I'm not sure your statement is doing it justice. The idea that a combination of two losing things can be a winning thing specifically doesn't seem intuitive.

I'm not sure your statement is doing it justice. The idea that a combination of two losing things can be a winning thing specifically doesn't seem intuitive. Lots of game-theoretic analyses involve decomposing a complex game into different situatons and trying to solve each situation seperately. Especially for hidden information games with multiple rounds (eg Poker or card games generally). The assumption underlying this approach is by combining winning strategies together you can approximate an overall optimal solution breaks down in the face of this given that you might need to include all combinations of losing things also since those losing strategies may combine to form a winning strategy overall.