A persistent stalemate over ownership and resource allocation, of everything from beluga caviar to energy resources, has hung over the Caspian Sea ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Looking to help advance the discussion over the Caspian toward as efficient and equitable an outcome as possible, scientists are taking a stab at the decades-old dispute by applying game theory and related methods, which use mathematics to study of competition and cooperation and have predominantly been used by economists and sociologists.