People have always played game among themselves: Antony and Cleopatra played the courting game. Bill Gates made himself enormously rich by playing the computer software game. Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty played a game – Holmes had to decide at what station to get-off the train, and Moriarty had to decide at which station to lie in wait. Even dishonest accountants and their auditors play a game; the former decides when to cheat, and the latter decides when to inspect the audit books.

  Bargaining hunters bidding on eBay and opposing candidates choosing the platform in election both are also playing a game. In James Dean’s movie, Rebel without a Cause, the game of chicken was invented in which he and another actor drive cars towards a cliff edge to see who will chicken out first. Bertrand Russell famously used the episode as a metaphor for the Cold War.

  The field of Game Theory was established with the publication of the....