Avinash K Dixit - Collected Quotes

"A game is a situation of strategic interdependence: the outcome of your choices (strategies) depends upon the choices of one or more other persons acting purposely. The decision makers involved in a game are called players, and their choices are called moves. The interests of the players in a game may be in strict conflict; one person’s gain is always another’s loss. Such games are called zero-sum. More typically, there are zones of commonality of interests as well as of conflict and so, there can be combinations of mutually gainful or mutually harmful strategies. Nevertheless, we usually refer to the other players in a game as one’s rivals." (Avinash K Dixit & Barry J Nalebuff, "The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life", 2008)

"Chess experts have been successful at characterizing optimal strategies near the end of the game. Once the chessboard has only a small number of pieces on it, experts are able to look ahead to the end of the game and determine by backward reasoning whether one side has a guaranteed win or whether the other side can obtain a draw. But the middle of the game, when several pieces remain on the board, is far harder. Looking ahead five pairs of moves, which is about as much as can be done by experts in a reasonable amount of time, is not going to simplify the situation to a point where the endgame can be solved completely from there on." (Avinash K Dixit & Barry J Nalebuff, "The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life", 2008)

"Chess strategy illustrates another important practical feature of looking forward and reasoning backward: you have to play the game from the perspective of both players. While it is hard to calculate your best move in a complicated tree, it is even harder to predict what the other side will do." (Avinash K Dixit & Barry J Nalebuff, "The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life", 2008)

"John Nash’s beautiful equilibrium was designed as a theoretical way to square just such circles of thinking about thinking about other people’s choices in games of strategy. The idea is to look for an outcome where each player in the game chooses the strategy that best serves his or her own interest, in response to the other’s strategy. If such a configuration of strategies arises, neither player has any reason to change his choice unilaterally. Therefore, this is a potentially stable outcome of a game where the players make individual and simultaneous choices of strategies." (Avinash K Dixit & Barry J Nalebuff, "The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life", 2008)

"Many mathematical game theorists dislike the dependence of an outcome on historical, cultural, or linguistic aspects of the game or on purely arbitrary devices like round numbers; they would prefer the solution be determined purely by the abstract mathematical facts about the game - the number of players, the strategies available to each, and the payoffs to each in relation to the strategy choices of all. We disagree. We think it entirely appropriate that the outcome of a game played by humans interacting in a society should depend on the social and psychological aspects of the game." (Avinash K Dixit & Barry J Nalebuff, "The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life", 2008)

"Science and art, by their very nature, differ in that science can be learned in a systematic and logical way, whereas expertise in art has to be acquired by example, experience, and practice." (Avinash K Dixit & Barry J Nalebuff, "The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life", 2008)

"Strategic thinking starts with your basic skills and considers how best to use them. Knowing the law, you must decide the strategy for defending your client. Knowing how well your football team can pass or run and how well the other team can defend against each choice, your decision as the coach is whether to pass or to run. Sometimes, as in the case of nuclear brinkmanship, strategic thinking also means knowing when not to play." (Avinash K Dixit & Barry J Nalebuff, "The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life", 2008)

"The essence of a game of strategy is the interdependence of the players’ decisions. These interactions arise in two ways. The first is sequential [...] The players make alternating moves. [...] The second kind of interaction is simultaneous, as in the prisoners’ dilemma [...] The players act at the same time, in ignorance of the others’ current actions. However, each must be aware that there are other active players, who in turn are similarly aware, and so on. Therefore each must figuratively put himself in the shoes of all and try to calculate the outcome. His own best action is an integral part of this overall calculation. When you find yourself playing a strategic game, you must determine whether the interaction is simultaneous or sequential." (Avinash K Dixit & Barry J Nalebuff, "The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life", 2008)

"When playing mixed or random strategies, you can’t fool the opposition every time. The best you can hope for is to keep them guessing and fool them some of the time. You can know the likelihood of your success but cannot say in advance whether you will succeed on any particular occasion. In this regard, when you know that you are talking to a person who wants to mislead you, it may be best to ignore any statements he makes rather than accept them at face value or to infer that exactly the opposite must be the truth." (Avinash K Dixit & Barry J Nalebuff, "The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life", 2008)