Fill in the gaps with the words and expressions from the text

1. Game is a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to ________.

2. An instance of the game from beginning to end is known as ______.

3. A pure strategy is an overall plan specifying moves to be taken in all ______ that can arise in a play of the game.

4. A game is said to have ______if, throughout its play, all the rules, possible choices, and past history of play by any player are known to all participants.

5. Games like _______, _______ and _____ are games with perfect information and such games are solved by pure strategies.

6. Games such as ______ and _____ are called two-person zero-sum games.

7. Zero-sum means that any money Player 1 wins (or loses) is exactly the same amount of money that Player 2 ___(___).

Match the notions with the definitions.

A game	No money is created or lost by playing this kind of a game.
A pure strategy	A game that has got no pure strategy that ensures a win.
A zero-sum game	A game, all the rules, possible choices, and past history of its play are known to all participants.
A play of the game	A game played by two persons only.
A two-person game	A competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons.
A game with perfect information	An instance of the game from beginning to end.
A game without perfect information	An overall plan specifying moves to be taken in all eventualities that can arise in a play of the game.

Match the names of the suits with the pictures.

Hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs.

1) ♠ 2) ♣ 3) ♥ 4) ♦

6. Answer the questions:

1) What is a game?

2) What do we call a play of the game?

3) What is a pure strategy?

4) What games with perfect information can you name? Why?

5) Have games without perfect information got pure strategy?

6) What are zero-sum games?

 

7. Characterize each game (chess, tick-tack-toe, backgammon, stone-paper-scissors, matching pennies) according to the following criteria:

A game with (without) perfect information, a zero-sum game, a two-person (many person) game

Finish the sentences suggesting your own ideas. Remember, that after ‘because of’ we use either a noun/pronoun or an –ing form. 

1. Chess is a two-person game, because of…

2. Stone-paper-scissors is a game without perfect information, because…

3. Matching pennies is not a game with perfect information, because …

4. Stone-paper-scissors is a zero-sum game, because of …

5. Tick-tack-toe is a game with perfect information, because …

 

Text 3

 

Read the rules of two games and translate them into Russian.

How to play some games

A Game of Coin Tossing: Two players take any coin at hand. Big-size coins are more fun. One of them starts tossing the coin and continues for a long time. It will be convenient to assume that the tosses occur at equal intervals of time. If heads, Player 1 wins, say, one kopeck, if tails, Player 2 wins and his opponent pays.

Rock (Stone), Scissors, Paper: Two players show with their hands one of three figures: rock (that’s a fist), scissors (two fingers are shown), or paper (a player shows a palm); actually they are to choose randomly among these three options, with equal weights. Rock is stronger than scissors, scissors are stronger than paper and paper in stronger than rock. The one, who shows the stronger figure, wins. The fun of playing this game comes from trying to guess and exploit the other player's choices.

 

Assignments:

Pair work: think of some game you know very well, describe its rules to your neighbour, by analogy with the above mentioned games. Let your neighbour guess which game you were speaking about.

 

Text 4