p.3 A game is being played whenever people have anything to do with each other.
p.4-5 In studying a toy game, we seek to sweep away all the irrelevant clutter that typifies real-world
problems, so that we can focus our attention entirely on the basic strategic issues... Nobody ever solved a genuinely difficult
problem without trying out their ideas on easy problems first. The crucial step in solving a real-life strategic problem
nearly always consists of locating a toy game that lies at its heart. Only when this has been solved does it make
sense to worry about how its solution needs to be modified to take account of all the bells and whistles that complicate the
real world.
p.15 It shouldn't be surprising that game theory has found ready application in economics. The dismal science
[JLJ - a reference to economics] is supposedly about the allocation of scarce resources. If resources are scarce, it is because
more people want them than can have them. Such a scenario creates all the necessary ingredients for a game... economists have
always... been closet game theorists... Only with the advent of game theory did it become possible to study other kinds of
imperfect competition in a systematic way.
p.19 Why Nash Equilibrium? Why should anyone care about Nash equilibria? There are at least two
reasons. The first is that a game theory book can't authoritatively point to a pair of strategies (s,t) as the solution to
a game unless it is a Nash equilibrium... Evolution provides a second reason why we should care about Nash equilibria. If
the payoffs in a game correspond to how fit the players are, then adjustment processes that favor the more fit at the expense
of the less fit will stop working when we get to a Nash equilibrium because all the survivors will then be as fit as it is
possible to be in the circumstances... Because evolution stops working when a Nash equilibrium is reached, biologists say
that Nash equilibria are evolutionarily stable.
p.39 How do we cope with games like chess, whose outcome is decided only after long sequences of moves?
p.60,65 Chess is so complicated that its solution will probably never be known for certain - and this is
just as well for people who play for fun. What would be the point of playing at all if you could always look up the optimal
next move in a book? ...nobody would play chess at all if it were known how to play it optimally.
