Best Responses

This lesson introduces the best response method of finding pure strategy Nash equilibria.

Takeaway points:

1. A player's best response is the strategy (or strategies) that generate the greatest payoff for him or her given what the other players are doing.
2. In larger games, it may prove helpful to mark best responses with asterisks (*) in the payoff matrix.
3. After doing this for all strategies, if all the payoffs in a particular cell have an asterisk next to them, then that strategy profile is a pure strategy Nash equilibrium.

Next lesson: Matching Pennies and Mixed Strategy Nash Equilibrium.
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