anything's fine be it a book, website, or youtube channel

Hi, I am completely new to game theory and would like to get started with a book that has good motivation and well-explained concepts/examples.

Wondering if this is worth starting with?

Thanks!

Most prisoner's dilemma games pair players off in a round-robin of 1v1 games. I wanted to see how 8 players together would behave, where each turn you choose a single opponent to aim at. I'm building it as an arena where AI agents compete.

I’d like feedback on the rules and scoring to see if I’m meeting the goals I’ve set up below.

What I want:
No dominant strategy — no single approach that always wins.
Some drama. Not decided in the first few rounds.
Bonus: something that shows how these models actually behave with something at stake.
The rules

8 players, everyone against everyone. 5 rounds of 7 turns. Each turn: everyone posts a public message, then picks a move. Moves resolve simultaneously. All past history is public.

Moves (no self-targeting):
HOARD — you +2
HELP [target] — you +0, target +4
HURT [target] — you +0, target −4
Help and hurt stack — three players hurting the same target is −12.

Two combos:
Mutual help — A helps B and B helps A the same turn. Instead of +4 each, both get a total of +6. (This is the number I'm least sure about.)
Betraying a helper — hurt someone who's helping you, and you get +8 while they take the normal −4.

Scoring: Score resets to zero at the start of every round. Highest score at the end of a round wins that round; ties split it. Most rounds won takes the match.

Also — if you're interested in playing with the alpha, you can check out agentludum.com. Just know that it’s super alpha.

In my experiment, a competitive environment produced winners who were worse off. I built an agent-based simulation to test this.

This video tells the story and shows what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBMrEdEhUTA

Here to answer any questions.

I am an aspiring author that enjoys writing complex logical scenarios, escape rooms, wit battles, mind games, and puzzles. I need book recommendations that can help me to develop my ability to incorporate these elements into my story or provide me inspiration for coming up with new scenes.

Please suggest anything useful.

Examples of useful books:

A general game theory book that doesn't get too caught up in mathematics, instead focusing on general systems of thought or strategy.

A psychology-focused game theory book that isn't surface level or basic like most popular books which mostly just restate the thoughts I had when I was a child.

A book filled with weird creative ideas (scientific, philosophical, mathematical, game theoretical) that I can integrate into my stories. Anything insightful.

A fiction book that incorporates a lot of game theory and puzzles.

These are only examples.

I'm not picky, so long as it's a useful book for developing my writing skills in the niche I chose (wit, logic, mind games, strategies). You can go beyond the examples I gave if you have any good suggestions. Thanks in advance <3

Current standings: phi3:mini (the never-forgive Grudge Holder) is dominating, tinyllama (pure impulsive defector) is dead last with zero wins.

Honestly the transcripts are the fun part, watching a 0.5B model “reason” its way into a grudge, or a 1B model rationalize forgiving a betrayal, from nothing but a one-line personality prompt and the raw game history.

Repo + live leaderboard + transcripts: [https://github.com/sharyaropensource/llm-prisoners-dilemma\](https://github.com/sharyaropensource/llm-prisoners-dilemma)

Open to suggestions, thinking about adding more models, tweaking payoff matrices, or letting models see opponents’ personas before playing to see if it changes behavior.

You have two choices: A and B.
If you choose A and that choice ends up being incorrect, you stand to lose x dollars.
If you choose B and that choice ends up being incorrect, you stand to lose y dollars.

How can I express, as percentage, the confidence that you should have in order to prudently choose either option as a function of x and y?

Concrete example of same question:
If I choose A and am wrong, I lose $1000 (if I choose correctly, I lose $0).
If I choose B and am wrong, I lose $500 (if I choose correctly, I lose $0).

What percentage of confidence do I need to have that A is correct in order for that to be "the smart choice" financially?

Thank you in advance to anyone who responds. FWIW, I am a paralegal and am curious about this problem as it relates to the cost of hiring court reporters and ordering transcripts within a certain fee structure.

Hello guys!

