The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and Game Theory "Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo" ("The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"), a masterpiece directed by Sergio Leone and with the performances of Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach, is according to Tarantino “The best-directed film of all time”. Two elements stand out from the point of view of decision-making theory, the first is that the leitmotif of the cooperation between “Blondie” (Eastwood) and “Tuco” (Wallach) is the information asymmetry about the exact place where the treasure is located; while the second is its final scene, where an unprecedented confrontation occurs until that moment in the western genre, a triple duel ("truel", to use an expression coined by M. Shubik) between the three protagonists that reaches its climax amid the wonderful music composed by Ennio Morricone. Typically, in the western genre, duels involve time-related decisions, where "quick draw," or the ability to...
Man vs Machine: the legacy of Marion Tinsley Who was Marion Tinsley? Nothing more and nothing less than the greatest player of checkers - a 5,000-year-old game that almost everyone knows how to play but only a few thousand people compete in seriously- in history. Tinsley was born in Ironton, a small town in Ohio, on February 3, 1927, and, like many residents of the American Midwest, learned to play checkers at an early age. It is said that as a child he did not show anything extraordinary on the board, and his first great rival was Mrs. Kershaw, an old woman who defeated him repeatedly accompanying each victory with laughter and mockery. Young Marion, now 14, was upset by his lack of progress in the game, and it was by chance that, while looking for a math book in the local library, he came across two books on the game of checkers. From then on, Marion alternated studying the game with her other two passions; the study of the Bible and the study of mathematics. At age 27, Tinsl...