The essence of game theory

If you sat down next to somebody in an airport waiting lounge and asked them to be your friend and give you a hundred dollars they'd probably move away and find somewhere else to sit. If on the other hand you told them that you'd just heard from your pal at the reception desk that there was going to be a delay to the flight you'd be likely to have no problem in striking up a friendly conversation with them.

These are common sense predictions as to the outcomes of two initial communication exchanges. If a variety of different initial approaches could be tried out and analysed, some general rules might emerge to enable you to work out a general strategy for getting friendly with people in airport waiting lounges.

This is the way games theory works. A number of tactics are tried and from the results of these tries some general rules might emerge that can be used in a "rule of thumb" strategy that will lead to a reasonable degree of success in any future similar circumstances.

This is the essence of the Zen-ness that has been mentioned previously in this book. The rules that emerge are not hard and fast rules that work every time, they are "best guess" tactics that are likely to give the best results over a period of time.

All strategic game players must acquire this knack of seeing situations as if they were likely to be repeated often - even if they aren't. This is the only way to achieve success in conditions of uncertainty and competition. It's a simple mental trick to think of yourself as having to decide what play to make if you had to use a single play in one hundred identical situations. The question to be answered is, "What play would be likely to be right the most times". This trick allows you to make a statistically optimum choice. This is the essence of game theory and is the Zen-ness that makes it appear to others that successful players seem to have all the luck.

Using game theory as an abstract modelling environment, it can be used to devise a suitable strategy in any competitive game playing situation where there is uncertainty and unknowns. The environment of the Internet is just such a situation: where the game is to compete for co-operation. A superior strategy here would see the user of the strategy being a likely winner to secure the co-operation of others and thus be able to participate more successfully in collaborative ventures to create wealth.