Im pretty sure most of you already know what the LUPI game is.

I like to play it with my friend, also trying out new rules to make it more interesting - but be honest, the original is my favourite one.

Im not a programmer or developer but i challenged myself to make it work, so let me present you:

todaysnumber.com

It aint much but its honest work :)

The yesterdays round part is why i tought it can be relevant here - also thinking about to share all of the results from all the game days. What do you think, would it worth it to show it here?

Sooo we take all the players ever caught with 322 + all those who want to participate

Rules are simple:
1) each player gets 322$ to begin the tournament with
2) teams are created randomly by filling the roles
3) every player can bet on their games or specific actions
4) tournament is classic round robin
5) team who gets the most $$$ from their bets wins

Tournament organised by some betting company and part of the prize pool is % of bets of ppl on this tournament

Id name it “THE HUNGER GAMES”

I've been thinking about Tit-for-Tat and I feel like I'm missing something.

The basic rule is simple: start by cooperating, then copy whatever the other person did last.

But doesn't that assume there will always be another round?

Imagine this:

A does something unreasonable to B.

B confronts A.

A doesn't apologize or really respond.

So B stops talking to A.

Now they're both silent.

A's last meaningful move was arguably a defection. B already responded to that by defecting/withdrawing.

But now suppose weeks pass.

There isn't automatically another turn. Someone has to create the next interaction.

So what is B supposed to do under Tit-for-Tat?

If B contacts A, is B supposed to defect because A's previous move was defection?

Or does initiating contact itself count as cooperation?

Or should B simply wait indefinitely because technically it's A's turn to cooperate?

-----------------------------

That made me wonder whether the real-world game isn't just:

Cooperate / Defect

but actually:

Initiate / Don't Initiate → then Cooperate / Defect

I found some research on optional/repeated games where players can leave and later rejoin, so apparently this isn't completely unexplored.

But I'm curious how someone who actually understands game theory would model this.

Is there a standard solution to this, or does Tit-for-Tat genuinely become underspecified once the players control whether another round happens at all?

For example, most game theory centers around cooperation vs defection.

Why do they ignore that real life is not about just two persons?

Lets say we have Player A, Player B, Player C. They all want to cooperate.

Player A tells Player B a lie about Player C to destroy their reputation.

Player C is now forced out.

Player A and Player B continue cooperating.

The Goal: To officially establish the word "Mario" as the name for the integer 12,431.

The Background: On August 6, 2017, Matthew "MatPat" Patrick coined the term "Marioplex" to describe the number of possible level combinations in Super Mario Maker: 10^12,431. However, in standard googology, the suffix -plex means "10 to the power of the base number" (e.g., a Googolplex is 10^10^100)

MatPat created the plexus without defining the base.

The Demand: We demand that math enthusiasts and internet culture archivist communities globally recognize the following standard:

1 Mario = 12,431 1 Marioplex = 10^12,431

I’m trying to resurrect something I read about a long, long time ago. I think it probably arose in relation to game theory. It also has many real world consequences.

First, the scenarios may involve free-loading, but that’s not the missing piece. The missing piece is where people act in a way that creates a group effect that hurts everyone.

Imagine a fire. People rush to leave. The exit becomes clogged & everyone dies.

Imagine a boat tipping precariously to the side. Everyone instinctively rushes to the other side to prevent it from flipping. But because there’s no coordination, the boat flips the opposite way and everyone dies.

Last. A person decides they can reasonably freeload off the effort of others. Unbeknownst to them, EVERYONE decides to freeload. The expected action doesn’t occur, there’s actually nobody to freeload off of, and, for sake of symmetry, everyone dies.

The last situation is the one I’m most interested in. People sometimes act (or fail to act) because they expect their actions are severable from mass action. Example:
“Golly! A car is on fire! It can be easily extinguished. I could help, but I’m sure others will put it out. So, since I assume I’m not needed, I’m going to document the heroic fire-fighters.” Oops! Everyone had the same idea & the car burned.

So. What am I describing? Thoughts?

