Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed two-person zero-sum games, in which a participant's gains or losses are exactly balanced by the losses and gains of the other participant. In the 1950s, it was extended to the study of non zero-sum games, and was eventually applied to a wide range of behavioral relations. It is now an umbrella term for the science of rational decision making in humans, animals, and computers.
Minimax is a decision rule used in artificial intelligence, decision theory, game theory, statistics, and philosophy for minimizing the possible loss for a worst case scenario. When dealing with gains, it is referred to as "maximin" – to maximize the minimum gain. Originally formulated for several-player zero-sum game theory, covering both the cases where players take alternate moves and those where they make simultaneous moves, it has also been extended to more complex games and to general decision-making in the presence of uncertainty.
In game theory, the Nash equilibrium is the most commonly-used solution concept for non-cooperative games. A Nash equilibrium is a situation where no player could gain by changing their own strategy. The idea of Nash equilibrium dates back to the time of Cournot, who in 1838 applied it to his model of competition in an oligopoly.
In game theory, the centipede game, first introduced by Robert Rosenthal in 1981, is an extensive form game in which two players take turns choosing either to take a slightly larger share of an increasing pot, or to pass the pot to the other player. The payoffs are arranged so that if one passes the pot to one's opponent and the opponent takes the pot on the next round, one receives slightly less than if one had taken the pot on this round, but after an additional switch the potential payoff will be higher. Therefore, although at each round a player has an incentive to take the pot, it would be better for them to wait. Although the traditional centipede game had a limit of 100 rounds, any game with this structure but a different number of rounds is called a centipede game.
In game theory, a subgame is any part of a game that meets the following criteria :
- It has a single initial node that is the only member of that node's information set.
- If a node is contained in the subgame then so are all of its successors.
- If a node in a particular information set is in the subgame then all members of that information set belong to the subgame.
In game theory, a move, action, or play is any one of the options which a player can choose in a setting where the optimal outcome depends not only on their own actions but on the actions of others. The discipline mainly concerns the action of a player in a game affecting the behavior or actions of other players. Some examples of "games" include chess, bridge, poker, monopoly, diplomacy or battleship.
In game theory, a solution concept is a formal rule for predicting how a game will be played. These predictions are called "solutions", and describe which strategies will be adopted by players and, therefore, the result of the game. The most commonly used solution concepts are equilibrium concepts, most famously Nash equilibrium.
In game theory, an extensive-form game is a specification of a game allowing for the explicit representation of a number of key aspects, like the sequencing of players' possible moves, their choices at every decision point, the information each player has about the other player's moves when they make a decision, and their payoffs for all possible game outcomes. Extensive-form games also allow for the representation of incomplete information in the form of chance events modeled as "moves by nature". Extensive-form representations differ from normal-form in that they provide a more complete description of the game in question, whereas normal-form simply boils down the game into a payoff matrix.
In game theory, a Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium (PBE) is a solution with Bayesian probability to a turn-based game with incomplete information. More specifically, it is an equilibrium concept that uses Bayesian updating to describe player behavior in dynamic games with incomplete information. Perfect Bayesian equilibria are used to solve the outcome of games where players take turns but are unsure of the "type" of their opponent, which occurs when players don't know their opponent's preference between individual moves. A classic example of a dynamic game with types is a war game where the player is unsure whether their opponent is a risk-taking "hawk" type or a pacifistic "dove" type. Perfect Bayesian Equilibria are a refinement of Bayesian Nash equilibrium (BNE), which is a solution concept with Bayesian probability for non-turn-based games.
In game theory, a Bayesian game is a strategic decision-making model which assumes players have incomplete information. Players may hold private information relevant to the game, meaning that the payoffs are not common knowledge. Bayesian games model the outcome of player interactions using aspects of Bayesian probability. They are notable because they allowed, for the first time in game theory, for the specification of the solutions to games with incomplete information.
In game theory, a sequential game is a game where one player chooses their action before the others choose theirs. The other players must have information on the first player's choice so that the difference in time has no strategic effect. Sequential games are governed by the time axis and represented in the form of decision trees.
