Read Game Theory for Free Online

piece of paper anyway and wrote them down: 10, 13, 27, 28, 39, 41. Was that it? I couldn’t remember, but it didn’t make any difference. I gave her the paper and she slipped it into her jeans’ pocket.
    ‘Good luck,’ I said, but she left without replying.

CHAPTER 5
    Gutless invited me round to his place on the Saturday of Summerlee’s birthday. I had nothing else to do. He wanted to show me a new video game he’d bought. Gamers never say ‘computer games’. They say ‘video games’. It must be cool to be retro in the world of hardcore gamers. To be honest, I’m not the slightest bit interested in computer games. I tried to be. Throughout the early years of high school, you didn’t really have a social life in the playground unless you were. But I never got into them. They were okay to while away a few hours, but then I got bored. I found it difficult to understand how someone like Gutless could spend days, weeks on the damn things with virtually no breaks. He told me there were others worse than him. He knew someone in Canada (Gutless knows lots of people around the world. Well, he knows them in a virtual sense) who wouldn’t even leave his computer to take a piss. He had his mother collect all these bottles and he would piss in them and leave them around his bedroom, just so he didn’thave to walk down the corridor and be away from his screen. And the really great thing was that his mother would collect the bottles and empty them for him. And bring them back, presumably, so he could start it all over again. I asked Gutless what his friend did when he needed a shit, but Gutless didn’t know. Just as well. I don’t think I wanted to know.
    Gutless invited me to stay for dinner and that was fine by me. His mum was a good cook and, being well aware of her son’s waistline, dished up huge quantities. We ate in Gutless’s bedroom, of course, on the grounds that time around a dinner table, eating with the family, was time wasted when you could be blowing things up. I didn’t mind that too much, even though Gutless’s bedroom smelled of mouldy pizza, festering underwear and old farts. I didn’t mind because his dad was a bit of a dick and would try to get my opinions on politics and current affairs. Gutless didn’t expect anything from me and I was cool with that.
    ‘Don’t you ever make your bed, Gutless?’ I asked, looking around the darkened wasteland. He never opened his curtains but even in the murk I could make out rumpled bedclothes, an assortment of dirty dishes and a small collection of Coke cans scattered on the carpet.
    ‘What’s the point? I’m sleeping in it later on.’
    ‘Fair enough.’ At least he stopped gaming to sleep. Did he dream about crosshairs and exploding heads?
    I tried to find a place on the bed to stretch out while Gutless booted up his computer. I shifted a dinner plate from where apillow might have rested if it hadn’t fallen onto the floor. Something brown and congealed was smeared on the plate. God knows what it had been, but there were tinges of green around the edges. I wondered how long it had laid there. We might have been talking weeks. Life was thriving in Gutless’s bedroom. It just wasn’t the kind of life I’d be happy sharing my pit with.
    The big G himself plopped down in his computer chair and stuck on his headphones, leaving one ear exposed, the better, I imagined, to gather my responses to his gaming wisdom. That was fine by me. I didn’t normally listen to him anyway, but just grunted at regular intervals. What I’d do is watch the huge flatscreen TV that he had permanently turned on in the corner of his room. That is one thing about Gutless. He doesn’t stint when it comes to electronic gadgetry. He has more stuff than an average JB Hi-Fi store. State-of-the-art computer gear, five-hundred-dollar earphones, a gaming mouse he proudly told me cost nearly three hundred bucks, as well as console machines, TVs and other things that wouldn’t have