Best response
The strategy that pays most against a specific belief about what the others will do.
Often misread asHunting for 'the' best response to the game as a whole rather than to a named choice by the others, and then objecting that the answer depends on what they do.
How to see it
The question that always has an answer: given that, what now?
A best response is your best option once you have fixed a guess about what everyone else is doing. It is not a prediction and not a solution. It is the answer to a conditional question, and you can ask it of every guess in turn.
The checkIt is meant to depend on what they do; name their choice first, then answer.
Try itTake any two-by-two game and mark your best payoff against each of the opponent's choices, then let them do the same. Any cell carrying both marks is an equilibrium, and the point is that you found it without once asking what ought to happen.
Games that show it
Know these first
Leads on to
Easily confused with
Sources
- Nash, J. (1950). PNAS 36(1), 48-49.