Edge

program so a computer can play is as yet unclaimed. Chess itself is certainly a good game and I enjoy it. It has, though, been so written about and studied and deconstructed that when I sit down across from an experienced player I sometimes feel that I’m not playing against him but against a crowd of stuffy, eccentric ghosts.
    What do I like about board games as opposed to, say, computer games, which certainly offer the same mental challenge?
    For one thing I like the art. The design of the board, the playing pieces, the cards, the die, the spinners and the wooden or plastic or ivory accoutrements, like sticks and pins. The aesthetics are pleasing to me and I like it that they also serve a functional purpose, if you can call playing a game utilitarian.
    I like it that a board game has longevity and is tangible, it doesn’t go away when you shut off a switch or pull a plug from the wall.
    Most important, though, I like sitting across from a human being, my opponent. Much of my life involves playing a match of life and death against people like Henry Loving, who are invisible to me, and I can only imagine their expressions of consideration as they pick their strategies to capture or kill my principals. Playing chess or Go or Tigris and Euphrates—a very good game, by the way—I can watch people as they choose their strategy and note how they respond to something I’ve done.
    Even über-techie Bill Gates is a devout bridge player, I’ve heard.
    In any event, playing games has honed my mind and helps me as a shepherd.
    So does game theory, which I became interestedin while I was getting one of my graduate degrees, in math, also for the fun of it, lolling in academia and delaying entry into the real world.
    Game theory was first debated in the 1940s, though the ideas have been around for years. The academics who formulated the theory originally analyzed games like bridge and poker and even simple contests like Rock, Paper, Scissors or coin flipping, with the goal not of helping win leisure-time activities but to study decision-making.
    Simply put, game theory is about trying to make the best choice when presented with a conflict among participants—either opponents or partners—when neither knows what the other will do.
    A classic example is the Prisoners’ Dilemma, in which two criminals are caught and held in separate cells. The police give each one a choice: to confess or not. Even though each doesn’t know what the other will pick, they do know—from the information the police give them—it will be for their mutual good to confess; they won’t go free but they’ll get a relatively short sentence.
    But there’s also the chance that by not confessing, they will get an even shorter sentence, or none at all, though that’s riskier . . . because they could instead receive a much longer one.
    Confessing is the “rational” choice.
    But not confessing is acting with what’s called “rational irrationality.”
    In the real world, you see game theory applied in many situations: economics, politics, psychology and military planning. For instance, customers might know that it’s better not to withdraw all their savings from a troubled bank, because if they dothey’ll contribute to a panic, the bank will fail and everybody will lose. On the other hand, if they’re the first to get their money out, they won’t lose anything; to hell with the common good. By withdrawing all their funds fast, rational irrationality might save them individually, even though it will start a run on the bank and ruin it.
    How does this affect my job as a shepherd?
    Since neither I nor opponents like Henry Loving know what moves the other will make, I continually apply game theory in trying to pick the best strategy to win—strategy being not an overall approach to a contest but a specific move, like “Pawn to Rook Seven” or selecting a fist in Rock, Paper, Scissors.
    Here, my strategy was to play the flytrap, believing that Henry Loving was more likely than not to make a rational choice: to go for the bait.
    But game theory exists because of uncertainty—on gaming boards and in real life. Perhaps Loving would sense this was a trap and, knowing that I was preoccupied there, would use this opportunity to find the real safe house the Kesslers were in, while I was busy here.
    Or would he try a different strategy altogether, something I couldn’t figure out but which was even now brilliantly outmaneuvering me?
    I was getting