The worst payoffs are the (1, 4) and (4, 1) payoffs in the prisoner’s dilemma of game 2 in chapter 1. The first of these is worst for the column player, and the second is worst for the row player. These represent the outcome of one player’s taking the other’s holdings without anything in trade—hence theft rather than exchange.

DEFINE: Clarifies the distinction between theft and exchange through game-theory payoff structure: theft is the extreme where one player takes without giving anything in return.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 989