Game Theory: An Introduction First Edition

This book corresponds to material from the introductory course on game theory I took at Stanford from Steve Tadelis. One of the problems in game theory is that there are not good textbooks for college students/undergrads. Either the texts are more suitable for general audiences (I personally love "Thinking Strategically" and "The Art of Strategy" as supplemental reading but not as replacement textbooks), or they are way too technical and more suited for graduate work (like Fudenberg and Tirole's "Game Theory"). This book is a rare treat: it is precise mathematical treatment of game theory that is also fun to read. I'd recommend the reader be familiar with formal math proofs as well as have taking a course in probability theory (to understand Bayes Rule and expectation theory). I read the book from cover to cover and it reminded me why I enjoyed game theory so much. This is the text I'd recommend for anyone that wants to learn game theory in a rigorous fashion.

This book is an excellent text for an advanced undergraduate course or a first-year graduate course. In my opinion, it hits the sweet spot in terms of balancing rigor and readability. It is rigorous in the sense that it includes precise mathematical definitions of key ideas and results, and in the sense that it is thorough (covering all the main topics and discussing important technical caveats when relevant). It is readable in the sense that it includes a wide variety of examples (both to motivate the topics and to illustrate ideas), and in the sense that it is very clearly written. The writing is not too chatty, but also not too formal, and from a formatting perspective the book is clean and free of all the colored boxes and bloated figures that plague textbooks these days (especially undergraduate textbooks).

I was 'recommended' (not required) to purchase this book for a grad-level Game Theory class. I'm so glad I did!Our class textbook is a little too complex and it's easy to miss the bigger picture, but in this book by Tadelis, the concepts are thoroughly explained for the novice reader AND it has the details which provide the necessary depth to understand the topics. I like the examples, the manner of writing (on your level, not above or at you), and it's made understanding Game Theory much more practical. Overall, I highly recommend this book for a student (or an intellectually curious learner) to help understand the complexity (and fun) that is Game Theory.

There are many books about game theory on the markets, some are too difficult and have too many pages, and some are too easy or have too few pages. This book lies in the middle.This book is well-structured in that it consists of 18 chapters and each chapter contains about 15-20 pages. Since each semester consists of about 18 weeks and a course typically takes 3 hours per week, this makes it suitable as a textbook.The context of this book is constructive since it first provides a big picture of the to-be-discussed topic and then uses interesting examples to concretize the solution concepts and equilibria of games.However, I think this book could be improved by the following ways. (i) This book typically provides examples after introducing a proposition or principle. Hence I hope the author can add at least one example to illustrate the one-stage deviation principle (introduced in Section 9.5) and Mechanism Design (Chapter 14) in more detail. (ii) Some mathematical notations are not intuitive enough and are difficult to comprehend, including information sets and Bayesian Nash equilibrium. Some sentences are too long and somewhat difficult to parse especially for the readers whose native language is not English. (iii) I hope that in the second edition of this book, the author can add some very important topics which are missing in this book, including evolutionary games and coalition games.

The mechanism design part in this book is a bit light. The repeated games part is pretty nice, but it's missing repeated games w/ imperfect information as well as self-generation for both perfect/public monitoring. Other than those two blips this book covers basically everything that a 1st year PHD game theory course will cover. The book walks the balance between math and intuition. This is a very clear and concise book. Hopefully the author expands it to cover more topics!

I cant open this book in mi kindle paperwhite 1st generation. my kindle shows a not compatibility message. what can i do with to solve this problem?

Prof. Tadelis provides an excellent introductory grounding to game theory. I wish this book went deeper into algorithmic and cooperative game theory, but for an undergraduate text it was excellent Value for the money.

This is a great text. It is deep and rigorous but not overly mathematical (assuming you understood college calculus and are not afraid of simple proofs). Its really great.