Positive-Sum Games and Zero-Sum Games are important. Positive-Sum Games are win-win games. Zero-Sum Games are win-lose games. When you put them together in a sequence, you can understand others’ strategies. They also help you build your own (See A Spy’s Guide To Strategy for how those sequences work). Negative-Sum Games don’t matter as much for strategies. Most of the time. They don’t matter because people usually avoid lose-lose games. You see it when you drive. Drivers are

When you’re figuring out the other side’s strategy, you start with their Endgame. That’s because most people follow the first rule of strategy: Look forward and reason backward. Strategies are built when people imagine an Endgame. From there, they reason backward. They build a strategy for getting the people, places and things for their Endgame to exist. Most strategies look like this: To learn more about this sequence, read A Spy’s Guide To Strategy. But sometimes you don’t