Thanks R2L and No Quarter.
I think the whole idea of "game or cur" is an insane idea. Like saying "mouth or no mouth," or "air or no air." The truth is, dogs have degrees of gameness, degrees of mouth, degrees of stamina, etc., and all we as breeders try to do is to breed to dogs who have a HIGH degree of all these things.
Most dogs we breed to do NOT have "100% killer mouth," or "100% tireless stamina," or "100% dead gameness" under any and all circumstances ... and yet most of the dogs we breed to DO have a high degree of all of these things when compared to other dogs. It's the same thing with ability. There are almost zero "100% perfect athletes," but hopefully we're all breeding to dogs with a high degree of athleticism.
I agree with most people that gameness is the #1 trait to breed for, and I don't want to breed to any dog that looks or acts like it's going to quit (let alone to any dog that has quit), but if some dog had a HUGE degree of ability, stamina, and enough gameness to go down to the very bitter end against world class opposition ... and it wasn't quite 100% game ... I sure would still think a lot of that dog, because most dogs people are breeding to at home would not have gone that far.
Sure, maybe in some ways it's better to breed to the dog that whipped him ... but (take the original Ch Nico for example) not always. Gr Ch IBM may have outlasted Ch Nico, and Ch Nico might not have been 100% DG, but looking at their production records, I would rather breed to Ch Nico any day than Gr Ch IBM.
So there is a lot more to it than just "game or cur" ...
Jack