r/GAMETHEORY

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?

https://preview.redd.it/14yaijs5uqjh1.png?width=499&format=png&auto=webp&s=435d6080d8067dad9d494b3f47f3d38c39b2e920

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.

I'm looking for the most rigorous, textbook-level treatments of strategy as a discipline — not business-press filler.

Three specific things I want to understand deeply:

1. Unexploitable strategies — play that holds no matter what an opponent does (game theory, minimax, GTO-style reasoning).
2. Finding the absolute constraints and hard limits in any system — what's actually fixed vs. what's negotiable.
3. The art of winning games and systems, treated with real rigor rather than aphorisms.

I've read the usual suspects (Schelling's The Strategy of Conflict, Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation, von Neumann & Morgenstern). What sits beyond those? The deeper, more formal, or more comprehensive books you'd put at the pinnacle of the field.

What's the one book you'd hand someone who wants to master this end to end, and why?

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

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.

Hey,

I know this might be a little out there but I’m looking for a job and wanted to email GTLive about potentially hiring me to edit their livestreams into highlight videos to post. I’ve been a fan for awhile and it was something they did before Matpat swapped to the mostly GTnotlive era, and it’s pretty common among other streamers (RTGame, SuperTF, Ludwig(tho his channels work a little differently)). Anyway I figured I’d ask if anyone knew of a business email or something similar I might use to contact them. Thanks

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?