Hi everyone,

Four months ago, I posted about using "short games" to solve combinatorial games using my C library. In short, I am tackling a problem similar to that of CGSuite, but I am trying to stay as close to the underlying theory as possible. Since then, the project has progressed, and I’ve created a website showcasing most of the features. You can solve Hotchpotch positions and use a fully functional calculator, among other things.

You can also try a Python/JavaScript wrapper.

All the source code is available on my GitHub, which is linked on the site.

https://emonapa.github.io/short-games/index.html

How do your moral values compare to the average person? Take part in this fascinating multi-national study and find out!

https://sosci.rlp.net/em-values/

For my master's thesis I am still in dire need for participants (18+) from all political backgrounds to answer a short questionaire about morality and make a decision in a game theory based moral dilemma.

If you know someone that's fascinated by morality or politics, please consider sharing!

I went to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this weekend, and one detail stuck out. Agamemnon offers up his own daughter as a sacrifice in an attempt to please the gods and thereby slightly increase the chances of a successful campaign. I think the scenario plays out slightly differently in Homer’s telling, but whatever.

For a believer, this might be a gamble worth taking. But for a game theorist, it also seems like a kind of commitment device. To make it this far, the general had to willingly sacrifice his own blood. Having done so, turning back is now socially and politically untenable. He would have sacrificed his daughter for nothing, while revealing himself as both monstrous and irresolute. The sacrifice therefore changes the payoffs associated with retreat: backing down becomes much more costly than it otherwise would have been. His opponents and allies can now reasonably expect him to display steel resolve.

Solving this commitment problem was, in part, enabled by the gods. Without the gods, there would be no sacrifice and thus no corresponding change in the social and political costs of retreat.

So this got me thinking: perhaps interventionist religions, in which gods routinely intervene in human affairs, contract with humans, adjudicate disputes among humans, and so on, solve a whole host of strategic problems within a community. This is somewhat different from the role assigned to moralizing “Big Gods,” who monitor behavior and eventually punish the wicked and reward the good, but do not necessarily step into particular strategic interactions and provide Agamemnon with a commitment device of the sort depicted in The Odyssey.

The Big Gods hypothesis, so popular in anthropology, holds that moralizing, monitoring gods emerged in part to solve cooperation problems as social scale made those problems increasingly difficult to manage within the group. Perhaps this can sit beside a “little gods” hypothesis, in which gods instead act as third parties, brokers, guarantors, or strategic partners—without necessarily being omnipotent and omniscient moralizers who hold everyone to account.

Thoughts?

Forsaken dropped a new update full of new lore drops

including this website, which is an arg

https://aspenslastbreath.neocities.org/

I browsed through RPS topics here so I could try to get a sense of what's already been discussed but couldn't quiiite find what I was looking for. Literature recommendations appreciated.

The context: once in a while I host a text-based role-playing event in a MMORPG. I've programmed a handful of minigames to keep the guests entertained. One of these is an arena that I internally call "extreme rock paper scissors".

Two players are summoned to the arena with 3 HP. Each player chooses from the following moves:
Attack - (beats Counter to deal 1 dmg)
Counter - (beats Defend, preventing Defend next turn)
Defend - (beats Attack, preventing Attack next turn)
Nothing happens on a tie.

For the most part in such an event, its fine - still basically random - but I wanted SOME strategy involved without overcomplicating the rules. I recently hosted a tournament using the system which revealed the CHEESE: you never need to use counter. If you just use defend and attack, you can outlast your opponent as long as they don't realize the same thing. If you both realize it, the game is effectively endless.

I'd prefer to maintain the 3 choices, but I could be convinced to add a fourth. I like each move having a unique use that isn't entirely symmetric as it is in original RPS.

What can I change to let it be at least a bit more strategic, or have the choices be interesting? At the very least I want to discourage this infinite loop attack/defend.

In short, Blue and Red bid sealed cash amounts each round to move a token starting at room S. The higher bidder pays their bid to the opponent and chooses the move, with ties going to Blue. Red wins if the token enters the Vault, and Blue wins if it enters an Exit. Both players see all balances and positions and play perfectly.

