Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life

by Avinash K. Dixit, Barry J. Nalebuff

The international bestseller — don't compete without it! A major bestseller in Japan, Financial Times Top Ten book of the year, Book-of-the-Month Club bestseller, and required reading at the best business schools, Thinking Strategically is a crash course in outmaneauvering any rival. This entertaining guide builds on scores of case studies taken from business, sports, the movies, politics, and gambling. It outlines the basics of good strategy making and then shows how you can apply them in any area of your life.

Genres: Business, Economics, Nonfiction, Management, Politics, Psychology, Self Help

393 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Avinash Kamalakar Dixit (born August 6, 1944 in Bombay, India) is an Indian-American economist. He is currently John J. F. Sherrerd '52 University Professor of Economics Emeritus at Princeton University, Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Economics at Lingnan University (Hong Kong) and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.

Dixit received a B.Sc. from Bombay University in 1963 in Mathematics and Physics, a B.A. from Cambridge University in 1965 in Mathematics (Corpus Christi College, First Class), and a Ph.D. in 1968 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Economics.

Dixit has been the John J. F. Sherrerd '52 University Professor of Economics at Princeton University since July 1989. He is also Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Economics at Lingnan University (Hong Kong) and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He previously taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at the University of California, Berkeley, at Balliol College, Oxford and at the University of Warwick. In 1994 Dixit received the first-ever CES Fellow Award from the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Munich.

Dixit has also held visiting scholar positions at the International Monetary Fund and the Russell Sage Foundation. He was President of the Econometric Society in 2001, and was Vice-President (2002) and President (2008) of the American Economic Association. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.

With Robert Pindyck he is author of “Investment Under Uncertainty” (Princeton University Press, 1994; ISBN 0691034109), the first text-book exclusively about the real options approach to investments, and described as “a born-classic” in view of its importance to the theory.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Riku Sayuj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book on game theory. The examples from history, literature and from every day life make the discussions lively and entertaining. Mathematics and complex reasoning is kept to a minimum and conversational, easy-to-follow logic is generally adopted. The case studies at the end of each chapter helps to sum up understanding and we can easily breeze through the book with the assurance that the final chapter of case studies will refresh any idea that we might be unclear on. All in all, a great medium-difficulty-level introduction to the complex field. Not a bed time read though, unless your intention is to fall asleep quickly.

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging read about game theory and how to use these insights in business. Quite accessible, despite some of the baseball and American Football metaphors flying right over my head
The best way to surprise your enemy is to surprise yourself

More thoughts to follow but surprisingly relevant and full of insights for a book almost thirty years old.

[Toe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is how a book should be written.

It is a fantastic introduction to game theory for the intelligent layman. It covers strategic decision making for innumerable scenarios, including but not limited to: poker, political campaigns, takeover bids, business negotiations, baseball pitches, bargaining, labor relations, tax audits, and nuclear war. The authors strike the perfect blend of in-depth coverage of the technical topics, like Bayes theorem, with concrete examples illustrating the concepts. They avoid jargon as much as possible and deliver the meat of the matter. Sprinkled in like M&Ms in trail mix are humorous anecdotes and some hysterical quotes (with more than a few stemming from the fertile mind of Yogi Berra). I was so engrossed with the book that I failed to take the time to record all the funny quotes and stories; besides, there were too many to record anyway. They await your discovery.

Unfortunately, as you will learn after reading the book, the ideas you discover cannot help you gain an advantage over future adversaries. Why not? Because they will have read the book too. There is no strategic advantage to be gained, the price of admission has merely shifted.

Here are the most fundamental ideas heartlessly wrenched from a charming and intriguing book well worth your time:
Rules:
1. Look ahead and reason back.
2. If you have a dominant strategy, use it.
3. Eliminate any dominated strategies from consideration, and go on doing so successively.
4. Having exhausted the simple avenues of looking for dominant strategies or ruling out dominated ones, the next thing to do is to look for an equilibrium of the game.

