Seven Games

“The games that have preoccupied and fascinated us over millennia tell a story not just about human history but, crucially, about the nature of the human mind. Oliver Roeder’s Seven Games offers a sweeping and provocative tour of the labyrinths into which we so eagerly lose—and so revealingly find—ourselves.” – Brian Christian, author of Most Human Human and The Alignment Problem“Seven Games is exciting and personal – you can sense Roeder’s emotional investment. The book is also built on richly fleshy characters profiled by Roeder – both the human game champions and the AI designers who beat them.” – James Mcconnachie - Times Literary Supplement“A journalist and gaming geek, Roeder’s book is part memoir and part meditation on the way in which overwhelming machine superiority is changing both games and those who play them. His account is perceptive in particular on the oddities of gaming subcultures, most notably those he plays well himself such as Scrabble, where he was briefly one of the 200 or so best players in the US.” – James Crabtree - Financial Times“Illuminating….a fascinating group biography of some of the most popular games of all time….offers powerful insights into why we play games and what we can learn from them….accessible, enjoyable….raises provocative and sometimes unsettling questions about the nature of intelligence and the unintended consequences when machines play better than we do….If you are intrigued by this rare opportunity to pull back the curtain on how humans and computers learn, then you will be richly rewarded.” – The Washington Post“Part memoir and part meditation on how games ranging from chess through checkers to poker have changed in an era when AI-powered computers crush the best human players. Roeder… is especially good on the oddities of gaming subcultures.” – Simon Kuper - Financial Times

Oliver Roeder has been a senior writer at FiveThirtyEight and editor of The Riddler. He studied artificial intelligence as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and holds a PhD in economics focused on game theory. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.