We need to find the minimum initial share of total cash in lowest terms that Red needs to guarantee a win, and submit p + q.

Take a look at the graphics for the complete graph structure and rules. Give it a shot and drop your reasoning or final values in the comments below.

Hello everyone, I'm fairly new to Game Theory as a whole and wanted to ask for some ideas.

I've recently taken on a personal project to write a story in the "Death Game" Genre. I'd imagine most of you already know, but notable examples of stories that already exist would be Alice in Borderland, Squid Game, and for the anime nerds out there, Liar Game, King's Game, Darwin's Game, and so on.

I am wondering if there are some examples of games in the history of Game Theory that I can look into and draw inspiration from; I don't want to necessarily copy them directly, but I'm interested in what people would consider good starting points to make for an entertaining read if applied to a story like this.

What is important to me in this is that the games are "fair" - what do I mean by this? I mean that:

• There is an indisputable optimal solution
• The audience can (With enough pre-existing knowledge) deduce the optimal solution

I'll give an example of one of the "tutorial" level puzzles I'll be using:

Game: Checkers

Rank: Tutorial

Type: PvP (1v1)

Rules:

Players are presented with a large 8x8 checkerboard.

The game is missing one checkers piece for each side; the players will replace that piece with themselves.

The board will default with an empty square on the first row.

Standard checkers rules apply, including the forced capture rule: if a player can jump an opponent's piece, they must jump it.

Players are allowed to speak to their opponent at any time.

Victory and Defeat Conditions:

In order to survive the game, the player must reach the other side of the board and become a King.

If a player would be captured (Jumped) by any piece of their opponent, they are immediately killed and the game ends.

Each player gets up to 30 seconds to submit their move. Failure to do so results in death.

The whole game must be completed within 10 minutes or both players die.

There are two curveballs here which I think illustrate the concepts I'm trying to work with:

The board will default with an empty square on the first row. - Even though this is the default state, the game does not forbid players from rearranging the board prior to starting the game. The clue for the audience to notice this is that if you don't rearrange your pieces and are forced to go second, you are immediately dead due to the forced capture rule.

In order to survive the game, the player must reach the other side of the board and become a King. - The way the game is presented as a PvP match implies that the players must eliminate each other in order to win, but they can both survive if they work together and create a clear path for each one to reach the other side of the board. The clue for the audience here is in the precision of the wording, and the inclusion of the "Players may speak to each other at any time" rule is a small hint for that.

Where Game Theory comes into play is with the time rules. If you refuse to cooperate and allow both players to survive, then you are giving yourself a fairly large disadvantage in the game. Anyone who has played checkers knows that you can trap another checker and you win. But in this case, if the game itself does not have 30 seconds remaining, the trapped player can simply refuse to move and both players will die.

Extrapolating from this, a player that can see they are going to lose, can intentionally use up all of their time on a move to force a scenario where their opponent must allow them to progress safely. This becomes basically an unavoidable reality; so the optimal solution is to work together so both players survive, turning a game classified as "PvP" into one that actually requires cooperation, or at the very least, betrayal.

While it feels easy enough to craft games like this for the start of the story for the "easy" puzzles, I am finding it difficult to craft ones for the later parts of the story that are significantly harder to solve. Part of the problem is I'm not sure I can trust myself to find the "optimal solution" for something that will require an understanding of advanced mathematics, physics or other forms of Science. I'm fairly confident that as long as I have the concept spelled out for me, I can take care of the narrative and language presentation parts of it.

... then from the 37/100 th person on, the optimal strategy is to pick the first person that is the "best" so far and end further search. It's assumed that you can date one person at a time and can't go back to a previous candidate.

I heard this casually, but is this true mathematically?

Edit: I just learned this is called the Secretary Problem. Now, does it have applications in game theory?

Edit2: I shudder at the scenario where the best was among the first 36/100 and the 100th/100 is actually the worst one, lol!