While the focus of this course is not on 0-sum games, you still
might find it enlightening (or at least fun) to play a bit with
some of the examples from the course notes. Recall the poker game
we analyzed this week:
Each of two players is dealt a high or low card, with equal probability.
Each player antes $1, then looks (privately) at his or her own
card. Player I (the dealer) may either fold, or bet $1. If I bets,
then II may fold, call (matching the bet), or raise $1 (putting
two more dollars on the table). Finally, if II raises, I may either
fold or call (matching the $1 raise). A player wins the pot if
his opponent folds, or if a call occurs and he holds a higher
card than his opponent. If they hold equal cards, a call results
in the pot being split evenly.
After a bit of analysis, we were able to reduce the strategic
choice problem to a pair of strategies for each player, and we
then "solved" the game by hand. If you'd like to see
a spreadsheet that uses Excel's "Solver" tool to solve
the same game, download this workbook.