Catan is a great game, and a great series. I play all the expansions and variations of Catan and some of our own design. It's nice to read an article proclaiming the lessons of investment and risk management learned from games. I would venture to say most games are about risk management. In Catan it's easier to see the value of initial investment versus distribution than in other games like Monopoly or Cash Flow, because the market does not change and the statistics of dice rolls are visualized on the board. The most important thing that is not seen is the availability of resources which do not always match the statistical normals. So to "fix" this you can use what is called a "dice deck" which is a deck of cards of all possible rolls of 2 six sided dice, So it becomes a game of WHEN something is rolled instead of IF it is rolled, further helping you manage your risk.