So long suckers: Bargaining and betrayal in Breaking Bad

Abstract

In this teaching note, I introduce the rules of a bargaining game called So Long Sucker to help university instructors convey strategic concepts and impart good negotiation skills to their students. In addition, to further bridge the gap between negotiation theory and strategic reality, this note explores several commonalities between So Long Sucker and the many strategic interactions in the critically acclaimed TV series Breaking Bad.

Introduction

Whether one is contracting with customers, suppliers, or other business stakeholders, the ability of our students to negotiate effectively is vital to the success of their professional careers. But strategic concepts are highly abstract and difficult to grasp, and negotiation skills are notoriously difficult to teach. Accordingly, in this note I introduce the rules of a bargaining game called “So Long Sucker” (Hausner et al., 1964) to help instructors convey strategic concepts and impart good negotiation skills to their students. In addition, to further bridge the gap between negotiation theory and strategic reality, this game study explores several commonalities between So Long Sucker and the many strategic interactions in the critically acclaimed TV series Breaking Bad. ¹

In brief, So Long Sucker, a simple bargaining game designed to illustrate the problem of strategic choice, has been variously described as “a dog-eat-dog world” (Rapoport, 1971: 220), “vicious” (Poundstone, 1993: 260), “anti-chess” (Burnett, 2012: 69), and “fiendish” (Tannenbaum, 2012: 66). ² That these dire terms equally describe the dangerous underworld as depicted in Breaking Bad is no coincidence, for both the bargaining game So Long Sucker and the meth trade in Breaking Bad share many commonalities. In both worlds agreements are unenforceable; double-crosses, recurrent; victory, elusive. We can thus learn many lessons by recreating and studying strategic behavior in such a cut-throat and lawless environment.

Bargaining game description

There is something very paradoxical about a game like So Long Sucker: even though it attempts to recreate a “society of ruffians,” a world with well-defined property rights in bargaining chips but without enforceable contracts—that is, a world in which betrayal is a necessary condition in order to win the game (see, e.g. Shubik, 2002: 139)—it is not a world without rules. In fact, So Long Sucker consists of 12 simple rules, so I shall organize this teaching note around these 12 rules. Specifically, I shall restate the original formulation of each rule in italics, explain the details of each rule in plain words, and then use examples from Breaking Bad to illustrate the operation of each rule. ³

Rule 1. Number of players

A four-person game. (Burnett, 2012: 70)

Arguably, the four-player rule in So Long Sucker establishes a floor, not a ceiling. ⁴ Either way, the main purpose of this rule is to make the formation of coalitions as well as the ultimate outcome of the game as unpredictable as possible. ⁵ Accordingly, I would revise Rule 1 as follows: “At least a four-person game.”

Likewise, Breaking Bad is fundamentally a game with four major players. To begin with, there is the nucleus of the show—the initial two-man partnership between teacher and student, between Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. In addition to Walt and Jesse, there is also the cool and ruthless Gustavo Fring, the powerful drug lord and frontman of Los Pollos Hermanos, as well as his mysterious fixer and enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut. Like the game So Long Sucker, the series Breaking Bad can thus be reconceptualized as a four-person contest—a dangerous game of survival, one with life-and-death consequences and multi-million dollar stakes, but a game nonetheless—because most of the action in Breaking Bad revolves around these four characters, who form unlikely alliances, suffer sudden betrayals, and plan premeditated double- and triple-crosses throughout the series. ⁶

Yet the entire universe of shifting coalitions and alliances in Breaking Bad involves far more than these four main characters—Walter, Jesse, Gus, and Mike. In the course of five TV seasons, meth kingpin Walter White will form temporary or long-term alliances with a whole host of characters, including his estranged wife Skyler White, an accountant and aspiring writer; Tuco Salamanca, a volatile and violent drug lord; Gale Boetticher, a gentle university-trained chemist and literary devotee; Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, a corporate executive at Madrigal Electromotive, a multinational corporation; Todd Alquist, a key employee at a local pest control firm; and Todd’s uncle, Jack Welker, the leader of a notorious neo-Nazi motorcycle gang. ⁷

This series of strange alliances and sudden betrayals highlights another fundamental commonality between Breaking Bad and the bargaining game So Long Sucker. In the words of one legal scholar (Reynolds, 2015: 611), “Breaking Bad is an absolute treasure trove [of strategic alliances], producing an incredibly complex and varied array of bargaining parties and negotiated transactions.” Walter White will not only team up with a motley crew of characters but also betray or double-cross each one, unless he is betrayed or double-crossed by them first. Moreover, the problem of unstable coalitions is not limited to illegal markets like the meth trade. This problem occurs in a wide variety of settings, such as post-Cold War military alliances (see, e.g. Mearsheimer, 1990), production decisions of oil-exporting nations (see, e.g. Ayoub, 1976: 15–20), and the rise and fall of coalition governments during the French Fifth Republic (see, e.g. Tsebelis, 1988). But we would nevertheless expect the problem of unstable alliances to be especially acute in domains like the drug trade, that is, black markets lacking legally recognized property rights or legally enforceable contracts (see, e.g. Levitt and Venkatesh, 2000: 780–781, noting the absence of property rights and legally binding contracts among street gangs).

