A Course in Game Theory

Osborne, M. J., & Rubinstein, A. (1994). A Course in Game Theory. MIT Press.

Type

Book

Intellectual base

Textbook

Year

1994

ISBN

9780262650403

Link

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262650403/a-course-in-game-theory/

Cited from

economics_finance, information_theory

Cited by

8 citations across 8 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Rock-Paper-Scissors (Intransitive Cyclic Dominance)
  • The set of options is {rock, paper, scissors}; the beats-relation is rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock.

    This sourceStandard game-theory text presenting rock-paper-scissors as a canonical symmetric zero-sum game and defining its beats-relation (rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock) and unique mixed equilibrium.

• Social Dilemma
  • Cooperation is Pareto-superior, yet it is not individually incentive-compatible in a single play of the game, because whatever the partner does, the defector does better than the cooperator.

    This sourceStandard graduate text developing strict dominance, Nash equilibrium, and Pareto efficiency; grounds the claim that defection dominates while mutual cooperation is Pareto-superior yet not incentive-compatible, and that a dominant-strategy failure differs from a coordination failure.

• Zero Sum Game
  • Matching pennies is the canonical finite two-player zero-sum game and exhibits the minimax structure exactly.

    This sourceStandard text presenting matching pennies as the canonical finite two-player zero-sum game with no pure-strategy equilibrium and a unique 50/50 mixed minimax solution.

Domain-specific

• Distributed algorithmic mechanism design
  • The entry records a descriptive analytical identity; practical use requires the governing domain's evidence, standards, and safety obligations.
• Dominated Strategy
  • Game-theory solution analysis — the workhorse first step, the belief-free pre-equilibrium reduction (iterated elimination of dominated strategies) run before any Nash search.

    This sourceIterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies as a belief-free reduction applied before any equilibrium computation.

• Minimax Theorem
  • Each player therefore has an optimal mixed strategy and the game has a value.
• Move by nature
  • The entry records a descriptive analytical identity; practical use requires the governing domain's evidence, standards, and safety obligations.

Mechanisms

• Mixed-Strategy Policy Table
  • Its failure mode is dominated-action padding: the temptation to add weak rows purely to look unpredictable, which lowers predictability and performance at once — folding a dominated strategy into the support to seem sophisticated.

    This sourceDefines dominated strategies as choices that perform no better and sometimes worse than another available strategy, so placing one in a mixed strategy cannot improve the player’s support.

Verification

Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's ISBN resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.

Does it back the claim? Not recorded. Neither this nor any other of the 8 citations of this work carries a recorded support check.

Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.

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