Strong Players Research Articles

The Examination of Personality Characteristics of the Player of Table Tennis

Personality characteristics of 707 members in the table tennis club of high schools, universities and general women in the Kinki District and the Tokyo Metropolis were examined by analyzing such items as 1) YG personality inventory, 2) the period and degree of their experience of the table tennis club activities and so on, and the following results were obtained:I Personality characteristics of members in the table tennis club1 YG personality traits of club members of high schools and universities are about average.2 YG personality profile of women participants shows the good state (Positive Stability Pattern).3 In comparison with the university club members, the high school club members have a more thinking extroversion (T trait), a more rhathymia (R trait), a less cooperativeness (Co trait) and a greater lack of objectivity (O trait).4 In comparison with the non-athletic culb members of women in university, the women's table tennis club members in universities have a more ascendance (A trait), a more activity (Ag, G traits) and a more leadership (A, S traits).II Comparison of personality characteristics of the stronger players with the not so strong players in the game1 The stronger players have a more rhathymia (R trait), a more aggressiveness (Ag trait) and take less pleasure in club activities.2 The female stronger players have a more ascendance (A trait), a more rhathymia (R trait), a more leadership (A, S traits) and a less stage fright.3 The stronger players with the pattern of playing close to the net have a more aggressiveness (Ag trait) and a more ascendance (A trait). The stronger players with the pattern of cutting away from the net have a more rhathymia (R trait) and a more activity (Ag, G traits). The stronger players with the pattern of driving away from the net have no differences of personality characteristics from those of the not so strong players.III Comparison of personality characteristics of the player in each of the three playing patterns1 In comparison with the players who have the pattern of playing close to the net, the players with the pattern of driving away from the net have a more general activity (G trait) and a less inferiority feeling (I trait).2 Personality characteristics of the players with the pattern of cutting away from the net are similar to those of the players with the pattern of playing close to the net.3 In comparison with the players who have the pattern of cutting away from the net, the players with the pattern of driving away from the net have a more ascendance (A trait), a more activity (Ag, G traits) and a less cooperativeness (Co trait).IV In comparison with the other sport club members, the table tennis club members have a less emotional stability (D, C, I, N, traits), a more nervousness (N trait), a less social extraversion (S trait) and a less thinking extraversion (T trait).

Thinking Ahead in Chess

Cognitive processing in skilled chessplayers has earlier been shown to depend on search and evaluation abilities, not solely on recognition memory. How well players foresee the values of impending game positions was tested by obtaining positional evaluation scores after each of a series of moves that were dictated but not made on the board. Players next chose the best move from the imagined positions, and the pieces were moved into place for a final, visual evaluation. The move choices varied in quality in accordance with the playing strengths indicated by tournament ratings. All players showed reduced discrepancies between the projected and the visual evaluations as the internally represented moves approached the final position. Stronger players had smaller discrepancy scores throughout the projected moves, with almost zero discrepancy at the end of the sequence, as expected if they excel at forward judgment.

Rewards and Punishments as Selective Incentives

Apex games place weak players in the formal equivalent of a multiperson prisoner's dilemma in which each weak player must choose between competing against the other weak players for the opportunity to coalesce with the strong player or cooperating with the other weak players to produce a jointly preferable outcome. Punishments, not rewards, are predicted to be effective for enforcing cooperation by the weak players. Fifty-four groups of four subjects each played the weak role in a five-person apex game with a confederate playing the apex (strong) role in a 3×3 design with factors of low, medium, and high levels of rewards and punishments available as incentives. As predicted, punishments but not rewards had a significant impact on increasing cooperation. Despite this effect, many groups experienced harmful effects of punishment availability that increased the risk of retaliatory spirals. It is concluded that a second-order dilemma may be seen in prisoner's dilemmas, since punishments are both necessary for enforcing cooperation and detrimental to that cooperation.

Stronger Players Need Not Win More Knockout Tournaments

Abstract We present a counterexample to the following conjecture of F.R.K. Chung and F.K. Hwang (1978): for any knockout tournament plan and any preference scheme satisfying strong stochastic transitivity, if all assignments of players to starting positions are equally likely, then stronger players (as defined by the preference scheme) are more likely to win the tournament.

Coalition formation in the triad when two are weak and one is strong

Eighteen groups of subjects each participated in five different computer-controlled superadditive 3-person characteristic function games with sidepayments, that modeled negotiable conflicts in which two of the players are weak and one is considerably stronger. Both the degree to which the strong player was powerful and the type of communication were experimentally manipulated. The 90 game outcomes rejected any solution concept that predicts a single payoff vector for a given coalition structure, but supported the recently developed single-parameter α-power model that allows range predictions. Both the degree of power and type of communication were found to affect game outcomes and to determine the predictive power of models that make point predictions in 3-person games.

Nonsymmetry and Core Size in N-Person Sidepayment Games

This article presents a procedure for indexing n-person cooperative games in terms of degree of nonsymmetry. This ordinal-level index is limited to sidepayment games, but applies generally to games of three or more players. To validate the index, a laboratory experiment was conducted with four-person games differing in degree of nonsymmetry and in core size. The results show that, while core size had no significant effects, the players' payoffs varied significantly as a function of nonsymmetry. Strong players received increasingly more and weak players received increasingly less as nonsymmetry increased. Tests for goodness of fit of several prominent solution concepts show that, across experimental treatments, the Shapley value predicts better than other solutions. Shapley is followed in order by the disruption nucleolus, the nucleolus, and finally the equality solution. These tests also show that all of the theories decline in predictive accuracy as the degree of nonsymmetry increases. Reasons for this trend are discussed in terms of predictive patterns and payoff variances.

