Mixed strategies primarily prevent the opponent’s anticipation of one’s choice.
Evidence
One can, instead, interpret mixed strategies in zero-sum games as a means of introducing continuity of strategies into a discrete-strategy game that has no pure-strategy saddle point, thereby converting it into a game that does have a saddle point. In this interpretation the role of mixed strategies in zero-sum games is not so different from their role in the nonzero-sum games. One can flip a coin to keep an opponent from guessing with confidence whether it will come up heads or tails; or one may flip a coin to “average” heads and tails, to create (in an expected-value sense) a strategy halfway between heads and tails. Both interpretations are useful. If the second is somewhat more sophisticated, the first may better catch the spirit of the problem as it presents itself to a game player. And the first reminds us that the problem, even with randomization, is still to prevent the opponent’s anticipation of our actual strategy choice, and that the machinery of choice, the procedures for recording and communicating a choice, and any advance preparations required by the outcome of the random process, must remain inaccessible to his intelligence system. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 800
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Strategic moves work by constraining one’s own behavior to shape an opponent’s expectations. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 361; Players win only by drawing a division line both can anticipate identically — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 234
Related
- Hall’s method reads conjunctures to find strategic moves, not first principles (similarity 0.80)
- Strategic moves work by constraining one’s own behavior to shape an opponent’s expectations. (similarity 0.79)
- Mixed-motive games require tacit social coordination absent from zero-sum games (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Strategic moves work by constraining one’s own behavior to shape an opponent’s expectations.
#expands(0.85) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 361