A Gentle Introduction to Game Theory

DOI10.1090/MAWRLD/013MaRDI QIDQ4227580zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 24 February 1999

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1090/mawrld/013

maximin strategy minimax strategy Nash equilibrium two-person game

Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to game theory, economics, and finance (91-01) 2-person games (91A05) Noncooperative games (91A10)

Review text

This book provides a correct and elementary mathematical introduction to basic game theory. As the author himself writes: ``The exposition is gentle because it requires only some knowledge of coordinate geometry, and linear programming is not used. It is mathematical because it is more concerned with the mathematical solution of games than with applications. More than half of the book is devoted to two-person zero-sum games with finitely many strategies. von Neumann's minimax theorem is proved in the \(2\times 2\) case. The text also contains an introduction to Nash equilibrium in two-person non-zero-sum games, with a proof of Nash's existence theorem in the \(2\times 2\) case. The main tool used in the book is elementary algebra. Stahl's presentation of game theory is very accessible but does not reflect at all the recent achievements of the discipline. He restricts himself on results in non-cooperative game theory that were already available in the early fifties, without giving any idea of the impressive developments of game theory since then [see for instance the Handbook of Game Theory, \textit{R. Aumann} and \textit{S. Hart} (eds.), Amsterdam: North Holland, vol. I (1992; Zbl 0874.00032), vol. II (1994; Zbl 0899.90166)].

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