Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-68).

<p>Whist is one of the most played card games of the world. Though there have been many studies made in the field of game theory, whist is still somewhat of an unchartered territory. In this thesis some methods to obtain an optimal strategy for whist are discussed. </p><p>Whist belongs to a group of games called logical games. For this group there exists algorithms which result in an optimal strategy. Two algorithms where examined. The minmax algorithm and the alphbeta algorithm. these algorithms could be adapted to whist </p><p>It is possible that there are methods that use the properties of the cards better the the former algorithms to get an optimal result. A few such methods will also be discussed. </p><p>The practical result of the theoretical investigation was a game where the adapted algorithms were implemented. </p>

Whist is one of the most played card games of the world. Though there have been many studies made in the field of game theory, whist is still somewhat of an unchartered territory. In this thesis some methods to obtain an optimal strategy for whist are discussed. Whist belongs to a group of games called logical games. For this group there exists algorithms which result in an optimal strategy. Two algorithms where examined. The minmax algorithm and the alphbeta algorithm. these algorithms could be adapted to whist It is possible that there are methods that use the properties of the cards better the the former algorithms to get an optimal result. A few such methods will also be discussed. The practical result of the theoretical investigation was a game where the adapted algorithms were implemented.

Thesis advisor: Maia McAleavey / My dissertation explores how nineteenth-century novelists imagined rational thinking as a cognitive resource distributed through physical, social, national, and even imperial channels. Scholars studying nineteenth-century discourses of mind frequently position rational thinking as the normalized given against those unconscious and irrational modes of thought most indicative of the period's scientific discoveries. My project argues, in contrast, that writers were just as invested in exploring rational thinking as multivalent procedure, a versatile category of mental activity that could be layered into novelistic representations of thinking by "thinking with games": that is, incorporating forms of thinking as discussed by popular print media. By reading novels alongside historical gaming practices and gaming literatures and incorporating the insights of twenty-first century cognitive theory, I demonstrate that novelists Maria Edgeworth, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, and Rudyard Kipling experimented with models of gaming to make rational thinking less abstract and reveal its action across bodies, objects, and communities. If Victorian mind-sciences uncovered "thinking fast," games prioritized "thinking slow," a distinction described by psychologist Daniel Kahneman in his recent book, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2013). Scenes of games often slow thinking down, allowing the author to expose the complex processes of rational, cognitive performance. Furthermore, such scenes register the expanded perspective of recent cognitive literary studies such as those by Alan Palmer and Lisa Zunshine, which understand thinking, at least in part, as externalized and social. In effect, by reading scenes of thinking along the lines proposed by strategic gaming, I demonstrate how novels imagined social possibilities for internal processing that extend beyond the bounds of any individual's consciousness. Of course, games easily serve as literary tropes or metaphors; but analyzing scenes of gaming alongside games literature underscores how authors incorporated frameworks of teachable, social thinking from gaming into their representations of rational consciousness. For strategy games literature, better play required learning how to read the minds of other players, how to turn their thinking inside out. The nineteenth-century novel's relationship to games is best understood, I suggest, within the landscape of popular games literature published at its side - sometimes literally. An article on "Whistology" appears just after an installment of The Woman in White in Dickens's All the Year Round; the Cornhill Magazine published a paean to "Chess" amid the serialization of George Eliot's Romola. As a genre, strategy manuals developed new techniques for exercising the cognitive abilities of their readers and, often along parallel lines, so do the novels I discuss. Prompting the reader to think like a game player often involved recreating the kinds of dynamic, active thinking taught by games literature through the novel's form. My dissertation explores how authors used such forms to train their readers in habits of memory, deduction, and foresight encouraged by strategy gaming. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

This diploma thesis consists of two basic parts. The theoretical part, which you hold in your hands just now, and the practical part, which you can find in reduced ver-sion in the image supplement of this work and whose originals will be presented by the day of the diploma thesis defence session. In practical part of my work I have created a full collection of the whist cards using coloured lino-cut technology. In the theoretical concomitant of the art part I wrote about the history and the pre-sent of card games. You can find there informations about origin of cards, about their journey and spreading to the continental Europe, about cards in the Czech countries and about contemporary world of cards. I also wrote about kinds of cards, especially whist cards (they have separate chapter), about card games (games played in our area and games played with whist cards above all), about technology of card production and about their players. I dedicated one whole chapter to talk about practical realization of my whist cards collection, where I cleared up the choice of the theme, creation of con-crete figures and colours used.