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A zero-sum game is also called a strictly competitive game, while non-zero-sum games can be either competitive or non-competitive. Zero-sum games are most often solved with the minimax theorem which is closely related to linear programming duality, [5] or with Nash equilibrium. Prisoner's Dilemma is a classic non-zero-sum game. [6]
Matching Pennies is a zero-sum game because each participant's gain or loss of utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the utility of the other participants. If the participants' total gains are added up and their total losses subtracted, the sum will be zero.
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.
The concept of a mixed-strategy equilibrium was introduced by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern in their 1944 book The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, but their analysis was restricted to the special case of zero-sum games. They showed that a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium will exist for any zero-sum game with a finite set of ...
Constant sum: A game is a constant sum game if the sum of the payoffs to every player are the same for every single set of strategies. In these games, one player gains if and only if another player loses. A constant sum game can be converted into a zero sum game by subtracting a fixed value from all payoffs, leaving their relative order unchanged.
The first theorem in this sense is von Neumann's minimax theorem about two-player zero-sum games published in 1928, [2] which is considered the starting point of game theory. Von Neumann is quoted as saying "As far as I can see, there could be no theory of games
The sixth chapter of the book moves from probability theory to game theory, including material on tic-tac-toe, matrix representations of zero-sum games, nonzero-sum games such as the prisoner's dilemma, the concept of a Nash equilibrium, game trees, and the minimax method used by computers to play two-player strategy games.
Von Neumann noted that he was using information from his game theory, and conjectured that two person zero sum matrix game was equivalent to linear programming. Rigorous proofs were first published in 1948 by Albert W. Tucker and his group. (Dantzig's foreword to Nering and Tucker, 1993)