A simple game

I like simple games. Some of the best games survive the test of time because of its simplicity. Think tic-tac-toe or tetris. In my trip to Mount Kinabalu in Sabah (Malaysia), some of the nights were spent playing a card game called bluff (or bullshit, cheat etc). It tests the ability to bluff your way through, and to call other people’s bluff. It was fun!

Recently, I played a different game where we had to choose between red and blue chip. We were divided into 4 groups, and each group had to come up with a decision to choose red or blue. If you choose red, you will win at least 1 point from the banker if at least one of the other groups choose blue. If no one chooses blue, all groups will lose 1 point to the banker. However, if all of us chooses blue, then all of us will gain 1 point. The scoring system is as follows:

• 4 reds – deduct 1 point from each group
• 3 reds – red group +1 point, blue group -3 points
• 2 reds – red group +2 points, blue group -2 points
• 1 red – red group + 3 points, blue group – 1 point
• 0 red (all blue) – plus 1 point for each group

Naturally, in my mind anyway, all of us stands to win from the banker if we all chose blue. Although by choosing red, you have a higher chance of winning (since red wins at least 1 point 3 times out of the 5 scenarios), I was willing to give the trust to people around us that each of us stand to gain if we all choose blue.

I guess that thought was naive. Economics won. The rest of the groups chose red and we were the only group who chose blue. We loss 3 points. Due to this first round, the trust level sank and in the second round, all of us chose red, in which case all of us loss 1 point.

To make things more interesting, in the next round, a representative from each group can “negotiate” what chip they want to choose. So i vented my frustration of why didn’t they all chose blue where all can win. As a result of the negotiations, we decided to choose all blue for once. But i told them that I have now a very strong incentive to choose red because I have lost 4 points in total, whereas all other groups have not lost as much. We left it at that and went back to choosing the chips.

The result? 2 reds and 2 blues in the third round. Our group chose red and i don’t blame them. But there was an additional group who chose blue, who later admitted that they were trying to bridge our loss and at the same time won’t lose much themselves. The other groups who chose red later confessed that they were trying to scam the other groups.

In the 4th and final round, we were allowed to negotiate again. I gave up negotiating this time (i thought it was a waste of time!) and someone else in our group went. They were out there for very long, for something that is “just a game”. And after the long negotiation, the outcome was to choose whatever each group wants, because there wasn’t any trust any longer in any of the groups.

4th round result – 2 reds 2 blues

For something that’s “just a game”, it showed a lot of different characters of people, and the dynamics of human interactions in general. As much as I want a perfect solution to all, others may not. The solution? Always bear in mind that cooperation and competition will always work hand in hand. We need competition, otherwise the human race wouldn’t have advanced to the state it is today. However, cooperation will yield much better results, which is why there are so many open source movements, an example of which is wordpress, which is powering this blog you’re reading right now.

p/s: Incidentally, the push hands exercise I’ve been doing draws out this “cooperate vs compete” paradox quite vividly. As we learn to push, we will learn the principles of tai ji only if we cooperate with our partner. However, in a bid to win, we might lose the principles as well and forget that in order to “win”, we will need a higher level of cooperation! I can’t explain this further other than bid you to try push hands yourself, which is why this is in a foot note.

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