Kevin Styles is the best college football player in the nation, but he gets caught up in the world of celebrity. Will he figure out who his real friends are and will he commit to his girlfriend before it's too late?

From the untimely deaths of young athletes to chronic disease among retired players, roiling debates over tackle football have profound implications for more than one million American boys—some as young as five years old—who play the sport every year. In this book, Kathleen Bachynski offers the first history of youth tackle football and debates over its safety. In the postwar United States, high school football was celebrated as a "moral" sport for young boys, one that promised and celebrated the creation of the honorable male citizen. Even so, Bachynski shows that throughout the twentieth century, coaches, sports equipment manufacturers, and even doctors were more concerned with "saving the game" than young boys' safety—even though injuries ranged from concussions and broken bones to paralysis and death. By exploring sport, masculinity, and citizenship, Bachynski uncovers the cultural priorities other than child health that made a collision sport the most popular high school game for American boys. These deep-rooted beliefs continue to shape the safety debate and the possible future of youth tackle football.

The modern day youth sports environment has taken the enjoyment out of athletics for our children. Currently, 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13, which has given rise to a generation of overweight, unhealthy young adults. There is a solution. John O’Sullivan shares the secrets of the coaches and parents who have not only raised elite athletes, but have done so by creating an environment that promotes positive core values and teaches life lessons instead of focusing on wins and losses, scholarships, and professional aspirations. Changing the Game gives adults a new paradigm and a game plan for raising happy, high performing children, and provides a national call to action to return youth sports to our kids.

Who of us cannot remember the pain and humiliation of being rejected by our classmates? However thick-skinned or immune to such assaults we may become as adults, the memory of those early exclusions is as palpable to each of us today as it is common to human experience. We remember the uncertainty of separating from our home and entering school as strangers and, more than the relief of making friends, we recall the cruel moments of our own isolation as well as those children we knew were destined to remain strangers. In this book Vivian Paley employs a unique strategy to probe the moral dimensions of the classroom. She departs from her previous work by extending her analysis to children through the fifth grade, all the while weaving remarkable fairy tale into her narrative description. Paley introduces a new rule—“You can’t say you can’t play”—to her kindergarten classroom and solicits the opinions of older children regarding the fairness of such a rule. We hear from those who are rejected as well as those who do the rejecting. One child, objecting to the rule, says, “It will be fairer, but how are we going to have any fun?” Another child defends the principle of classroom bosses as a more benign way of excluding the unwanted. In a brilliant twist, Paley mixes fantasy and reality, and introduces a new voice into the debate: Magpie, a magical bird, who brings lonely people to a place where a full share of the sun is rightfully theirs. Myth and morality begin to proclaim the same message and the schoolhouse will be the crucible in which the new order is tried. A struggle ensues and even the Magpie stories cannot avoid the scrutiny of this merciless pack of social philosophers who will not be easily caught in a morality tale. You Can’t Say You Can’t Play speaks to some of our most deeply held beliefs. Is exclusivity part of human nature? Can we legislate fairness and still nurture creativity and individuality? Can children be freed from the habit of rejection? These are some of the questions. The answers are to be found in the words of Paley’s schoolchildren and in the wisdom of their teacher who respectfully listens to them.

A group biography of seven enduring and beloved games, and the story of why—and how—we play them. Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism”; and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white Go stones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language itself. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games—and for us. Funny, fascinating, and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history, and how play makes us human.

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Science of Storytelling comes a bold and ambitious investigation of status that will redefine human culture for our times There's something humans desire even more than gold. It's a fundamental drive that's common to all humanity, cutting across race, gender, age and culture. Our need for it is such that exactly how much of it we possess dramatically effects not only our happiness and well-being but also our physical health. It'sstatus, argues Will Storr. You can't understand human behaviour without understanding The Status Game. This game, which we are all playing, is not only the secret of our success, but also of our most evil behaviour. Everything is subordinate to status, and humans aren't unique in our complicity with it. By reflecting on the various ways humans negotiate this game - through status hierarchies, values, myths and sacred markers, Storr gives readers a master class in this most malevolent of social mysteries.

Based on a game rated M for Mature (17+) by the ESRB.

An examination of subversive games--games designed for political, aesthetic, and social critique.

Game Theory and Exercises introduces the main concepts of game theory, along with interactive exercises to aid readers’ learning and understanding. Game theory is used to help players understand decision-making, risk-taking and strategy and the impact that the choices they make have on other players; and how the choices of those players, in turn, influence their own behaviour. So, it is not surprising that game theory is used in politics, economics, law and management. This book covers classic topics of game theory including dominance, Nash equilibrium, backward induction, repeated games, perturbed strategie s, beliefs, perfect equilibrium, Perfect Bayesian equilibrium and replicator dynamics. It also covers recent topics in game theory such as level-k reasoning, best reply matching, regret minimization and quantal responses. This textbook provides many economic applications, namely on auctions and negotiations. It studies original games that are not usually found in other textbooks, including Nim games and traveller’s dilemma. The many exercises and the inserts for students throughout the chapters aid the reader’s understanding of the concepts. With more than 20 years’ teaching experience, Umbhauer’s expertise and classroom experience helps students understand what game theory is and how it can be applied to real life examples. This textbook is suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students who study game theory, behavioural economics and microeconomics.

With the renewed interest in the WSOP and Texas Hold-Em poker, online poker rooms have become the easiest way for the average player to get in the game. Online poker generates billions of dollars a year. Millions are playing and millions are lost every day. When playing poker live, an experienced player coupled with a little luck is a winning hand. But when playing online, rampant cheating and endless numbers of bad players make the luck factor the deciding factor. This book will let you understand the two different games being played, comparing live play to online play. What No One Else Is Saying About Online Pokerhighlights how the internet has changed the game into a free for all that could bring even the most experienced professional poker player to his knees, begging for mercy. What No One Else Is Saying About Online Poker is the tell all book about online poker. Topics: . Research the ins and outs of the industry and how the internet has changed the game forever. . Understand why online poker rooms are spending millions to detect cheating. . Learn the different types of cheating taking place in today's online poker rooms and how to recognize it. . Uncover the truths and rumored myths of online poker. . Learn exactly where online poker rooms and the players stand concerning the new bill passed into law on October 13,2006: "The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006." . Arm yourself with the knowledge to compete and discover if you can even afford trying. Author Carl Varrone, a successful business owner and poker enthusiast began his research for What No One Else Is Saying About Online Pokerin 1998. His curriculum included reading numerous books and firsthand experiences in casino poker rooms learning to master the game. When poker rooms started popping up on the internet, Varrone found himself playing online every chance he could. Through his years of playing and research he was compelled to write this book. Every person playing online poker or considering it should learn from his experiences before getting in on the action.