A gambit is a reminder of life’s trade-offs. In the game of chess, a player can sacrifice pieces early in the game to gain a positional advantage. Is this risky move it worth it? An aggressive player would answer it’s worth it, because the positional advantage gives players an edge. A more defensive player would disagree, because being down on material is something to avoid. This may seem like a discussion, but it’s not. Both are correct. Their statements are both true and useless. They are correct because the effects are well identified. But it’s useless because the matter at hand is a trade-off. It demands a further investigation into the magnitude of each effect, to determine if, on average, a gambit is worth it. In this blog, I propose to find the trade-offs of such unusual things. Every policy, every action, has negative effects on someone.