There are 8 ways to make credible threats or promises:
1. Establish and use reputation
2. Write Ks
3. Cut off communication
a. Last will and testament
4. Burn bridges behind you
a. Cortes burned his ships when he landed in Mexico
5. Leave the outcome beyond your control
a. The doomsday device in Dr. Strangelove was set to automatically destroy the planet if the Soviet Union were attacked
6. Move in small steps
a. Purchase cocaine in small quantities and take delivery even if you want a lot
7. Develop credibility through teamwork
a. Alcoholics Anonymous, Roman army would kill deserters
8. Employ mandated negotiating agents

Min-Max theorem – in zero-sum games in which the players’ interests are strictly opposed, one player should attempt to minimize his opponent’s maximum payoff while his opponent attempts to maximize his own payoff. When they do, the mini-max and maxi-min are exactly equal. Neither player can improve his position, so there is an equilibrium. Employing your "best mix" strategy requires unpredictability to avoid letting your opponent catch on.

[Omar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid introductory book on game theory. Game theory is the science of strategic decision making, or the systematic analysis of strategic interactions i.e. the interdependency of decision making due to other people's actions, reasoning our way skillfully to a decision, the specific strategies we implement, the coalition forces we create, the zero sum/non zero sum games, the sequencing of moves made, anticipating our rivals moves, introspecting on all possible outcomes, etc. ‘Games’ exist in nearly every facet of our lives and we start playing them as children with our parents and our peers then into adulthood from our personal lives to our workplace. Examples in the book are mostly from business, sports, politics, movies, literature, etc to lay out concepts and methods with the goal to help us improve our strategic thinking IQ. It’s interesting stuff that makes one think more deeply about the variety of matrixes in our lives where games are played as life is essentially a series of chess boards with context specific conditions to which we all have talent, skill, and experience to varying degrees to make sound decisions. Game theory essentially establishes general principles to help us make better decisions and to recognize the framework of the games we're playing more clearly. However, this book doesn't go into complex mathematical detail as the intended audiences is the general reader.

[Ami Iida · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a book to learn the game theory from basic.
This book is ideal as introduction to game theory.
Learning the game theory by using the game.
It is to incorporate all the basic essence of game theory.

[John Blackman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book should really be called an introduction to game theory. I certainly enjoyed it as a way to think about problems and reduce them to a polynomial equation that solves for a particular variable. You can take this a step further and find local minimum and maximum in any given function to find optimal solutions which is essentially what is most of modern machine learning. The hard part is getting an accurate function to define your problem which generally takes a lot of data. This book was written in 1991 before the massive adoption of machine learning to all things business. Those concepts still apply, but now we just have a lot more data.

Turning problems into a a mathematical representation takes the romance and human component out of solving problems. This eats my soul and also produces better outcomes. It takes things like rules and regulations and reduces them to probabilities and punishments. This leads one to think that rules don't need to be followed as long as the equation predicts a better outcome and the risk of rule enforcement is low enough to warrant breaking them. This math help define how to fight the cold war since there aren't any real rule enforces in a geopolitical scale.

So if you want to find the best solutions to problems that can be represented by equations and probabilities, this will be a great book to get you started. The equations for the problems presented in this book were pretty simple which is great for teaching by example. To be competitive today you will likely have to have much more data and much more accurate equations to define your problem space.

May the best math win.

[Ivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh game theory! I agree with the fact that knowledge of how to play games matters but this book was more academic than mainstream. Economics is a dismal science though, and this book does not even make an effort examining moral implications of many games.

Things I learned:

- To improve the effectiveness of your backhand in tennis, improve your forehand so your opponent respects (and plays more) against your forehand.

- When you're #1 in the industry, let the competitors drive the innovation and imitate them when they are successful so you take less risk and protect your standing.

- Mix your strategies randomly to keep the opponent honest.

- Hostages' dilemma is often worse than prisoners' dilemma though both generally suck and require difficult resolutions. Why? It is hard to deter cheating.

- It takes a lot of effort to earn credibility.

- In unique situations (i.e. war battles), surprise yourself at the last minute to surprise your enemy.

- Brinkmanship saved the world from nuclear disaster but failed at Tiananmen Square.

- We're stuck with the QWERTY keyboard and racially non-integrated neighborhoods due to unkind equlibria. Many equilibria are also determined by fad.

