Bookshelf:

Recently Finished:

• Ken MacLeod, Cosmonaut Keep

Currently reading:

• Louise Marley, The Glass Harmonica

Next up:

1. Analog, July/August 2001 issue
2. Derek Nelson, Off the Map: The Curious Histories of Place Names
3. Kage Baker, Sky Coyote
4. Rachel Pollack, Unquenchable Fire
5. Julian May, Jack the Bodiless
6. Barry Hughart, The Story of the Stone
7. Barry Hughart, Eight Skilled Gentlemen
8. Sean Stewart, Resurrection Man
9. A. K. Dewdney, The Planiverse
10. Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers

Game Theory

John and I had another one of our arguments today. Actually we had like two or three of them. You'd think neither of us had any work to do on Fridays.

This one started during a game of Pool. John is a much better Pool player than I am, you should know. Now, almost anyone is probably a better Pool player than I am, since I've probably played more pool in the past month than at any time in my life, and I don't plan to play very seriously.

I am, however, a fairly competitive person, in the sense that I don't really like to play games where I'm going to lose regularly. And this is where the trouble started: Although I made a couple of nice shots, the game came down to John having to sink the 8-ball, and me still having 5 balls on the table. It was pretty clear that I had no hope of winning the game, so I conceded and went back to my office.

John thought this was totally lame. His arguments for this were as follows:

1. It's worth playing a game out to improve your skills or learn more about the game.
2. There's an "implied social contract" that once you start playing a game, you're expected to play the game to the end. (He acknowledges that a few games - notably Chess - explicitly allow for concessions before the final end.)

My outlook is somewhat similar. First of all, I believe in the old saying (attributed to Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Vernon Law), "If you don't play to win, why keep score?" I don't really like to play games where I'm going to get crushed repeatedly. Improving my skills at a game is only one of many things I get out of playing a game, but it's by no means the only thing. Now, I do often play games where the odds are not in my favor; for instance, any table game I play with Subrata usually ends up with Subrata winning. But, I usually put on a good showing and I win often enough to keep me encouraged. (We once played something like three games of Empire Builder variants in a row where Subrata beat me by two turns or less.)

Second, I simply don't believe that if you're getting your ass thoroughly kicked at a game, that you need to play the game out to the bitter end. I conceded the Pool game to John once he had sunk his last ball, and I knew I wasn't nearly a good enough Pool player to sink six balls before he could sink one. And while I could have practiced one or two shots before he won, I didn't see any real benefit to doing so. (If I want to just practice shots, I can do that on my own without getting my ass kicked that badly.) Conceding a game of Pool seems entirely reasonable to me. (If I had had, say, two balls left, I would not have conceded, since even I could run together three decent shots to win the game once in a while.)

John says I should poll people about the "implied social contract" that once you start a game you must finish it. We've each asked one person we know, and - surprise surprise - each person we asked shared the opinion of the asker.

After some reflection, my take on it is that conceding in multi-player games, where abandoning your position can affect the outcome of the game among the other competitors - i.e., you're doing more than just registering your own defeat - is not generally acceptable. (This isn't always the case; Diplomacy, for instance, has rules for abandonment of position which are often extensible to other games, and I'm rarely hesitant to concede a multi-player game at Subrata's gaming night if the game is running far later than I want to stay up and I'm getting crushed. Although a handful of games - Tigris and Euphrates for instance - allow you to play "gadfly" quite effectively, screwing things up for everyone else in an entertaining manner even if you have no chance of winning.)

But particularly in one-on-one games I don't think it's unreasonable to concede a game you've surely lost, and it's actually a bit cruel to force someone to play to the bitter end.

What do you think?

Some other quick summaries of things we debated this afternoon:

1. I think that any game - really, pretty much any endeavor - involving multiple people and money is fundamentally different from a similar endeavor which doesn't involve money. People are irrational about money (even about small amounts of money), and unless you know ahead of time how the particular people involved will deal with the involvement of money, I think it's best to be very careful.
2. Related to that, I think John and I have very different attitudes towards money. I'm not sure how best to describe John's attitude; he seems to regard it as useful and valuable (to paraphrase something he once said, "I've had money and I've not had money, and I much prefer having money"), but he doesn't worry about it. I worry about money a fair bit, not for any critical reason, but just because much of what I like to do involves money, and I have to ration my money fairly carefully to do many of the things I want to do (like save to buy a house). John likes to go out to dinner often, whereas I go out to eat comparatively rarely, figuring I can spend $20 elsewhere on something which will give me more long-term enjoyment.
3. John and I have very different outlooks on possessions. He only values possessions if they have specific sentimental value to him, and otherwise considers them all replaceable. While I recognize that my stuff is replaceable, it also represents a substantial investment of both money and time searching for the stuff, and I'm proud of having amassed the particular stuff I have, as I think in a way it reflects on me personally. I don't think either of us really properly understand's the other one's point of view on this subject.

In any event, the contrasts between our ways of thinking are pretty interesting, I think, especially since we get along so well in many ways. In September we'll have known each other for ten years!

Tonight I finished reading Ken MacLeod's Cosmonaut Keep, which I'd say is an "average" MacLeod novel, i.e. not as good as The Stone Canal or The Cassini Division, but better than The Star Fraction or The Sky Road. The ideas content is moderate, and the political content is lower than usual. I'm somewhat surprised that The Sky Road is up for this year's Hugo Award, as it's probably his weakest novel. I've only read two of the nominees, though, and IMO Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire isn't the sort of book that should even be nominated for the Hugos.

Anyway.