RISK: The Decision Matrix: Strategies That Win

All games, RISK included, are matrices in which one decision affects another. Successful players visualize how each separate choice contributes to the entire strategy and fashion a winning game plan; they make smart tradeoffs and gambits, allocate scarce resources wisely, and even sacrifice outright in order to win. Alan Axelrod—one of the world’s great experts on decision-making—evaluates the decisions made by leaders in the realms of diplomacy, agriculture, economics, politics, war, business, and technology. Some choices produced positive results, others negative, and a few had mixed—even entirely unexpected—outcomes. Both the good and the bad are equally valuable instructional tools for those who want to master decision making in complex, high-stakes environments: the very world in which we all live, move, and decide.