FYI: non-Transitive Gaming

Nontransitive game

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

A non-transitive game is a game for which the various strategies produce one or more "loops" of preferences. As a result, in a non-transitive game the fact that strategy A is preferred over strategy B, and strategy B is preferred over strategy C, does not necessarily imply that strategy A is preferred over strategy C. See also intransitivity, transitive relation.

A prototypical example non-transitive game is the game Rock, Paper, Scissors which is explicitly constructed as a non-transitive game. In probabilistic games like Penney's game, the violation of transitivity results in a more subtle way, and is often presented as a probability paradox.