mean field games are played by populations of competing agents who derive their update rules by comparing their own state variable with that of the mean field. after a brief introduction to several areas where they have been used recently, we will focus on models of competing tumor cell populations based on the replicator dynamics mean field evolutionary game with prisoner’s dilemma payoff matrix. we use optimal and adaptive control theory on both deterministic and stochastic versions of these models to design multi-drug chemotherapy schedules that suppress the competitive release of resistant cell populations (to avoid chemo-resistance) by maximizing the shannon diversity of the competing subpopulations. the models can be extended to networks where spatial connectivity can influence optimal chemotherapy scheduling.