In any case, the fact that there are far more than four players in the topsy-turvy world of Breaking Bad does not alter our fundamental insight that the action in this TV series can be modeled as a game of So Long Sucker.

Rule 2. Bargaining chips

Each player starts with seven chips, distinguishable by their color from the chips of any other player. As the game proceeds, players will gain possession of chips of other colors. The players must keep their holdings in view at all times. (Burnett, 2012: 70)

Let’s break this rule down into three separate parts:

Each player starts with seven chips…

Because So Long Sucker is a stylized game (i.e. a simple game designed to recreate the complexity of coalitions and mimic the messiness of real-life bargaining), the rules of the game are artificial and simple. Rule 2 of So Long, Sucker, for example, stipulates that each player must be allocated the same number of bargaining chips. Nevertheless, despite its outward simplicity, Rule 2 conveys a fundamental feature of bargaining generally and Breaking Bad specifically: the all-important idea of a bargaining chip.

The main characters in Breaking Bad are continually bargaining with each other as they create a wide variety of uneasy and unstable coalitions throughout the show’s five seasons (alliances that ultimately unravel from the opposing pressures of greed or guilt), but more to the point, each of the main players in Breaking Bad—Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, Gustavo Fring, Mike Ermantraut, Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, etc.—brings a special skill or attribute to the bargaining table.

Consider the initial alliance between Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in season one of Breaking Bad. Although the 50-year-old Mr White—a respectable middle-class family man and terminal cancer patient—and the twenty-something Jesse—a small-time drug dealer and video-game devotee—make strange bedfellows, each man brings something valuable to the partnership table. Mr White, after all, is a professional chemist, while Jesse has valuable street contacts and a rudimentary distribution network. In short, the fact that both men have valuable bargaining chips at their disposal is what makes their initial alliance in season one feasible in the first place.

In fact, the same can be said for every major character—and every successive alliance—in the remaining four seasons of Breaking Bad. For as they contemplate whether and when to work together—or whether and when to betray each other—every major player in Breaking Bad brings special skills or valuable resources to the bargaining table—not just chemistry teacher Walter White and drug dealer Jesse Pinkman, but also business owner Gustavo Fring, fixer Mike Ermantraut, corporate executive Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, and neo-Nazi Jack Welker, just to name a few of the players with whom Walter White does business.

Gus Fring’s bargaining chips, for example, are his resources, such as his state-of-the-art super-lab, along with his sophisticated regional distribution network. His enforcer, Mike Ermantraut, is a retired Philadelphia beat cop. His bargaining chip is his human capital, specifically, his fierce loyalty and his extensive knowledge of forensic evidence, surveillance methods, and police procedure. For her part, Lydia Rodarte-Quayle’s bargaining chip is her proximity to methylamine (CH₃NH₂), a key ingredient in Walter White’s coveted blue meth recipe. In addition, she has lucrative overseas contacts as well as access to an overseas distribution network. Lastly, Jack Welker’s bargaining chip is his “muscle.” As the leader of a vicious neo-Nazi motorcycle gang, he is able to intimidate his adversaries by engaging in murder and mayhem at will.

As the game proceeds, players will gain possession of chips of other colors…

Recall from the first part of Rule 2 (above) that every player is allocated a certain number of bargaining chips at the start of play. This next part of Rule 2 tells us that we can expect the players to capture other players’ chips as the game proceeds.

Poker chips are the currency of a board game like So Long Sucker; in the meth underworld of Breaking Bad, it is information that is the main currency of this deadly game. Sklyer White, for example, eventually learns the true provenance of Walt’s fortune and even helps him launder his illicit funds, while Hank finally figures out the true identity of Heisenberg. In fact, by the final few episodes of the series, each of the remaining characters—that is, the characters who are not yet dead—are in possession of valuable information, metaphorical bargaining chips that each character will try to use to his advantage.