- Voting sucks because no voting system exists in the world that can induce ALL voters to represent their honest views through their votes. Voting gets even worse for contests such as the Baseball Hall of Fame.

- Shrinking industries usually feature larger firms go out of business first because their costs are highest.

[Tin Wee · Rating 3 out of 5]

A primer on game theory - it attempted to explain the main concepts in lay language, without going too much into the maths. Found portions difficult as some examples were drawn from baseball and american football, which I'm not familiar with. Still, there are many other interesting examples that will warp your brain. Some of the mathematical explanations were also beyond me. My main grouse with game theory is that it assumes that players are logical, which is apparently not true all of the time. Nonetheless, it does provide good frames for thinking about problems. Recommended if you're interested in game theory.

[Kramer Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty interesting overview of game theory and a wide variety of game theoretic methods. I think Schelling is probably a more engaging writer on game theory, but this might be more appealing if you're interested primarily in how game theory impacts business. That said, although I am not so interested in business, it was still worth reading.

[Kolagani · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not one of those 'motivation' books, the caption for the book is misleading. Application of strategies in all walks of life-sports, casinos, business, politics, and everyday life-using case studies are presented in this book. Although majority of the case studies are explained based on rudimentary concepts in game theory, there are instances of using probability and psychology concepts as well. Overall, a very good no non-sense read, which is not very thought provoking but interesting in most of the pages.

On the negative side, the concepts in case studies are repeated in many instances, notwithstanding the fact that the background story of every case study is unique. About around five case studies out of more than thirty are unique in terms of idea and complexity.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few case studies in the book were exceedingly boring, and most of those concern 80's American politics. aside from that, I don't think this book is all that practical. Some strategies assume your opponent is also a rational robotic thinker, and that you have access to probabilities and data most people won't have in real life. But it's fun to daydream about being a hyper-genius anime protagonist outsmarting some buffoon while reading through the chapters.

[Kathryn Davidson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book focuses on game theory as strategy. The overview of the game theories is decent. Unfortunately, the authors attempt to convert everything to a quantifiable value that can then be run through standard formulas. Personally, I think a lot of the quantification is highly qualitative and therefore isn't quite as straightforward as it's made out to be in the book.

[Prakhal Goyal · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic read! Inundated with examples of politics, sports, and business. Relevant case studies are provided post chapters. An active mind is required while reading the book. Definitely a mind expanding book!

[Sandy Maguire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic introduction to game theory. I would highly recommend this book to everyone I've ever met.

[Stephanie Carr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting but some fun mental exercises nonetheless.

[Hồng Sơn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nếu chịu động não và suy nghĩ kỹ hơn những ví dụ trong sách thì có lẽ rating sẽ cao hơn :D

[Alex Petkus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting, quick, and easy read. The only dry section was about 20 pages on politics, of the ≈ 376 pages; somewhere around 280. The politics section, in my opinion, is more about winning for the sake of winning and less about winning with meaning, principles, or a philosophy in mind; basically, become as bland and ordinary as possible, more ordinary than the people you are running against, and you will be more likely to win that election- that is a major waste of time and a loss in my book - AKA sellout to win, take positions based on polls, etc. But, in game theory, it is all about winning and not always about winning in the most meaningful way, just how you are most likely to win, which can feel empty; there are caveats, the book does recommend not to be "cutthroat" when you are competing against somebody where you may be able to cooperate with them in the future for mutual benefits, ect, ect..

A lot of the book sounds like logical or common sense, but some of it is helpful in getting what you strategically desire, such as making the deal a little sweeter for your competitor; for example, in a boardgame, don't just warn a competitor that you will attack one of there important areas if they take a game piece you desire, sweeten the deal by promising that you will not take a particular game piece that is strategically important to them...but be sure to betray them before they betray you near the end of the game, in order to win in a win-lose zero sum situation. However, if there is a fixed number of turns in a game, betray your opponent immediately, because betrayal has the biggest payoff in a "fixed turns" game, but you are not likely to keep friends or acquaintances this way, this is only how you act when you will never compete against this opponent again; if you treat a "future opponent" this way, you will have dealt yourself a terrible hand before the beginning of the "future game."

