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Luck, Logic, and White Lies: The Mathematics of Games

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Jörg Bewersdorff (Author)
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Jörg Bewersdorff (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 7 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-1568812106
ISBN-10: 1568812108
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 504 pages
  • Publisher: A K Peters/CRC Press (December 10, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1568812108
  • ISBN-13: 978-1568812106
  • Product Dimensions: 1.5 x 6 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,047,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Highly recommended reading among avid game players
By Midwest Book Review on April 11, 2005
Format: Paperback
Written by the general manager of Mega-Spielgerate, a game design company based in Limburg, Germany, Luck, Logic & White Lies: The Mathematics Of Games is a no-nonsense instructional in basic probability, geometry, and mathematics as they apply to popular games. Topics discussed include popular myths among those who the lottery, to the question of whether it is possible to reconcile chance and mathematical certainty, to testing dice, the possibilities of distribution in a roulette, modern theories as applied to the classical game of Go, whether bluffing in poker can be done without psychology, and so much more. Written in plain terms, Luck, Logic & White Lies teaches readers of all backgrounds about the insight mathematical knowledge can bring and is highly recommended reading among avid game players, both to better understand the game itself and to improve one's skills.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Some Math, but you don't have to be a Mathematician
By John Matlock on January 8, 2007
Format: Paperback
As this book points out, games fall into three broad categories:

1. Games of Chance

2. Games with a large number of combinations of different moves

3. Different states of information among the individual players.

And this book is broken into three main sections, one for each of these.

Before you get too turned off, yes, there is some math in this book. But it is really not heavy duty. (After all, John Nash of A Beautiful Mind won the Nobel Prize for his work on game theory and his work was not simple math.) The authors explanations of the situations described in the games are very good are very good, and the minimal amount of math is really helpful.

Virtually all of the common games from from the lottery to chess and even Monopoly, as well as the casino games such as blackjack and Roulette are discussed in detail. For anyone interested in what's really going on in games they play, this is an extremely interesting book.

The author knows whereof he speaks, he is the general manager of a game design company based in Germany.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
A great introduction to the mathematics of games
By madlibrarian on August 16, 2005
Format: Paperback
So many books about the mathematics of games are either long out of print, hard to find, or fairly esoteric and not something I'd recommend to just anyone. The best book I've found for someone new to game math is Luck, Logic and White Lies by Jörg Bewersdorff. It introduces the reader to a vast mathematical literature, and does so in an enormously clear manner, which never takes one very far away from either the math or the games behind them. I love Winning Ways and On Numbers and Games, but they're definitely not for the faint of heart. LL&WL is the perfect book for gamers who are interested in the mathematics that underlie the choices they face and decisions they make. Just great stuff.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Panoramic overview of the mathematics of games
By David J. Aldous on August 31, 2012
Format: Paperback
One third concerns probability and games of chance, another third concerns "combinatorial games" (from Nim to Go and Chess) and the final third concerns "game-theoretic", i.e. strategy, games like rock-paper-scissors. Perhaps because the author is an actual game designer, this book has an interesting and unusual style that straddles several more familiar genres. The book is ``about the mathematics", so demands more concentration than many ``popular science" style books that just talk about math instead of engaging it. On the other hand it differs from textbooks in that the chapters (45 chapters averaging 10 pages) are somewhat independent, a wide cross-section of math ideas are mentioned and the math level varies between chapters. The reader should be willing to engage lower division level college math but is not required to have specific prior knowledge. Another non-standard feature is that there is some careful history -- the author has read some original works, not just copied textbook accounts of the history of the subject.

The first third (on probability and games of chance, my own main interest) discusses mostly standard topics from textbooks and popular science (Binomial distribution, expectation and standard deviation; law of large numbers and Normal approximation; Poison approximation; Monte Carlo simulations, chi-square test, Monty Hall, Buffon's needle, nontransitive dice) with some specific "games" applications (snakes-ladders and Monopoly as Markov chains; dice-races and Risk probabilities).Read more ›
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