Game theory

THIS week's issue of The Economist includes an article on stadium financing in the United States. Read it here. Our sister blog, Free Exchange, has also published a post on the topic here.

Continue reading "Bread, circuses and leather balls" »

HELD once every four years, the Volvo Ocean race, the biggest round-the-world event in the sailing calendar, is renowned as one of sport’s toughest slogs. Over eight months, competitors face a 39,000-mile battle against the elements, braving rough water and stormy weather. But this year they also have to contend with apparently unseaworthy vessels. Since the start of the race in Alicante, Spain on November 5th, every single boat has run into problems. More than half lost their masts. Just one finished the recent leg from New Zealand to Brazil via Cape Horn.

Continue reading "The fast and the failures" »

TENNIS players compete on such a variety of court surfaces that changing one’s typical appearance would seem to be a fairly innocuous move. Yet the decision by the organisers of this week’s Madrid Open to use blue clay, instead of the normal red, has provoked a hostile reaction from some of the sport’s stars. Having struggled to overcome the low-ranked Daniel Gimeno-Traver in his first match of the competition, Novak Djokovic, the current world number one, denounced the surface as “impossible”.

Continue reading "Feeling blue" »

WHICH casino game offers the punter the best odds? Ask three gamblers and you'll get three different answers; cases can be made for baccarat, craps and blackjack. Of those three, blackjack is the dullest, the least romantic. Baccarat has a James Bond appeal (even though Mr Bond actually played a stutifyingly boring variation called chemin-de fer). Craps has a certain seedy, baffling charm. Blackjack, in contrast, is a grinder’s game. Learn the rules, decide on a strategy, stick to it, perhaps try to (unobtrusively) count cards if you’re able, play the odds, don’t take unnecessary risks, and you could go home a winner.

Continue reading "Making the house beat itself" »

THE 50,000 fans who travelled to Chile’s National Rodeo Championship Finals in late March may have been surprised to see that Michelle Recart had qualified. As an amateur and mother in her late 40s, Ms Recart looked the very antithesis of the typical competitor in what is a famously elitist and chauvinistic sport. But apart from being a woman, Ms Recart was little different from her rivals. Like them, she comes from a wealthy family that has been involved in rodeo for generations. Her father is the former president of the Federation of Chilean Rodeo.

Chilean rodeo is a maze of contradictions.

Continue reading "Rodeo rift" »

IT IS described by those who witnessed it as the greatest over ever bowled: Michael Holding, taking the new ball for the West Indies in the 1981 Test against England at the Kensington Oval in Barbados. They called him “whispering death”. His run-up, which started close to the sight-screen, was so graceful, the feet so light upon the turf, that it was said that the umpires couldn’t hear him approach. The action was beautifully languid, so that he appeared to put no effort into the delivery. And yet the ball would whistle past the batsman’s nose at unplayable speed.

Continue reading "In the blink of an eye" »

The invited guest author is the general manager of the Houston Rockets. He can be reached on Twitter at @dmorey.

IN A famous detective story by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Purloined Letter”, a minister steals a letter containing compromising information from a woman and uses it to blackmail her. The police scour every corner of his hotel room in search of the document: they check behind the wallpaper, under the carpets, and even examine the tables and chairs with microscopes, all to no avail. Defeated, they summon C. Auguste Dupin, an amateur detective, to help them with the case. Mr Dupin surmises that the minister would try to outwit the police by leaving the letter in plain sight.

Continue reading "The elephant on the court" »