strategies
there are two basic decision making strategies. you can maximize the chances of the best possible outcome. or you can minimize the chances of the worst possible outcome. in a trivial game with two outcomes, win/lose, the strategies are equivalent. things get a lot more interesting when there are three possibilities, win/lose/draw. the classic illustration goes like this: your navy can go around an island to the east or to the west. if you go west you will lose yo-many ships. if you go east it depends on the weather. if the skies are clear the enemy will easily find your ships and sink them. if it's cloudy the enemy will have trouble finding them and sink fewer. if you follow the max-best strategy you go east and hope for cloudy skies. on the other hand, the min-worst strategy is to go west. it'd be nice to say one of these strategies is always better than the other. but it's not. it totally depends on what's at stake. i'm a big fan of min-worst. i only go with max-best when the worst case isn't significantly different from the draw case. heh. which i guess is pretty much never. i don't even buy lottery tickets where the worst case is i'm out $1. heh, i'm a true conservative.