Backward induction is the process of determining a sequence of optimal choices by reasoning from the endpoint of a problem or situation back to its beginning using individual events or actions. Backward induction involves examining the final point in a series of decisions and identifying the optimal process or action required to arrive at that point. This process continues backward until the best action for every possible point along the sequence is determined. Backward induction was first utilized in 1875 by Arthur Cayley, who discovered the method while attempting to solve the secretary problem.
In computational complexity theory, generalized geography is a well-known PSPACE-complete problem.
In game theory, folk theorems are a class of theorems describing an abundance of Nash equilibrium payoff profiles in repeated games. The original Folk Theorem concerned the payoffs of all the Nash equilibria of an infinitely repeated game. This result was called the Folk Theorem because it was widely known among game theorists in the 1950s, even though no one had published it. Friedman's (1971) Theorem concerns the payoffs of certain subgame-perfect Nash equilibria (SPE) of an infinitely repeated game, and so strengthens the original Folk Theorem by using a stronger equilibrium concept: subgame-perfect Nash equilibria rather than Nash equilibria.
Sequential equilibrium is a refinement of Nash equilibrium for extensive form games due to David M. Kreps and Robert Wilson. A sequential equilibrium specifies not only a strategy for each of the players but also a belief for each of the players. A belief gives, for each information set of the game belonging to the player, a probability distribution on the nodes in the information set. A profile of strategies and beliefs is called an assessment for the game. Informally speaking, an assessment is a perfect Bayesian equilibrium if its strategies are sensible given its beliefs and its beliefs are confirmed on the outcome path given by its strategies. The definition of sequential equilibrium further requires that there be arbitrarily small perturbations of beliefs and associated strategies with the same property.
In game theory, a subgame perfect equilibrium is a refinement of a Nash equilibrium used in dynamic games. A strategy profile is a subgame perfect equilibrium if it represents a Nash equilibrium of every subgame of the original game. Informally, this means that at any point in the game, the players' behavior from that point onward should represent a Nash equilibrium of the continuation game, no matter what happened before. Every finite extensive game with perfect recall has a subgame perfect equilibrium. Perfect recall is a term introduced by Harold W. Kuhn in 1953 and "equivalent to the assertion that each player is allowed by the rules of the game to remember everything he knew at previous moves and all of his choices at those moves".
Quantal response equilibrium (QRE) is a solution concept in game theory. First introduced by Richard McKelvey and Thomas Palfrey, it provides an equilibrium notion with bounded rationality. QRE is not an equilibrium refinement, and it can give significantly different results from Nash equilibrium. QRE is only defined for games with discrete strategies, although there are continuous-strategy analogues.
In game theory, a simultaneous game or static game is a game where each player chooses their action without knowledge of the actions chosen by other players. Simultaneous games contrast with sequential games, which are played by the players taking turns. In other words, both players normally act at the same time in a simultaneous game. Even if the players do not act at the same time, both players are uninformed of each other's move while making their decisions. Normal form representations are usually used for simultaneous games. Given a continuous game, players will have different information sets if the game is simultaneous than if it is sequential because they have less information to act on at each step in the game. For example, in a two player continuous game that is sequential, the second player can act in response to the action taken by the first player. However, this is not possible in a simultaneous game where both players act at the same time.
A Markov perfect equilibrium is an equilibrium concept in game theory. It has been used in analyses of industrial organization, macroeconomics, and political economy. It is a refinement of the concept of subgame perfect equilibrium to extensive form games for which a pay-off relevant state space can be identified. The term appeared in publications starting about 1988 in the work of economists Jean Tirole and Eric Maskin.
The one-shot deviation principle is the principle of optimality of dynamic programming applied to game theory. It says that a strategy profile of a finite multi-stage extensive-form game with observed actions is a subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE) if and only if there exist no profitable single deviation for each subgame and every player. In simpler terms, if no player can increase their expected payoff by deviating from their original strategy via a single action, then the strategy profile is an SPE. In other words, no player can profit by deviating from the strategy in one period and then reverting to the strategy.
