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You have 24 hours in a day. Will you let someone steal your hours?

A zero-sum game is a situation where one person's gain is equal to another person's loss. The term is used in game theory, economics, and other contexts.

Examples

Games: Chess, poker, bridge, and Monopoly are all zero-sum games.

Trading: Options and futures trading on the stock market are zero-sum games.

Relationships: Zero-sum thinking can occur in relationships when one partner's win is perceived as the other partner's loss.

Negotiations: A negotiator might think that they can only gain at the expense of the other party.

Key characteristics

The net gain for the game is zero.

The total gains of the participants minus the total losses equals zero.

The supply of resources is fixed and can't shrink or grow.

The game only allows for the redistribution of the initial amount of resources.

Related concepts

The opposite of a zero-sum game is a positive-sum game, where the losses and gains are greater than zero. Most trades are positive-sum games.

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