Includes bibliographical references and index.

Game theory is a fascinating subject. We all know many entertaining games, such as chess, poker, tic-tac-toe, bridge, baseball, computer games — the list is quite varied and almost endless. In addition, there is a vast area of economic games, discussed in Myerson (1991) and Kreps (1990), and the related political games [Ordeshook (1986), Shubik (1982), and Taylor (1995)]. The competition between firms, the conflict between management and labor, the fight to get bills through congress, the power of the judiciary, war and peace negotiations between countries, and so on, all provide examples of games in action. There are also psychological games played on a personal level, where the weapons are words, and the payoffs are good or bad feelings [Berne (1964)]. There are biological games, the competition between species, where natural selection can be modeled as a game played between genes [Smith (1982)]. There is a connection between game theory and the mathematical areas of logic and computer science.