Game Theory - Lecture 2

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH! In my opinion, he's the greatest composer ever. He was born 321 years ago on 3/21! I've been listening to his music all day today.

It rained over half a foot in Dallas this weekend. There was lots of flooding. SMU got hit by the flooding. Sadly, an SMU student was one of the handful of people who died this weekend from the heavy rain. When I arrived on campus, it didn't look bad at all. I could tell where the water was. Cox got flooded in the basements of all three buildings.

Game Theory

After I arrived to campus, I walked over to the Collins Center (where the executive MBA's have classes) and studied for an hour and a half. I reviewed chapters 2, 3 & 4 and then read the articles.

After that, I walked over to the Crow building. By the time I arrived to the classroom, there were only 2 other students ... class would begin in 10 minutes. After a handful of other students showed up, we realized that class was on the 2nd floor. They cancelled all classes in the basements. This is at least the 2nd time Cox has been flooded. In Riffe's class, she recounted how a heavy rains overpowered the pumps and the entire basement of the Cox school was flooded. They had to practically rebuild the bottom floor. Suprisingly, they still keep the library in the basement ... along with the technical support team and all those servers. I'd put those two centers on the 2nd floor if I were in charge.

Anyway ... class was good. We talked about simultaneous games and strategys. We played this bidding game too. It was, again, a really good, fun lecture. I am enjoying reading the book and I find the lectures pleasant.

Quixote Update
Chapter 21 continued

I finished chapter 21 today at lunch. While they were walking to their next adventure, Sancho suggests that Quixote find a king so that the king can have a history written about Quixote. Quixote then thinks up how he thinks his adventures will end ... he then gives a summary of a typical knight's story. The way he tells it is pretty funny. There is some dialogue between Sancho and Quixote that's pretty funny too. Before Sancho asks Quixote about finding a king, Sancho says that he has something on his mind and wants to ask Quixote before he forgets what he wants to ask him. Quixote tells Sancho to ask the question, but not to be long-winded. The irony follows ... Sancho's request takes up less than a paragraph in the book, while Quixote's response spans 3 pages! This is such a good book!

Chess Update

I played one game of chess last night. I didn't see any seeks I wanted to play, so I put one out. A player rated in the 800's accepted my seek. I beat him and then dinked around with my formula ... to avoid seeing player's/computer's seeks that aren't in my range. Later, I'll need to mess around with my seek formula so that low-rated players can't accept.

The 3/21/06 chessgames.com puzzle is 31. ? Right off the bat, I think d7 is the best move. Black can capture white's, but then white responds with Rc8+ followed by RxR and then dxc8=Q+ The queen then goes on a rampage until black is defeated.

The answer is d7!