Behavioral Game Theory

Recently, in the Premiership football, Crystal Palace beat Cardiff City 3-0. Nothing particularly unusual about that. But it subsequently came to light that Crystal Palace had used underhand means to obtain the Cardiff team line up ahead of schedule . Cardiff, obviously, cried foul play. This incident reminded of the 2008 Ryder Cup golf when Nick Faldo was photographed with a set of team pairings. In that case there was no foul play. There was, though, the notion that the US gained from knowing the European pairings.        To make sense of why it may, or may not, be useful to know an opponents strategy we need to look at mixed strategies. To illustrate, consider the simple matching pennies game below. Europe can choose two possible team line ups, A or B, and the US can also choose two possible line ups, X or Y. If Europe chooses Team A and the US Team X then Europe wins (which is why Europe gets payoff 1 and the US payoff -1). If Europe chooses Team A and the US Team Y then the US