Definitely a fun read, more fun than I expected. The exercises at the end of chapters are fun and exciting when you choose the best strategy [according to the authors] based on what information you have or your position in a game.

[Iryna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read this book after we started the "Game Theory" topic at university. I started with listening Audible version but later understood that, for this book, illustrations are important. My main conclusion is that the book is a great introduction to the Game Theory.

The book provides us with a good overview of strategic principles. One of its advantages is that the authors give a lot of examples from various industries and life situations, which helps to better understand the theory. The examples include cases from businesses and history.

Everybody uses strategies, and sometimes we just do not even think of it. The book gave me the opportunity to take a new look at some of my life experiences including even relationships with friends, family, and myself. All of us make decisions every day, and this book is aimed to improve our decision-making by making us able to see the strategy and take the role of the opponent.

This book is valuable because of the approach authors use to explain it: the case studies after each module. Even though this is a very practical book and all the basic concepts of Game Theory are well-explained even without formulas, as for me, the book lacks some numbers and math.

[Sipho · Rating 4 out of 5]

A charming and enjoyable introduction to game theory and its practical applications in business and politics.

Written with a suitably low expectation of prior knowledge, the plain language made grasping some of these otherwise difficult concepts that much easier. Once you get a hold of some of these ideas, its impossible not to see them EVERYWHERE in ordinary life.

Key ideas included recognizing when you're playing "simultaneous move games" as opposed to "sequential move games." In sequential move "games", reason backwards to determine what you should do in any given situation. In simultaneous move "games", look out for what your dominant or most advantageous play is, and do that. But try to minimise the playing of your weaker position. Or you could also strengthen your weakness.

And of course, the authors talk about the Prisoner's Dilemma, Nash Equilibrium and all that other good stuff. Read the book, okay! It will be worth your time.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a qualified 4-star. The examples are somewhat dated as the book was written in 1990, and they do have a decidedly American flavour to them. This feels like a book written by people at Harvard business school, *for* people at Harvard business school. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

The major take aways:
- Look to the last action and reason backwards. This will help you recognise and avoid forced moved.
- There are differences in outcome depending on whether the game you are playing is one where players move simultaneously, or sequentially.
- Look for dominant strategies. If you have one, use it. If they have one, use your best move presuming they will use it (they'd be stupid not to).
- Collective action problems (of which the prisoner's dilemma is a subset) show up everywhere. Learn how to recognise them in your life and be the person implementing the enforceable agreement to resolve it, if possible.

Glad I read this but wouldn't read it again. Would definitely use it as a reference though.

[Moshe Zioni · Rating 2 out of 5]

It should have been titled the same but with the prefix: "A General Introduction to"-

Sometimes, to cram load of examples into one book doesn't make it readable - but irritating, to me, anyway.

Another thing that disappointed me with this book is that it constantly trying to get around the math without acknowledging it directly and the result is excessive use of words over a simple matter, and to put things worst - there is not even an appendix that explores the far reaches of the subject to those who want to do so (contra e.g. - I think that Simon Singh and Mario Livio did just that beautifully - try them yourself by reading Fermat last theorem of Singh and Livio's Golden Ration).

The book may be entertaining to some, especially if you tend towards looking at it as a pure enterteinment and not as something that supposed to be something like a science.

[Hesham Khaled · Rating 4 out of 5]

الكتاب بيربط نظرية الألعاب بالواقع المجتمعي والمواقف التاريخية والسياسية . . مع الإعتراف بعدم اكتمال النظرية حتى الآن وتكاملها.
نظرية الألعاب هدفها تحديد الإستراتيجيات السليمة الواجب اتباعها ، كيفية اختيار الاستراتيجية الغير مسيطر عليها والتي لا تتوقف على قرارات الغير . . كما في مثال مأزق السجين الشهير.

نظرية الألعاب على المستوى الإقتصادي وحساب المنافع بتصبح أكثر تعقيدا خصوصا لو تدخل في القرار حساب المنافع وجوانب أخلاقية.

الكتاب منقسم لمقدمة بتوضح التصرف الاستراتيجي.

