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Extra Credit: The Three-Player Prisoner's Dilemma Tournament

As decribed earlier, Axelrod held two computer tournaments to investigate the two-player prisoner's dilemma. This year we are going to hold a three-player tournament. Past three-player tournament results have indicated that basically cooperative strategies do very well. In one tournament, for instance, the winning strategy defected only if both opponents had each defected twice in a row. And the third place strategy (out of more than fifty entries) was simply poor-trusting-fool-3!

You can participate this year by designing a strategy for the tournament. You might submit one of the strategies developed in the problem set, or develop a new one. The only restriction is that the strategy must work against any other legitimate entry. Any strategies that cause the tournament software to crash will be disqualified. Include a comment at the beginning of your submission containing your name, a brief mnemonic name for your strategy, and a short paragraph (2-4 sentences) explaining why you chose the strategy. You may choose a strategy in hopes that it wins, or just because its behavior is interesting in some way (e.g., you might try to sabotage one of the known strategies).


next up previous
Next: The Game Supervision Code Up: No Title Previous: The Three-Player Prisoner's Dilemma
Michael J. O'Donnell
1998-11-22