This Greek game-theory guru is the most interesting man in Europe right now [View all]

The Greek stock market exploded Tuesday with the Athens Stock Exchange General Index surging 11.3%.This comes amid rapidly evolving talks over how Greece will climb out of its debt crisis.

At the center of these dealings is Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. He's the voice and face of the Greece's economic situation today.His position on what to do about Greek's crushing debt seems to change daily, but that seems to be working to his advantage.

Varoufakis, who describes himself as a libertarian Marxist, became the finance minister after the far-left Syriza party won a resounding victory in Greek elections in January.

Before being elected to parliament, Varoufakis was an economics professor. He teaches economic theory at the University of Athens, but for the past two years he has spent time as a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

But he was probably best-known in Europe for his work at Valve, the video-game company, as the man who analyzed sales of virtual goods and micro-transactions in games like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike. Varoufakis joined Valve three years ago to oversee its Steam Market virtual economy.



He looks like a tech exec too. In photos of his negotiations with various European leaders over the weekend, he appeared with an untucked shirt and no tie. It seemed to convey a message: I don't play by your rules.

Varoufakis' academic specialty is game theory, the study of strategic decision-making. James Galbraith, a fellow UT Austin professor, told Bloomberg that Varoufakis was as knowledgeable "as anyone on the planet" and would "be thinking more than a few steps ahead" in negotiations with Greece's creditors, known as the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission).



Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/yanis-varoufakis-most-interesting-2015-2?r=US#ixzz3Qlacg5fl