Each prisoner thus has to chose to betray the other or to remain silent. The Pareto optimal case is that both stay silent. However, each player's dominant strategy is to confess.

This Demonstration illustrates a very common game theory concept, that the Pareto optimal strategy is not always the dominant strategy. The initial settings of the sliders , , (.5 , 5 , and 10) are very common values used in the prisoner's dilemma problem to show this. As a matter of fact, any setting where and will similarly lead to the same situation. However, you can set the sliders so that the dominant strategy of both prisoners is not to confess.