وبعد ذلك عرض لعشر قصص واقعية عن أمثلة الإستراتيجيات المختلفة التي اتبعها لاعبين ومناضلين وقادة عسكريين

ثم استرسال في عرض نظرية الألعاب بصورة متميزة عن طرق ألعاب ومشاركة من القارئ لاختيار الاستراتيجيات الصحيحة.

[Paola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice introduction to game theory. Enaging and easy to read, though not as deep as David M. Kreps'Game Theory and Economic Modelling, but still very insightful. Ideal for general readers or undergraduate students in their first years of study in the social sciences.

[Roberto Quijano · Rating 5 out of 5]

During this pandemic, I decided to enter the world of game theory. As a lawyer by training, numbers do not come to me naturally; however, there is great potential in incorporating them into my practice. Broadly defined, game theory is the mathematical analysis of decision making. Humans make decisions every day, few humans make strategic decisions every day. Being one of the latter is a lot more advantageous than being one of the former. Success lies with those that make the best decisions. How to make the best decisions? Through strategy.

There are many strategies, choosing the best one requires determination, skill, and vision. Generally, strategies are either dominating or dominated. In most cases, the dominating strategy is better than the dominated strategy; nonetheless, there are instances where our dominating strategy can be beaten by the dominating strategy of our adversaries. Game theory offers a valuable framework to analyze the impact of your decisions and those of your adversaries.

One of the main tenets of game theory is to think forward and reason backward. One should be able to schematize all probable decisions in a game from beginning to end and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of every decision. The purpose is to analyze the probable outcome of the game considering your decisions and those of your adversary.

Common sense indicates that we should be making the best decisions all the time, maximizing our outcomes. Yet, our best decisions may collide with the best decisions of our adversaries. For instance, oil-producing countries might assess that maximizing their oil outputs is the best strategy to increase profits. However, there are many oil-producing countries that are using the same thought process, they all coexist in a global competitive market. In this case, if all parties decide to opt for their best strategy (maximize outputs), everyone would end up worse off (lower profits). The best scenario for everyone would be to commit to a lower output to sustain higher oil prices. This would require negotiations between parties where each one commits to honoring any agreements. There is always the possibility of cheating. Sometimes cheating in certain situations is a dominating strategy, the problem is the shattering of trust for future agreements.

It is possible that your adversaries are also using a game theory framework to predict your strategies; a tennis player might know that given his/her weak backhand, the server will always aim for his/her backhand (dominating strategy). This player might secretly train his backhand and beat the dominating strategy of the server. In this case, the server should predict this possibility and must come up with a scheme that makes the use of his dominating strategy as unpredictably as possible.

Another important factor is the credibility of your threats or promises to use your dominating strategy given its potential costs. For example, the use of nuclear weapons as a response to an aggression would lead to large number of deaths and destruction. If you want your threats (or promises) to be credible you must either have the will to execute them or leave their execution to other factors (chance, unpredictability, third party decision). Having last thoughts before “pressing the nuclear buttons” might impede the execution of your dominating strategy, your credibility to use them in the future would be lower. During the Cuba Missile Crisis, Kennedy stated how the use of nuclear weapons was extremely high (almost irreversible), this implied that the threat to use these weapons had to be credible enough to dissuade the Soviet Union from going further with their strategy. The essence of the brinkmanship mechanism is to create a risk that is sufficiently intolerable for your adversary, influence the other’s actions by altering his expectations.

Many dominating strategies must be sustained over a period of time in order to get its full results. A union should sustain a strike for an X period of time if it deems that the benefits are worth it. On the other hand, the company should determine if this strike is worth prolonging or stopping earlier to avoid decreases in profits. The party most able to sustain the costs over time will be the winning one. A similar example is the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. It appeared that after 1968, the U.S. had gone so deep into this conflict that prolonging it further would not represent “higher costs”, a surrender would be a lot more “costly”. North Vietnam assumed its victory at a very high cost.

“Thinking Strategically” is a phenomenal book for those interested in acquiring a more strategic mindset. As one of its critics stated, it is Machiavelli updated to our times. Many consider Machiavelli’s texts as guides on how to be a ruthless strategist by describing a pessimistic outlook on power and business. This erroneous thinking has led to centuries of misunderstanding of his philosophy. Machiavellianism should be seen as a guide on how to perceive these “ruthless” behaviors upheld by your adversaries. In this sense, game theory (and this book in particular) builds off from this idea: analyze your adversary and his decisions, they may have a lot to say about you and your decisions.

