my company. There is no place for such underhanded and dishonest people in any company.
If you work a professional job, the strategy should be to act professional. If that doesn't work at your company then your "best strategy" will become self-fulfilling.
@sgryphon How do you prove it?
I mean, any company who uses stack ranking already shows that they have no understanding of what motivates people, so I doubt that they are going to be good at catching this kind of sabotage.