MIT instructors Philip B. Tan and Jason Begy open a session of CMS.608 Game Design by examining how skill, chance, and information availability combine to shape strategy in games. They discuss how shifting the balance among these elements changes the player experience, moving from pure chance to pure skill and the middle ground where most games live. Illustrative clips include celebrating Red Sox fans, a Britain's Got Talent audition, a Japanese Shinto shrine festival, and a news segment on a scratch-off lottery winner, used to ground abstract design concepts in recognizable real-world examples. The lecture draws on Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber's Challenges for Game Designers and William Poundstone's writing on game theory. Part of the Fall 2010 offering of MIT's CMS.608/CMS.864 Game Design course, available through MIT OpenCourseWare.