[Brian Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tough going but a good overview of game theory as it applies to strategy.

[Anthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Skip to Part 3 and save the time

[Sanjay Dixit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book to understand Game theory and thinking ahead process. It's very technical and little hard as you need to concentrate if you want to solve problems mentioned in the book

[Igor Veloso · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent introductory book to Game Theory.

It starts small then evolves into more complex problems, followed by case discussions. The initial cases presented may be completely hypothetical and simplified to show a point, but later we get to apply Game Theory in real cases, like the Cold War nuclear threat. This is a classic case to present game theoretical concepts, and sometimes include some simple maths, and that's because of the maths I would suggest getting the book on paper, it'll be much more practical and have you face less distractions, if you struggle with them.

First half of the book was easy to take notes and lessons from, the other half starts getting trickier, but I talk as someone who loves Game Theory and learned it first from social sciences; I'm not talking as someone who loves maths, so there's that disclaimer. The good thing is these theoretical games can be applied in conjunction with Sun Tzu's The Art of War, current politics and geopolitics. As for economics, I'd go ahead and say that in an era of digital currencies, game theory is to bitcoin what financial literacy should have been to the Euro and management of our own wallets. It does allow consumers and leaders to make better decisions, and in my country I would recommend some of these concepts to be introduced during classes. In Portugal there's a discipline that should've been for this kind of literacy, but is instead ridden with not very useful and not long term knowledge, but professors are incentivized to teach less complex problems due to lack of preparation and proper schedules. Financial Literacy was actually the main motive to create this discipline, but instead is used to make sure kids know that killing is wrong and cheating is bad - to think we need the state to teach us that, and not the parents.

Now, Game Theory should be introduced after a good bout of Financial Literacy and other skills, not before. I mean, school should be preparing kids better in the first place, and Portugal has a discipline that allows it but does not use it. A left wing government wants to use it to further it's agenda, right wingers either want to make it completely optional in the curriculum or get rid of it altogether. The job of life skills literacy is left to private institutions like think tanks, which is better even, but schools seem to have little incentive to hire them.

So buy this book, or similar ones, as you prefer, to introduce yourselves and your kids to Game Theory, or at the very least, some literacy. This is not about learning hard maths, hard statistics or complex biochemical problems. It is simply to make better decisions with your money and with your life, to minimize chances of being exploited by populists and tyrants, be it in politics or in your work place.

[Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

- On "hot hand": while psychologically speaking, such perception during sports is only a psychological illusion: even throwing coins, with large enough sample size, will result in multiple repeated same face. Yet, the perception of "hot hand" might make opponents to focus on such player more, resulting in lesser performance of such player, but better performance of rest of the teammates.

- Decisions that's made case-by-case and without a grand overall view often lead to undesirable overall outcome.

- Unpredictability is an important strategy when competing with an opponent that knows enough about you

- In liquid market, bid-ask spread would be small. However, avoid market where the bid-ask spread is infinity or extremely large

- In technology races, the looser tends to be innovative, and the leaders tend to imitate the followers - it's not always advantageous to seize the initiative and move first

- When analyzing, one should always start with the result of each major decision and then go backwards

- During many negotiations, it's easy to forget that time is also money

[Duygu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am still working through this book. It is a great introduction to game theory and demonstrates how it can be used in real life. This can be a great supplementary book for students learning game theory and need further examples or anyone who would like to have an overall understanding of game theory without going into the mathematical details, Nash equilibrium and etc.

One thing which has been missing so far (25% of the book) is what one should do when parties have incomplete/imperfect information, meaning when they don't know what their competitor's dominant strategy is, or costs are. More often than not, we are in an ambiguous world. We can't predict the outcomes of our strategies until we go ahead and implement them, we learn the outcomes of our actions but so does our competitors. No two "games" are the same in that sense.

With that said, this is still a book I would recommend to anyone who would like to learn thinking strategically. In my opinion, it should be supplemented with additional literature on learning and incomplete information.