Game Theory: players' gender convention? What is the Game Theory convention of using gender terms (male/female) for the players?
I found only one reference suggesting that odd-numbered players are male and even-numbered players are female. 
Best regards,
Avner
 A: I do not think that there is a common convention in the litterature. A good illustration of the divergence of opinions in the field can be found in the preface of A Course in Game Theory by Osborne and Rubinstein:

"A Note on Personal Pronouns
We disagree about how to handle English
  third-person singular pro- nouns. 
AR [Ariel Rubinstein]
   argues that we should use a
  “neutral” pronoun and agrees to the use of “he”, with the
  understanding that this refers to both men and women. Continuous
  reminders of the he/she issue simply divert the reader’s attention
  from the main issues. Language is extremely impor- tant in shaping our
  thinking, but in academic material it is not useful to wave it as a
  ﬂag, as is common in some circles. 
MJO [Martin Osborne] argues that no language is
  “neutral”. In particular, there is a wealth of evidence, both from
  experiments and from analyses of lan- guage use, that “he” is not
  generally perceived to encompass both fe- males and males. To quote
  the American Heritage Dictionary (third edition, page 831), “Thus he
  is not really a gender-neutral pronoun; rather it refers to a male who
  is to be taken as the representative mem- ber of the group referred to
  by its antecedent. The traditional usage, then, is not simply a
  grammatical convention; it also suggests a par- ticular pattern of
  thought.” Further, the use of “he” to refer to an individual of
  unspeciﬁed sex did not even arise naturally, but was im- posed as a
  rule by (male) prescriptive grammarians in the eighteenth and
  nineteenth centuries who were upset by the widespread use of “they” as
  a singular pronoun and decided that, since in their opinion men were
  more important than women, “he” should be used. The use of “he” to
  refer to a generic individual thus both has its origins in sexist
  attitudes and promotes such attitudes. There is no neat solution to
  the problem, especially in a book such as this in which there are so
  many references to generic individuals. “They” has many merits as a
  singular pronoun, although its use can lead to ambiguities (and
  complaints from editors). My preference is to use “she” for all
  individuals. Obviously this us- age is not gender-neutral, but its use
  for a few decades, after a couple of centuries in which “he” has
  dominated, seems likely only to help to eliminate sexist ways of
  thought. If such usage diverts some readers’ attentions from the
  subjects discussed in this book and leads them to contemplate sexism
  in the use of language, which is surely an issue at least as
  signiﬁcant as the minutiae of sequential equilibrium, then an increase
  in social welfare will have been achieved. (Whether or not this book
  qualiﬁes as “academic material”, I see no reason why its readers
  should be treated diﬀerently from those of any other material.) 
To conclude, we both feel strongly on this issue; we both regard the
  compromise that we have reached as highly unsatisfactory. When re-
  ferring to speciﬁc individuals, we sometimes use “he” and sometimes
  “she”. For example, in two-player games we treat player 1 as female
  and player 2 as male. We use “he” for generic individuals."

A: Alice and Bob, A and B for short, genders can identify also.
Caroline
Dave,
Eve,
Fred,
Gail (sp?),
Hal,
Ingrid (not to be confused with Ingrip, God of CAPATCHAs),
Jack,
Kathryn (distinct from Caroline could be spelt with a C),
Luke,
Megan...
I should stop now
