Risk Analysis: How to know when to fold

League is a game about getting an advantage and keeping it so that you can ride that to victory, that shouldn't be that revolutionary to anyone. But what people do time and time again is fail to understand the cost vs. benefit of many situations. For example, trading a kill for a kill may seem like an obvious example of an equal trade but it almost never is. A very basic example yes but it is at the core of the game as a whole. If you can get a hold on what the value of an action is you are able to make the best use of the resources you have at hand to create an advantage and abuse it.

To Dive or Not to Dive

Playing with a large group of friends I have people who run the gambit from their first game to 2.2k, this allows to me get an idea of some of the biggest mistakes people make and the most common I see is the ill-fated tower dive. Too often have I seen someone decide they need to go and kill that quarter HP Alistar, only to immediately regret that decision. Tower diving is one of the riskiest things to try and pull off at any point in the game regardless of how ahead you are. There are so many variables to take in consideration and if one is ignored it can easily lead to a snowballing lane.

• Who are you diving? One of the obvious is the champion that you intend to dive. There are certain champions that you generally avoid diving due to their ability to not die (see soraka) or have CC to distract you long enough for the tower to do its job (Alistar). Either way don’t dive Blitz he is the definition of both of these things and diving him is a near death sentence.

• Are you on a spree? If so generally diving is a no-no. Giving the enemy 400 something gold may not seem much but that is the difference between a pick axe and some pots and a BF sword. If you are ahead that far in lane then you should be playing the Zoning game and try to avoid being at their tower at all cost

• Where are the minions? If you have a big wave in the middle of the lane and you want to go dive someone please don’t. Creeps are ALWAYS a more reliable source of income no matter what point in the game it is. 20-30 creeps is a kill worth of gold and 12 creep spawn a minute, so if you have a chunk of creeps in lane and you are going to be out of lane dead then you shouldn't be under that tower.

• What are your CDs? Too many times have I seen an ally dive only to hear him say moments later " So lucky I had 10 seconds left on Flash". You need to always have your CDs in mind as well as the CDs of the enemy champ so that you don’t just die for a few minutes of CD.
You need to have all of these in mind when you decide to pull the trigger underneath the tower.

Baron

The highest risk and reward thing in the game. The Buff it gives has an amazing gold value that can bring back even the most deprived team from the depths of oblivion. That is great in all but Nashor does some major damage and often takes proper shuffling of damage to deal with. This can be easily done by most teams but if found that can spell the end for almost any team.

• Is smite up? If not then you shouldn’t be even thinking about baron, that damage to secure the buff is necessary unless you have someone like Nunu or Cho'Gath who have large minion nukes to take the kill at the last second.

• Where is the enemy? If you manage to catch a vital champion on the enemy team at bottom then it might be time to get that sweet sweet purple stones to match your new outfit.

• Wards? You need to have proper ward coverage so that you know when the enemy is going to come or not come. Also always know where the enemy's wards are so you can play around them and maximize your control of knowledge between your team and their team.

Those are the two highest risk situations that you can get into and some of the basics ways to understand the risks associated with them so you can minimize the risk so that you have the highest probability of succession.