The Egg Smashing Tournament

Question

My cousins and I have a annual egg breaking tournament. First, each of us gets a hard boiled egg. Then, in a bracket tournament style, a pair of us face off in an egg breaking round: one person holds their egg, and their opponent smashes their own egg into the first's egg. Whoever's egg shell stays unbroken wins that round, and moves on, and the other person is eliminated.

This goes on in the regular tournament style, until one of us is declared the champion, and receives fame, glory, and a year's worth of bragging rights.

So my question is: what is the optimal strategy to win this game? Specifically:

Do I want to be the smasher or the smashee?
How tightly or loosely should I hold my egg? 
If I'm smashing, which part of my egg should I use. 
If I'm getting smashed, which part of the egg should I try to get hit? 
What angle should I use to smash when I'm the smasher?

Misc.nerdiness · Answer

If you want to smash another person's egg, you simply need a firm grip around the base of the egg (the wide end) and attack with the narrow end of the egg pointed at the other person's egg. The science behind this is the physics of pressure
$$
P=F/A
$$
P for pressure, F for force and A for area.
When the narrow end of your egg hits the side of another egg 2 things happen:

The narrowness of your end will make sure that even though you're applying the same force as you would otherwise, the egg that you are smashing will be more likely to smash with this added pressure.
The shell behind the narrow end adds more support to it, much like the way that a pyramid's shape helps it not fall down. This should help prevent your own egg from smashing as you hit the other.

The Egg Smashing Tournament

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