A ZERO-SUM GAME is a situation in which what is gained by one person or group is lost by another.
Here is an example that describes what a zero-sum situation is:
To understand zero-sum games, it is helpful to think of the following example: If I have a slice of pizza and my brother has none, our collective wealth is ZERO. If he takes my pizza away from me, our collective wealth will still be zero. So in a zero-sum game, the collective wealth (= what we have together) remains the same, it is just a matter of how we divide it up between us. Therefore a zero-sum game is always highly competitive because your gain (= what you get) will be someone else’s loss (=what you lose or cannot keep/get).
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