IT WAS a novel idea to hold the International Congress of Game Theorists at
Christmas. The computer had indicated that the optimal strategy was a mixed
one鈥攔andom choice between a Christmas meeting in an exotic locale (97 per
cent) and the usual mid-February bash in Boondock, Kansas (3 per cent). The
treasurer of the World Game Theory Society had obediently prepared 100 numbered
cards, drawn Kansas, rejected the result as a statistical outlier, drawn again,
and settled on a five-star hotel in the Canary Islands.
Unfortunately, when he tried to make the booking he discovered he was a
little late in the season鈥攖hat’s the trouble with novel ideas鈥攁nd
the best alternative accommodation that he could find on fartoolate.com was at a
scientific station in Tierra del Fuego normally used as a base for the study of
the dietary habits of the lesser crested weedbird. Also, in the rush to set up
the conference, nobody had explained that the station was normally only open in
August, when the weedbirds flocked in their dozens en route from Kerguelen to
Lanai, so the restaurant facilities consisted of a stock of canned
food鈥攂aked beans and spam鈥攁nd the bar was a shed piled to the roof
with crates of root beer. Thankfully only one member of the
society鈥攂esides the chairman, treasurer, and secretary鈥攖urned up, so
the usual four thousand would not witness the fiasco.
Trouble was, without them there wasn’t very much to talk about. By the second
day of the three-week conference, the participating member had delivered her
paper on “Suboptimal strategies for inequitable pay-off distributions…
