Skip to main content
Skip header

Game Theory

Type of study Follow-up Master
Language of instruction English
Code 460-4116/02
Abbreviation TEH
Course title Game Theory
Credits 4
Coordinating department Department of Computer Science
Course coordinator doc. Ing. Zdeněk Sawa, Ph.D.

Subject syllabus

Lectures:

- Introduction.
- Combinatorial games, graph games.
- The game of NIM, the Sprague-Grundy function.
- Sums of games and their solution using the Sprague-Grundy function.
- Two-person zero-sum games in the strategic form, matrix games.
- Dominated strategies, saddle points, mixed strategies.
- Solving matrix games by transformation to a linear programming problem.
- Linear programming.
- Two-person zero-sum games in the extensive form, Kuhn tree, chance moves, games of imperfect information.
- Two-person general-sum games in the strategic form, bimatrix games, Nash equilibria.
- Cooperative games with transferable utility.
- Games in coalitional form.

Tutorials:

- Simple take-away games.
- Combinatorial games, graph games.
- The game of NIM, the Sprague-Grundy function.
- Sums of games and their solution using the Sprague-Grundy function.
- Two-person zero-sum games in the strategic form, matrix games.
- Dominated strategies, saddle points, mixed strategies.
- Solving matrix games by transformation to a linear programming problem.
- Linear programming.
- Two-person zero-sum games in the extensive form, Kuhn tree, chance moves, games of imperfect information.
- Two-person general-sum games in the strategic form, bimatrix games, Nash equilibria.
- Cooperative games with transferable utility.
- Games in coalitional form.

E-learning

Materials are available on the web page of the lecturer: https://www.cs.vsb.cz/sawa/teh

Consultation through MS Teams.

Literature

[1] Thomas S. Ferguson – Game Theory — study text for the course Game Theory taught at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tom/math167.html
[2] Algorithmic Game Theory, edited by Noam Nisan, Tim Roughgarden, Eva Tardos and Vijay V. Vazirani, Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Advised literature

[3] Kevin Leyton-Brown, Yoav Shoham: Essentials of Game Theory: A Concise, Multidisciplinary Introduction, Morgan and Claypool Publishers, 2008.
[4] Martin J. Osborne, Ariel Rubinstein: A Course in Game Theory, MIT Press, 1994.
[5] Drew Fudenberg, Jean Tirole: Game Theory, MIT Press, 1991.
[6] Robert Gibbons: A Primer in Game Theory, Financial Times Prentice Hall, 1992.