Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays (AK Peters/CRC Recreational Mathematics Series) 2nd Edition

It seems the issue previous reviews had with getting a black and white copy was resolved. Bought new from Amazon and received a copy with properly colored diagrams.Excellent book, would have loved to have met any of the three authors, rest in fun and games good sirs.

If you want to study math in a deep level, you will certainly need this book

I took a chance on this despite seeing the reviews, because someone on Twitter sent me a picture showing they'd received a color copy instead and that the others might have just been unlucky. Mine came in the mail today, and lo and behold, it was in black and white. This isn't just a nitpicky thing — the games described in the book require being able to tell the difference between red and blue parts of the drawings, so when those diagrams is in black and white, it's absolutely useless.Decided to order it (and the other three volumes) from Taylor & Francis instead. Hopefully ordering directly from the publisher will alleviate the issue.

This is the first book in a fantastic series. They present an in-depth study in 2-player perfect information games. While they are written for the mathematically literate, there is still things that can be learned by people casually interested in the subject. Definitely check out the preview before purchasing.It's unfortunate that the two 1-star reviews are dragging down the rating because they got black and white versions of the books. The books as they were originally written and laid out don't deserve such a low rating.

OK, I must confess, this review is really based on the old set of (two) volumes, which i purchased around 1985. Rarely did I get so much value for money. I must have spent dozens of evenings in delight reading these volumes, which contain both serious math and scores of jokes on almost every page. And every two years or so I find myself rereading parts of it, chuckling at the pictures and puns once again.And how satisfying, to be able to stun some friends one afternoon by beating them consistently at dots and boxes, because I happened to remember the theory behind the game. And how did I baffle them once when I solved a (supposedly very tough) nim-like problem in a newspaper in an instant, because I could remember Sprague-Grundy theory.I can't recommend these splendid volumes enough.They have given me countless hours of joy.

This book is dazzling. It can be pretty tough going but it iswell worth the effort. You can always tell the work of a genius because it illuminates the landscape and shows us things we have never seen before. I design games for a living and this book rocks! Hackenbush, Nimbers, games with 1/2 move advantage. Well illustrated. ONLY PROBLEM: Where are volumes 2-4?

Not at all happy. Received a cheap black and white print, *not* the color print you see when you click the "Look inside" button above the book's image.It matters for this book in particular because the illustrations are extensive and rely on color to convey what is described in the text. Black and white illustrations literally remove information from the book.

I tried reading this book, but honestly it was pretty nonsensical. There is too much breadth at the expense of depth. It feels like every game is just glossed over and the structure of the book varies greatly and every game seems to handled differently. I was reading this book to learn about combinatorial game theory, but I feel as if I got nothing substantial out of reading this book. I was looking for a textbook style learning material, but this felt more like a brochure about math games