A good definition of the word “game” in the context of game theory is provided in this book:

A game is any situation involving more than one individual, each of which can make more than one action, such that the outcome to each individual, called the payoff, is influenced by their own action, and the choice of action of at least one other individual. One way to think about game theory as a field is that it is a collection of theories and techniques that help us think about how to analyze a game.

From the definition above, it is easy to imagine the plethora of disciplines that use game theory. These include biology, artificial intelligence, economics, psychology, and computer science.

This book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the text with a useful list of resources for those who need to refresh their knowledge on probabilities, graph theory, calculus, and so on, in order to tackle the subject of game theory. The chapter also covers the prisoner’s dilemma and finite state automata. Chapter 2 discusses games in extensive form with complete information and backward induction. Chapter 3 covers games in normal form and the Nash equilibrium. Chapter 4 discusses Nash equilibria and two-player zero-sum games. Chapter 5 is about mathematical games. This includes Nim, Sprouts, and deck-based games. Chapter 6 defines tournaments and their design. This includes round-robin scheduling. Finally, chapter 7 concludes the book with a brief discussion of future directions.

The text is easy to follow, clear, and concise, with no extraneous information. The author states that the actual text is a synthesis of his lecture notes. As a result, the book is intended for tutors of game theory rather than beginners. The reason is that its coverage of the tools and techniques used in the field does not include extensive details. It is still useful to learners as a guide rather than a self-contained tutorial. This probably explains the presence of exercises at the end of each chapter, for readers to test their knowledge of the covered material.

I would recommend it as a companion book on game theory rather than a beginner’s tutorial.