Consider Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, former business partners who have a major falling out by the final season. Walt wants Jesse killed. He knows the identities and home address of Jesse’s girlfriend and her son, Andrea and Brock Cantillo. He also knows how much his former partner cares for them, and he attempts to use this information against Jesse. For his part, Jesse, disillusioned with Walt’s ruthlessness and moral blindness, wants Walt to pay for his crimes. Although Jesse does not know the precise location of Walt’s barrels of money, based on his past dealings with him, he suspects that Walt has buried his fortune in the desert, and he uses this knowledge to lure Walt into a DEA sting operation.

The players must keep their holdings in view at all times.

Although the last part of Rule 2 requires an honest accounting of one’s bargaining chips at all times, it does not prevent the players from bluffing or lying about their true intentions when they are creating coalitions or negotiating with the other players. Simply put, Rule 2 only requires truthful record keeping; it does not prohibit other forms of deception and double-dealing (cf. Rule 12 on cheap talk and amoral bargaining, for example).

In fact, according to one of the creators of the game (Shubik, 1987: 1516; Shubik, 2002: 139), it is necessary to double-cross the other players in order to win the game. Or in the words of one scholar: “An emergent feature of the rules [of So Long Sucker] is that one cannot capture chips without help from others, so negotiation and [trust] are necessary to win the game. However, failing to live up to agreements is a way to stop others from winning and can also be used to make significant personal gains, so betrayal is also an implicit necessity for having a chance of winning” (Björk, 2015: 175).

We will see many such acts of betrayal and deception in the course of Breaking Bad.

Rule 3. First mover

The player to make the first move is decided by chance. ⁸ (Burnett, 2012: 70)

This simple first-mover rule imparts two important lessons: (a) the role of chance or fate, even in strategic games, and (b) the paradoxical idea of “a game within a game.” Both of these key lessons, moreover, recur over and over in Breaking Bad.

Chance events

As it happens, the two most pivotal events in Breaking Bad—the tragic timing of Walter White’s terminal medical diagnosis as well as his fateful re-introduction to his future business partner and nemesis Jesse Pinkman—occur purely by chance in the pilot episode of Breaking Bad.

To begin with, in the pilot episode Walt discovers—on the eve of his 50th birthday—that he has terminal, stage 3 lung cancer, and this dark diagnosis—occurring so close to such a milestone in Walt’s personal life—can itself be reinterpreted as a chance or fateful event. Although it is unclear whether Walter White was a smoker earlier in life, it is still statistically possible to develop lung cancer from other causes. (Recall, for example, that Walter is a chemistry teacher, so his lung cancer may have been caused by repeated exposure to certain chemicals.) And by the same token, although a cigarette-smoking habit increases one’s chance of developing lung cancer, not every “two-pack a day” or hard smoker will develop lung cancer.

Moreover, Walter White’s sudden diagnosis leads to another pivotal chance event in the pilot episode: the formation of the fateful business partnership between “Mr White” and Jesse Pinkman, an unstable alliance that sets in train all the other shifting coalitions and betrayals that occur and reoccur in Breaking Bad. As it happens, it is highly unlikely that Walt would have taken notice of Jesse at all had it not been for his diagnosis and for his macho man brother-in-law Hank Schrader, a federal police agent assigned to the Drug Enforcement Agency’s field office in Albuquerque.

Motivated by a mixture of pity and “machoness,” Hank offers Walt the chance (pun intended!) to observe a police raid. Although Walt appears to resent this pretend offer of generosity, he grudgingly accepts Hank’s ride-along invitation, and it is on the fateful day of the ride-along that Walt spots his former student, none other than Jesse Pinkman, fleeing the scene of a clandestine meth lab during the drug-bust operation. With this turn of chance or fateful events, our game of So Long Sucker (Breaking Bad edition) can properly begin.

Games within games

Consider the game of North American football, by way of example. A random coin toss at the start of play determines which team will receive the kickoff on the first possession (see, e.g. NFL Rulebook, 2015: Rule 4, Section 2, Article 2). Generally speaking, that one must play a mini-game in order to initiate the main game is itself an important idea, the idea of a game within a game.

A memorable but macabre example of such “a game within a game” occurs in the episode “…And the Bag’s in the River” (season 1, episode 3). Walt and Jesse are deliberating about the fate of a rival drug dealer who they are holding hostage in Jesse’s basement. The hostage, Krazy-8, had already attempted to kill them and may do so again, but even if they kill him in self-defense, they will have blood on their hands. Neither Walt nor Jesse wants to do this dirty deed, so the designated executioner is determined by a coin toss.

