That's a flawed characterization that keeps getting repeated.

As I explain in another comment below, in theory you could get your favorite candidate to win by further downranking the candidate who would otherwise win. One way of accomplishing that is to move other candidates up higher above your actual preferred candidate.

But in reality, there's no way to know what the exact precise vote breakdowns will be, so voting strategically (lying about your preferences) is impossible in a practical sense. There's no intuition to develop -- just vote your preferences.