The whole play to win/play to have fun thing is, I guess, inextricably tied to people's personalities. Some people can differentiate better than others. Anyway, I agree that they aren't mutually exclusive, but I strongly denounce the idea that they're the same.
I agree. It's a matter of priorities really, and focus. To TRULY focus on winning, to really rise high in the ranks, winning must be singular focus. It's not quite as true in something relatively passive like DOMINION, but in sport, winning often means a singular focus, at the full-expense of recreation. Your winning BECOMES the fun and that victory is generally only enjoyed briefly at its culmination. The enjoyment is brief, because you must then singularly focus on winning the next one.
Note Lombardi's quotes on this subject, where winning is the breath of life and there's no time for "entertainment", your entertainment is your success and vice-versa, that's it, that's how obsessive you must be with winning to truly rise to the highest echelon. Most pro-athletes don't enjoy the game they play that much anymore, it becomes a job. It has to become a job, in order for them to succeed.
But I stray too far from the original intent of the thread.
I concur that advice to opponents has to be handled with etiquette and with some awareness of how your opponent handles/absorbs advice as a whole.
With my wife, what worked best was talking about a board before we started. I'd ask her what she thought about playing and then I'd point things out like, "you've reached for two terminals in the first two turns, remember when you did that last time and both cards collided?". Or nudges like, "maybe this board isn't that strong and money might be a better focus with just a few actions for support"?
I generally tend to ask questions, as if I am unsure myself (hey I often am), so it makes it seem that we're both helping each other out (and in a way we are).
Here's the thing, some people use DOMINION as a social exercise. In other words, it's the social aspect we enjoy most. For my wife and I, we play for an hour, shortly after dinner. The kids have done their homework, I'm well-fed, the chores are mostly done and we can relax and enjoy something frivolous. Dominion is a relatively fast, fun game. But when I played frequently on iso and read the articles here, I "artificially" vaulted ahead of her skills. This took away the central reason why we played, to just relax and have fun. It took it away, because my wife could no longer compete.
Now I can go back to focusing primarily on "winning" again. I shift the priorities. They are NOT mutually exclusive, but they are a kind of balancing act. How you tip those scales comes to personal taste and the personalities of your opponent. One soccer team I play with, is hyper-competitive. There's not much chit-chat at practice and practices are vocal when you suck or screw up. There's no mincing of words. Other pick-up games are friendlier. You distribute the ball to weaker players because you know they need practice. You tend to congratulate your opponents more when they play well (because next week they might be on your team). The priorities shift, and it produces a different type of game, that has equal value, but for different reasons.
Some people can't transition from one to the other. In particular some people see any competition as a singular, obsessive focus. I get that. I know people like that and they tend to be great players in any endeavor (and tend to be excellent workmates because I think this focus is tied to work ethic too). But I also really enjoy games where the competition is taken down a notch, where the beer and the pretzels come out and the amount of laughter during a game rises exponentially. That, for me, is an important aspect of gaming too.