Another example of “a game within a game” occurs in the episode “Crazy Handful of Nothin’” (season 1, episode 6). One of the recurring plot lines in Breaking Bad is DEA agent Hank Schrader’s ongoing investigation and relentless pursuit of the meth kingpin Heisenberg. The cat-and-mouse game between the two brothers-in-law, between Heisenberg the criminal and Schrader the law man, fill many episodes with heightened suspense and dramatic tension. Within this larger game, there is a minor but revealing scene in “Crazy Handful of Nothin’” in which Walt and Hank are playing poker in Walt’s living room. In this game within a game, Walt decides to go “all in,” betting all of his poker chips on his hand. In response, Hank decides to “fold” rather than raise the stakes. It turns out, however, that Walt was bluffing. Walt had “a handful of nothing.”

Rule 4. Legal moves

A move is made by playing a chip of any color out onto the playing area or on top of any chip or pile of chips already in the playing area. (Burnett, 2012: 70)

In brief, this simple rule tells us there are two possible legal moves in So Long Sucker—two possible ways of playing one’s poker chips. Specifically, when it is one’s turn to move (see Rule 5 below), the moving player may place one of his bargaining chips either “out onto the playing area” or “on top of any chip or pile of chips already in the playing area.”

Likewise, there are two ways of risking one’s “bargaining chips” in real life, two possible ways of creating a coalition or partnership. In a word (or two words), you can either “rock” or “roll.” That is, you can take the initiative yourself by approaching a potential partner and proposing an alliance (we call this approach the “rock” strategy), or alternatively, you can sit back and wait for potential partners to approach you with offers (the “roll” strategy).

Notice how the “rock” versus “roll” methods of play correspond to the two types of moves in So Long Sucker. In the game, when you place your chip “on top of any chip or pile of chips already in the playing area,” you are playing the “rock” strategy: you are directly engaging or initiating contact with the other players whose chips are below yours. By contrast, placing your chip “out onto the playing area” is like the “roll” approach: you are allowing the other players to decide whether to engage or initiate negotiations with you by placing their chips on top of yours (cf. Cholag, 2015).

For their part, the creators of Breaking Bad present many memorable illustrations of the “rock” and “roll” methods of coalition formation. Consider, once again, the pilot episode of the series (“Pilot,” season 1, episode 1). It is Walter White who approaches Jesse Pinkman and who proposes that they go into the meth business together. In other words, Mr White is the “rocker,” the character who proposes a partnership, while Jesse is the “roller”: he must now react to Mr White’s unexpected offer.

Or consider a more dramatic example of “rock” versus “roll” in the episode “Crazy Handful of Nothin’” (season 1, episode 6), when Walter White (now transformed into Heisenberg) storms into the headquarters of Tuco Salamanca, a notorious drug lord, after Tuco and his henchmen have roughed up Walt’s partner Jesse and stolen their entire inventory: a pound of pure crystal meth. Instead of writing this theft off as a business loss and starting over, Walt decides to negotiate with Tuco directly and demand $50,000: “Thirty-five for the pound of meth you stole, and another fifteen for my partner’s pain and suffering.” More dramatically, Walt backs up his offer by hurling a bagful of fulminated mercury to the floor, generating a powerful explosion. Moreover, Walt’s risky “rock” strategy works: Tuco pays Walt his 50 grand and promptly orders another batch.

Rule 5. Order of play

The order of play, except when a capture has just been made, or a player has been defeated (Rules 6 and 9) is decided by the last player to have moved. He may give the move to any player (including himself) whose color is not represented in the pile just played on. But if all players are represented in that pile, then he must give the move to the player whose most-recently-played chip is furthest down in the pile. (Burnett, 2012: 70, emphasis in original)

Although Rule 5 is a mere procedural rule regarding the order of play, it has dark and sinister overtones, for it is the first rule to refer to the “capture” of a chip or “defeat” of player, and at a deeper level, this simple procedural rule also reveals an underlying and complex tension between the opposing forces of free will and determinism in the game itself. ⁹ On the one hand, the rule confers wide latitude on the last player to have moved: it lets him decide for himself to whom to give the next move. But at the same time, depending on the composition of the bargaining chips already in play, the rule limits his choices and deterministically designates the identity of the next player with the right to move.

By the same token, the series Breaking Bad presents this inherent and insoluble tension between these two opposing forces, this paradoxical battle between free will and determinism. The creator of the series, Vince Gilligan, sums up this philosophical tension this way: “If there’s a larger lesson to Breaking Bad, it’s that actions have consequences” (Segal, 2011: MM18, emphasis added). In other words, although one’s initial actions might be the product of voluntary choices, such actions will produce inevitable, if not deterministic, moral consequences.

