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Information About

Payoff Matrix




In static games of Complete , Perfect Information , a normal form representation of a game is a specification of players' strategy spaces and payoff functions. A strategy space for a player is the set of all strategies available to that player, where a strategy is a complete plan of action for every stage of the game, regardless of whether that stage actually arises in play. A payoff function for a player is a mapping from that the cross-product of players' strategy spaces to that player's set of payoffs (normally the set of real numbers, where the number represents a cardinal or ordinal utility - often cardinal in the normal form representation) of a player, i.e. the payoff function of a player takes as its input a strategy profile (that is a specification of strategies for every player) and yields a representation of payoff as its output.


AN EXAMPLE


The matrix to the right is a normal form representation of a game in which players move simultaneously (or at least do not observe the other player's move before making their own) and receive the payoffs as specified for the combinations of actions played. For example, if player 1 plays top and player 2 plays left, player 1 receives 4 and player 2 receives 3. In each cell, the first number represents the payoff to the row player (in this case player 1), and the second number represents the payoff to the column player (in this case player 2).


Other representations


Often Symmetric Game s (where the payoffs do not depend on which player chooses each action) are represented with only one payoff. This is the payoff for the row player. For example, the payoff matrices on the right and left below represent the same game.

  { Border "1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 1em background: #f9f9f9 border: 1px #aaa solid border-collapse: collapse font-size: 95%"


  { Border "1" align=right cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 1em background: #f9f9f9 border: 1px #aaa solid border-collapse: collapse font-size: 95%"
  { Align right border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 1em background: #f9f9f9 border: 1px #aaa solid border-collapse: collapse font-size: 95%"