Matrix (1954)

Matrix is an older boardgame from 1954 based on classical mathematical game theory of games with simultaneous selection of actions from a payoff matrix. The game has 2 phases: First the two players (or 1 player vs several, in a multi-player variant) first take turns placing their 8 tiles valued 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7 on a 4x4 square grid to create a payoff matrix which will be more favorable for them than for the opponent. Then simultaneously one player chooses a row and the other a column for that payoff matrix to earn points, i.e. directly playing a classical game theoretic game, until one side reaches 25 points. The multi-player variant in fact gives no upper bound on the number of players, but the example uses 4 players.