Positive-Sum Game Audit
Ask of any endeavour: is this win-win, win-lose, or lose-lose — externalities included?
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 80%
Boeree treats life as a stack of games and uses their payoff structure as a guiding star: is what I'm doing win-win, win-lose, or lose-lose? Poker is zero-sum by definition — her win is someone's loss — and around 2013 that pushed her to ask whether she wanted 'she was good at check-raising' on her gravestone. The subtlety is that no game is purely zero-sum in practice: even a chess match produces externalities, both players improve, a friendship deepens or sours. So the audit means classifying the direct payoff and then honestly factoring the externalities, which often reveals a game to be more positive- or negative-sum than it first appeared. War is the archetypal negative-sum game; deliberately steering work toward win-win is the constructive move. Crucially, it's permissible to play a selfish game — as long as you don't delude yourself it's doing good.
Origin
After years in zero-sum poker, Boeree began asking around 2013 whether her work was net-positive for the world. Building Raising for Effective Giving showed her how to layer a win-win onto a win-lose game, and the framing became a personal philosophy she now spreads through her YouTube work.
Core principles
- 01Any interaction, industry or career can be viewed as a game with a sum type
- 02Classify it honestly: win-win, win-lose, or lose-lose
- 03There is no truly zero-sum game in reality — every interaction has externalities
- 04War is the archetypal negative-sum game; collaboration can turn a win-lose into a win-win
- 05It's fine to play a selfish short-term game, but don't delude yourself that it's doing good
How to run it
- 1
Frame it as a game
Treat the interaction, industry or career you're examining as a game with players and payoffs.
- 2
Classify the direct payoff
Decide whether the immediate outcome is win-win, win-lose, or lose-lose.
- 3
Add the externalities
List the second-order effects the simple framing ignores — skills, relationships, reputational and societal costs.
Pro tip Remember no real game is purely zero-sum once externalities count.
- 4
Re-judge honestly
Re-classify the game with externalities included and ask whether you're merely optimising a short-term self-win.
Watch out Don't tell yourself a self-serving game is 'good' just because you skipped this step.
- 5
Redesign toward win-win
Where you can, restructure the activity so more players benefit, as she did by layering charity onto poker.
Pro tip A win-win layer can redeem an otherwise zero-sum pursuit.
In the wild
Around 2013 Boeree realised everything she did was zero-sum: 'I win, you lose.' She asked whether she wanted her gravestone to read that she was really good at check-raising people in a certain position. That reframing pushed her toward effective altruism and, eventually, out of pure poker into work she judged more positive-sum — spreading awareness of win-win versus win-lose dynamics.
→ A career pivot from zero-sum play toward positive-sum work.
Common mistakes
Assuming a game is truly zero-sum
Ignoring externalities hides real gains and harms; every interaction ripples beyond the immediate win or loss.
Self-deception about doing good
Playing a selfish short-term game is defensible; pretending it benefits the world when it doesn't is the actual error.
Is it for you?
Best for
People choosing a career, business model, or way of competing who want their work to actually benefit the world.
Not ideal for
Trivial one-off interactions where the overhead of a full externality audit isn't worth it.
From the transcript
“having it as just a philosophy like a guide star: is what I'm doing a win-win thing or is it a win-lose or actually could…”
“in reality there's no such thing as an actual zero-sum game... there's always externalities even to these zero-sum games”
From the episode
Liv Boeree: Poker Rules Of Life, Game Theory, AI & Effective Altruism
Liv Boeree