Consider the central character of Breaking Bad, Walter White. He freely decides to break bad and enter the meth trade, just as he freely chooses his new alias and alter ego “Heisenberg.” Or, in the words of one scholar (Stephenson, 2012: 210), “Walt has made his own choices in life—they weren’t made for him.” But once he makes these fateful choices, once he decides “to cook,” he not only becomes ensnared in the evil and violent logic of this dangerous underworld; his choices will also lead to his own inexorable and inevitable downfall. Simply put, in a survival game like So Long Sucker—as in the cut-throat world of the meth trade—the unwritten norms and cultural expectations of the players may influence the ultimate outcome of the game (see, e.g. Hofstede and Murff, 2010: 5–6). In other words, who you play with can determine how you play.

Rules 6 and 7. Kills and captures

Rule 6. A capture is accomplished by playing two chips of the same color consecutively on one pile. The player designated by that color must kill one chip, of his choice, out of the pile, and then take in the rest [of the chips]. He then gets the next move. (Burnett, 2012: 70, emphasis in original)

Rule 7. A kill of a chip is effected by placing it in the “dead box.” (Burnett, 2012: 70, emphasis in original)

Capture, kill, dead box… In sum, the object of the game So Long Sucker is to capture as many of the other players’ bargaining chips as possible, but captures are not costless. A capture necessitates a kill.

The cruel and callous core of So Long Sucker is thus upon us—comprising these two ominous kill and capture rules. Together, these two simple but sinister rules specify the conditions in which one player may rightfully take (i.e. capture) the bargaining chips of the other players as well as the conditions in which he is required to eliminate or remove (i.e. kill) a chip from his possession. Notice, too, how these two ruthless rules embody the recurring, unceasing interplay between freedom and fate—between autonomy and obligation. On the one hand, each player decides for himself whether and when to effectuate a capture, but when a player does make a capture, he is now obligated to drop one of the captured chips into the dead box. In a word, he must kill one captured chip. Yet even here the player retains a modicum of choice—even when he must kill a chip—for he may still decide which one of the captured chips to kill or eliminate.

Likewise, consider, yet again, Breaking Bad. One of the most memorable examples of capture/kill occurs in the back-to-back episodes “To’hajiilee” and “Ozymandias” in the season finale (season 5, episodes 13 and 14), two of our favorite episodes from the Breaking Bad series. Together, these compelling episodes—which present the culmination of Hank Schrader’s series-long pursuit of Heisenberg and the tragic consequences of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman’s volatile and now defunct partnership—involve a series of dramatic captures and kills. In short, the “To’hajiilee” and “Ozymandias” episodes present a series of successive captures—first of Walt, then of Hank and his partner Gomez, then of Jesse, and then of Walt’s buried barrels of money—captures that culminate in a gun battle and a cold-blooded killing. By the end of “Ozymandias,” Walter White/Heisenberg appears destroyed—destroyed but perhaps not defeated (cf. Hemingway, 2003: 103)—while Jesse is now a prisoner of Uncle Jack and his crew, a turn of events that now leads us to our next rule, the hostage rule. ¹⁰

Rule 8. Hostages

A prisoner is a chip of a color other than that of the player who holds it. A player may at any time during the game kill any prisoner in his possession, or transfer it to another player. Such transfers are unconditional, and cannot be retracted. A player may not transfer chips of his own color, nor kill them, except out of a captured pile (Rule 6). (Burnett, 2012: 70, emphasis in the original)

This prisoner or hostage rule does three things. First, it presents an intuitive definition of “prisoner.” A prisoner is a hostage, that is, any captured chip belonging to another player and thus held hostage by the player carrying out the capture under the capture rule (see Rule 6). Accordingly, when a player captures any chips during the course of play, those captured chips (excepting his own chips) become his “prisoners” or hostages.

Next, the hostage/prisoner rule specifies what a hostage-taker may do with his hostages or captured chips. In summary, the hostage-taker has three options at his disposal: (a) he may kill any or all of his hostages at any time, (b) he may “transfer” them (i.e. trade them or give them away) to another player at any time, or (c) he may sit tight and do nothing—that is, he may hold onto his hostages until further notice.

Lastly, the prisoner rule contains a special stipulation regarding the transfer of hostages (cf. option (b) above): all such transfers are final or unconditional and thus cannot be retracted once made. At first glance, this peculiar proviso appears to be a minor one, tucked away in one of the far corners of the rulebook, but in reality, this sub-rule is a critical one. Why? Because it exposes the players to the risk of betrayal, a possibility made explicit in Rule 12 below, the cheap talk and amoral bargaining rule.

