The Compleat Strategyst: Being a Primer on the Theory of Games of Strategy (Dover Books on Mathematics)

To calculate the value at the next state, you simply assume that the best possible action is taken.

Taken together, these three approaches—application of knowledge about specific games (prisoner’s dilemma, entry/preemption), simulation, and cooperative analysis—produce a balanced and comprehensive treatment of the problems of formulating strategy in markets with a few genuine competitors, all mutually capable and conscious of one another.

Theory of Games is his foundational text, and here’s what I learned within its pages: the entire theory was inspired by a single game—poker. “Real life consists of bluffing, of little tactics of deception, of asking yourself what is the other man going to think I mean to do,” von Neumann wrote. “And that is what games are about in my theory.”