This stuck out to me:<p>&gt; Even under some very tolerant assumptions, the expected payoff from playing on, for either player, was greater than the expected payoff from accepting the repetition.<p>Payoff, sure. But it&#x27;s well-known that the marginal utility of money is not linear, which means people tend to value money differently based on how much of it they have (poor people value a dollar more than rich people). This indirectly means some level of risk aversion is actually an optimal choice. Turning down a gamble, even if the expected payout is positive, can be rational.<p>This is well studied in economic theory: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenstern_utility_theorem#Automatic_consideration_of_risk_aversion" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenster...</a>