If A (the transferor) conveys or transfers a hostage to B (the transferee) based on a mutual understanding or agreement in principle that B will return the favor to A in some way—for example, by returning one of A’s chips to A or by killing a chip belonging to C or D—there is no guarantee that the transferee will keep his end of the bargain. After all, the transfer is unconditional and cannot be retracted. The lesson here is clear: transferor beware!

The possibility of betrayal thus presents a difficult predicament to all would-be hostage takers: should you trust or distrust your potential trading partners? A fateful example of this trust dilemma occurs early in the first season of Breaking Bad. In the episode “…And the Bag’s in the River” (season 1, episode 3), Walt and Jesse find themselves holding a rival drug dealer named Krazy-8 hostage in Jesse’s basement. Krazy-8 is a cold-blooded killer who has already attempted to kill Walt and Jesse. What will stop him from attempting to kill them again? Walt and Jesse thus find themselves in a dreadful situation, for they must make an awful choice. Either they trust Krazy-8 when he tells them “if you let me go, I won’t come after you” or they kill him in cold blood to remove the threat of retribution.

The hostage rule thus teaches us a critical lesson about contracts: when agreements are unenforceable and legal remedies costly or otherwise out of reach, voluntary transfers are effectively final.

Rule 9. Defeat

Defeat of a player takes place when he is given the move, and is unable to play through having no chips in his possession. However, his defeat is not final until every player holding prisoners has declared his refusal to come to the rescue by means of a transfer (Rule 8). Upon defeat, a player withdraws from the game, and the move rebounds to the player who gave him the move. (If the latter is thereby defeated, the move goes to the player who gave him the move, etc.) (Burnett, 2012: 70, emphasis in the original)

According to this rule, three conditions must be met in order for a player to be defeated and thus eliminated from the game: (a) it is the player’s move, (b) he has no remaining hostages, and (c) no other player is willing to rescue him. Notice, then, that defeat not only requires an absence of playing material on the defeated player’s part (i.e. the absence of any hostages or bargaining chips to play with); it also requires the active acquiescence of the other active players

For its part, Breaking Bad presents multiple examples of protagonists running out of bargaining chips and then being forsaken by their ostensible partners. Indeed, of all the mayhem and murder in Breaking Bad, the sudden downfall of DEA agent Hank Schrader in the final season of the series provides the most dramatic example of the defeat rule in action. By this stage in the series (episode 14 of season 5), Walter White aka Heisenberg has already destroyed or defeated (i.e. killed) a number of his former partners and business associates in the meth trade.

Previously, for example, Walt had lured the cunning Gus Fring into a deadly trap in “Face Off” (season 4, episode 13). Worse yet, Walt had also shot his loyal partner Mike Ehrmantraut point blank in “Say My Name” (season 5, episode 7). This state of affairs thus leaves four major “players” in this deadly survival game: (a) Heisenberg himself; (b) his brother-in-law, agent Hank Schrader; (c) Jesse Pinkman, Walt’s disgruntled former partner, who is now working with Schrader; and (d) Walt’s new business partner Jack Welker aka “Uncle Jack,” the ring leader of a nefarious Nazi motorcycle gang.

In “To’hajiilee” (season 5, episode 13), agent Schrader and his partner Steven Gomez, with the help of their informant Jesse, set Walter up in the middle of the desert. But as Schrader finally proceeds to arrest Walt and read him his rights, Uncle Jack and his henchmen come to Walt’s rescue and engage agents Schrader and Gomez in a fierce gun battle. The action then picks up in the very next episode, “Ozymandias” (season 5, episode 14), with Hank seriously wounded and Gomez left for dead. At this point, Walt tries to come to his brother-in-law’s rescue by offering Uncle Jack all of his buried money in return for Hank’s life. But in reality, Uncle Jack has already decided to double-cross Walt and take all of his money anyway, so Walt has no bargaining chips to give away. Thus, like Crazy-8 in a previous episode, Hank knows his fate is sealed, but unlike Crazy-8, Hank rejects Walt’s rescue out of pride.

Moreover, these cinematic events—and the defeat rule generally—teach us a stark, real-world lesson: regardless of how many bargaining chips a person may have at his disposal, in a world without enforceable contracts, in a world where legal remedies are out of reach, one is often at the mercy of one’s ostensible allies.

Rule 10. Zombies

The chips of a defeated player remain in play as prisoners, but are ignored in determining the order of play (Rule 5). If a pile is captured by the chips of a defeated player, the entire pile is killed, and the move rebounds as in Rule 9. (Burnett, 2012: 70)

Rule 10 deals with a special category of bargaining chips, what we shall refer to as “zombies.”

