I'm reminded of the first season of Survivor.

I didn't watch, but followed along on (IIRC) a Diplomacy discussion forum of all places; it seemed clear that Richard was playing an extremely strategic game, even deliberately sandbagging an endurance contest when it was down to 3 players, knowing that the woman who won it would have to eliminate the other, much more popular male contestant to have a chance to win the vote of those who'd already been dispatched.

I believe it. Playing Diplomacy, especially for years on Dipbounced, taught me more about strategy and game theory than any other resource. The community of players are all deep thinkers and incredibly ruthless. We used to have 2-3 day Diplomacy sessions back in college where we'd just do game after game and I miss it sorely.

If you were to ask me to pick the most pure strategy games, Diplomacy would be #1 and maybe EVE Online would be #2.

I'm looking for hardcore Diplomacy players to fill out the roster of a one-move-a-week, online-only game. Send me an email if you're interested.

Very tempting offer that I passed along to a couple of people. At the moment I'm preparing to change jobs and launch a business simultaneously and I'm trying to reduce any commitments that I have.

Thank you for the offer.

Martin Shubik once claimed to me that he more or less invented Diplomacy.

I forget whether this was based on his involvement in So Long Sucker, or whether he claimed a more direct connection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Long_Sucker

I've always wished there were a big online community that could consistently keep Diplomacy games going smoothly...

There is. Send me an email.

I couldn't find your e-mail address, so I sent you a tweet.

Yes! I never watched Survivor, but my mom and brother are both die-hards. They've talked about this before. During the first season, no one was _playing to win_ except for Richard. Then, in all of the later season, the players were much savvier and the strategy was much more deliberate.

The contrast between the later seasons and the first season sounds fascinating.

After having gotten my ass kicked (figuratively) a few times in real life business situations where I was too smug for my own good and thought I could get an advantage using my (limited) knowledge of game theory, and watching discussions of shows like Survivor and how people play 'strategically', I've wondered - are there any resources on real life applications of game theory? Things like war gaming (the real military kind, not c&c) sort of go there sometimes but I'm not a general so military applications are of limited use to me. Anyone know of business oriented literature for those of us to whom street smarts doesn't come natural?

>Particularly relevant to the Jeopardy contestant that buzzed in when he didn't know the answers to block others from getting the cash.

But this isn’t how Jeopardy works. If you get the question wrong, I still get the opportunity to get it right.

Can you explain this in more detail?