According to the previous rule (see Rule 9 on defeat), a player is defeated only when he runs out of bargaining chips. As such, this particular rule (Rule 10) refers to the defeated player’s captured chips—that is, bargaining chips originally belonging to the defeated player that were captured, but not yet killed, during any of the previous rounds of the game.

Recall that every player is assigned a fixed number of poker chips at the start of play (see Rule 2 on bargaining chips). Those bargaining chips, however, may subsequently be captured by any of the other players during the course of play (see Rules 6 and 8 on capture and hostages). Therefore, when a player is defeated (i.e. runs out of chips to play with), Rule 10 applies to his captured chips—zombie chips that are still being held hostage by any of the other players at the moment of the defeated player’s defeat. More importantly, Rule 10 tells us what happens if any of the remaining players decide to use a zombie chip to capture an active pile of chips on the board: all of the chips in the captured pile are instantly killed.

An exceptional illustration of the zombie rule occurs in the series finale of Breaking Bad: “Felina” (season 5, episode 16). In this episode, Walt hatches an elaborate blackmail plan and suicide mission to “make things rights.” He devises and executes a complex plan in order to leave what is left of his fortune in trust to his son (cf. the transfer rule) and to exact his revenge against Uncle Jack and his crew, the men who betrayed Walt by killing Hank and stealing the lion’s share of Walt’s buried fortune. At this point in the series, however, Walt is still down to his last barrel of cash, ill-gotten gains he had accumulated during his ill-fated partnerships with his former partners Jesse Pinkman, Gustavo Fring, and Mike Ehrmantraut. Because his former partners Gus and Mike are now both dead —“defeated” in the parlance of So Long Sucker —and because Jesse is still being held captive by Uncle Jack’s crew, Walt is effectively making his last move with Gus, Mike, and Jesse’s zombie chips. So, by the time Walt makes his last momentous move with his zombie chips he not only runs out of chips himself but everyone else’s chips are also “killed,” just as the zombie rule requires.

As it happens, everyone dies in the end, with one poetic exception: Jesse Pinkman, Walt’s original partner and the ostensible “winner” of this deadly meth game.

Rule 11. Last man standing

The winner is the player surviving after all the others have been defeated. Note that a player can win even if he holds no chips and even if all chips of his color have been killed. (Burnett, 2012: 70)

Notice this rule’s perverse and paradoxical definition of winning. Victory does not go to the player who is able to amass the most chips, nor does it go to the player with the most prisoners or hostages in his possession. Under this simple rule, victory goes to the last man standing, regardless of his chip or hostage count.

Likewise, the fate of Jesse Pinkman in the series finale of Breaking Bad provides a paradigm illustration of the last-man-standing rule in the game So Long Sucker. By the final episode, Jesse holds no metaphorical chips and all his own chips are figuratively dead, since he wants no part of his share of the blood money he had earned prior to his captivity in Uncle Jack’s meth lab and most likely wants no part in the meth trade ever again. Nevertheless, just as this paradoxical rule contemplates, Jesse is the ostensible “winner,” for when all is said and done, he is literally the last man standing.

Rule 12. Cheap talk and amoral bargaining

Coalitions, or agreements to cooperate, are permitted, and may take any form. However, the rules provide no penalty for failure to live up to an agreement. Open discussion is not restricted, but players are not allowed to confer away from the table during the game, or make agreements before the start of the game. (Burnett, 2012: 70, emphasis in original)

This final bargaining rule does three things: (a) it allows the players to negotiate with one other; (b) it stipulates that all negotiations must take place within the game itself; and (c) it allows each player to decide for himself whether to abide by the terms of any agreement he enters into during the course of the game. Proviso (c) is especially relevant to the nasty and brutish underworld portrayed in Breaking Bad, where most agreements are by definition illegal and thus unenforceable in courts of law.

The doctrine of illegal agreements has historical antecedents in the venerable English common law and is still good law today. ¹¹ In the universe of all possible voluntary exchanges, the subset of illegal ones contains many diverse members, including illegal bets, usurious loans, and contracts in restraint of trade (see generally Perillo et al., 2009: chs. 80–88). Broadly speaking, however, there are two general reasons why an agreement, bargain, or promise might be illegal and thus unenforceable: (a) the agreement might violate a legislative statute or administrative regulation (see, e.g. Note, 1941), or (b) it might violate “public policy” as declared by the courts (see, e.g. Friedman, 2012).

Either way, from a theoretical perspective, the illegal agreement doctrine is a paradoxical one. If the fundamental or classical liberal purpose of the law of contracts is to protect liberty and promote individual autonomy, why does our common law tradition interfere with such liberty and autonomy rights by declaring certain agreements illegal? In any case, when agreements are illegal or unenforceable, morality (e.g. the moral obligation to keep one’s promises) becomes the only deterrent to double-crossing one’s partners in crime.

Moreover, the cheap talk/amoral bargaining proviso in “So Long Sucker” and the general idea of an illegal agreement both raise a deeper moral problem. Simply put, regardless of the legal status or enforceability of a particular voluntary agreement, many people would agree that one should try to honor one’s word and keep one’s promises as a matter of morality (see, e.g. Fried, 1981). What happens, however, when this moral principle collides with the principle of self-preservation in a game like So Long Sucker or in the dangerous underworld of the meth trade as depicted in Breaking Bad? I shall conclude this teaching note by considering this troubling question.

Conclusion

One of the reasons the bargaining game So Long Sucker is worth teaching to our students is that this game invites us to explore many possible intersections between negotiation theory, ethics, and contracting strategy. Consider the following common sense wisdom of one contemporary philosopher (Moeller, 2009: 1), “Morality is a tool…for dividing people into two categories: the good and the bad.” Okay, but what happens when you live in a world without morality, a rough-and-tumble “society of ruffians” in which bargains are unenforceable and betrayal, a necessary evil. The world of Breaking Bad—like moral philosopher David Hume’s (1826) “society of ruffians”—is a lawless world, and “[i]n a lawless area, you do not know what to expect around the next corner, and this will prevent most people from ever going there” (Moeller, 2009: 13). Walt, however, goes there.

From a contract theory perspective, one might thus be tempted to see Walter White as the embodiment of the Holmesian bad man, a fictitious construct or ideal type that is frequently referred to in legal theory. ¹² In the words of the great Oliver Wendell Holmes himself (1897: 459), for example, the “bad man” is someone “who cares only for the material consequences” of his actions and omissions; a “good” man, by contrast, is one “who finds his reasons for conduct…in the vaguer sanctions of conscience.” In other words, the bad man will break the law only if he can get away with it; the good man will break the law only when that is the morally right thing to do.

But upon further reflection, far from being the embodiment of the “bad man,” Walter White is his antithesis. The bad man operates in a stable world, a world of formal legal rules that may or may not be enforced with some positive probability (cf. Guerra-Pujol, 2011). The world Walter inhabits, by contrast, is highly unstable and even dangerous; it is a lawless world defined by the utter absence of formal rules. There is no positive or man-made law to speak of in this type of underground economy, for in a “society of ruffians,” there is only one rule: survival. As a result, in the absence of enforceable agreements (see Rule 12), the alliances in Breaking Bad are unstable and fragile. But how could it be otherwise? Although loyalty and trust are no doubt necessary conditions for the formation and maintenance of a stable alliance, loyalty and trust are also hard to come by in a “society of ruffians.”

Aside from the absence of positive law, the rules of a game like So Long Sucker or the modern-day society of ruffians depicted in Breaking Bad raise deeper and more troubling questions about the nature of morality. In brief, what role can morality play in a society of ruffians? Does morality extend its reach into such a lawless or Hobbesian realm, or are the dictates of morality suspended under such desperate conditions?

There is a family of moral theories—all inspired by natural law theory—that posits the existence of a “higher law,” an ethical or moral code that is universally applicable across time and space and is discoverable by human reason. ¹³ Furthermore, in the words of one legal scholar (Murphy, 2011: sec. 2.3), “[a] developed natural law theory includes within it a catalog of […] fundamental goods, the basic values upon which the principles of [universal] right are founded.” But cultural artifacts like So Long Sucker and Breaking Bad expose a dramatic tension between two of the so-called “basic” or “universal” values in natural law theory: the master rule of universal love versus the fundamental good of self-preservation.

As we have seen throughout this teaching note, So Long Sucker is a pure negotiation game, or in the words of one of its creators (Shubik, 1987: 1516), this game “was designed so that in order to win it is necessary to form coalitions.” But at the same time, the formation of mutually beneficial coalitions or partnerships is not a sufficient condition to win the game: “At some point an individual must double-cross his partners” (Shubik, 1987: 1516). As a result, the players in a treacherous game of So Long Sucker—like the short-lived characters in Breaking Bad—“inhabit a realm of moral ambiguities” (Segal, 2011).

Thus, the cut-throat rules of these sinister survival games—So Long Sucker in the zero-sum world of winner-take-all board games; the dangerous meth business in the nefarious world of Breaking Bad—not only invite us to reconsider the big questions debated by legal scholars and moral philosophers for centuries, such as what is the relationship between natural law and positive law—between cosmic justice and human law? In addition, these bargaining games explore an entirely new question: what happens when the tenets of our morality are in conflict with themselves?