Selective Incentives in an Apex Game

The effect of a selective incentive system on the likelihood of collective action is tested using an experiment with an Apex Game, a power-imbalanced game in which the weak players choose between competing against each other to form an alliance with the strong player or cooperating with each other in a unanimous alliance of weak players (excluding the strong player). A theoretical introduction analyzes the nature and importance of selective incentives for collective action and demonstrates the relevance of Apex Game experiments for studies of collective action. Results confirm the predictions: Formation of the coalition of weak players rises from 20% in the control condition to 62% when a negative selective incentive system is added.

Stronger players win more knockout tournaments in average

A knockout tournament plan for n players can be considered as a rooted binary tree with n terminal nodes which serve as the starting positions for the players. A labeling means an assignment of the players each to a distinct terminal node. Associated with the set of players is a preference scheme which specifies for all possible pairs the probability of one player beating another in a game.It has been conjectured that if the preference scheme satisfies strong stochastic transitivity, then stronger players (as defined by the preference scheme) should have larger prob¬abilities to win a tournament for any given tournament plan, assuming each labeling is equally likely. In this article, we give some insight into the difficulties in proving the conjecture. As evidence for the conjecture's validity, we show that if we give some insight into the difficulties in proving the conjecture . As evidence for the conjectures validity,we show that if we average over all tournament plans, assuming each plan is equally likely. then stronger players are more likely to win.

A test of the Core, Bargaining Set, Kernel and Shapley models in n-person quota games with one weak player

n-person (n − 1)-quota-games where the quotas are positive for certain n − 1 (strong) players and negative for the remaining (weak) player, are discussed. Normative solutions predicted by the Core,the Kernel, the Bargaining Set, the Competitive Bargaining Set, and by the Shapley Value are presented and exemplified.

When three is not always two against one: Coalitions in experimental three-person cooperative games

Four models of coalition formation are tested in a computer-controlled experiment in which three players negotiated to form coalitions in order to gain rewards for themselves. Formation of the grand coalition of all three players as well as any of the three possible 2-person coalitions is permitted. The results indicate that the grand coalition is the most likely to form, followed by the coalition between the two strongest players. The individually rational bargaining set model of coalition formation is supported over an egalitarian model, the Shapley value, and the coalitionally rational bargaining set model. Various measures of the progress of negotiations are introduced, examined, and discussed in an effort to provide an increased data base for the establishment of a behavioral theory of bargaining and coalition formation.

Resource theory and ameliorative strategy in a minimal information political convention game

Coalition formation literature indicates that strategies more ameliorative than minimum resource theory appear under a variety of conditions of the competitive environment. These conditions include uncertainty of outcome and indivisibility of payoff. Some investigators have hypothesized that the inadequacies of minimum resource theory can be attributed to strong players using a parity norm and weak players using an equality norm in the bargaining process. The present study examines the plausibility of this hypothesis in the initial partner selection stage of the bargaining process phase of decision processes in systems at the small group level. An analytical paradigm is presented for discriminating among four strategic goals in the mixed motive three-person game: maximization, security, intracoalition compatibility, and competition. The last three goals are nonoptimal under minimum resource theory. Some earlier results that relatively indivisible payoffs lead to a greater incidence of nonpay-off-maximizing strategies than expected under minimum resource theory were supported under conditions of play involving indirect interpersonal interaction. The appropriateness of taking resource position alone as the determinant of a norm for strategy selection consequently must be questioned.

On Generalized Tournament Matrices

played (i.e., there are no ties). The outcome of the tournament may be represented by an n x n tournament matrix T where lij = 1 if player i defeats player j (symbolically, i -+ j) and zero otherwise. An n x n matrix P with nonnegative entries is a generalized tournament matrix if P + ptr = J I, where J denotes the matrix of l's and I the identity matrix. We interpret the entry Pij as the a priori probability that player i defeats player j when they meet (we assume Pii = 0 since no one plays against himself). Suppose the association organizing the tournament wishes to devise an equitable system of handicaps so as to neutralize the advantage strong players have over weak players. In ? 3 we discuss two general methods for doing this making use of various properties of generalized tournament matrices developed in ? 2. In the first method, each player bets a certain amount of his own money on each game he plays; in the second method the association awards a certain amount to the winner of each game. The bets and awards for each game are to depend on the two players involved. The association is to determine the amounts of the bets or awards in advance so that every player has the same expected net gain. There will be many fair systems in general and we consider the existence of systems satisfying various additional conditions. There are many ways in which a generalized tournament matrix P might arise; Pij could represent the frequency with which team i has beaten team j in some atheletic competition or Pi, might represent the frequency with which certain consumers prefer item i to itemj in a paired comparison test. One important problem is to determine some reasonable ranking of the n objects and, if possible, to obtain some quantitative measure of their relative merit. Several ranking methods have been proposed (see David [5]). The most obvious method is simply to rank the participants according to the number of games they have won. One well-known method is due to Zermelo, Bradley, Terry and Ford and another to Wei and Kendall. We obtain a new rationale for their methods as special cases of our betting and awards systems. Furthermore, in ? 3.3 we show that a parameter appearing in the Wei-Kendall method provides a natural measure of how evenly the participants are matched. Landau [12] has shown when there exists an ordinary tournament matrix with prescribed row sums; in ? 3.4 we obtain an analogous result for generalized tournament matrices. Some of the results in this paper were announced at the IFIP '68 Congress [161; some of these results were also obtained independently by Daniels [41.

The effect of information about strategy on a three-person game.

When a game of strategy is played by three or more players and coalitions are allowed, the outcome of the game depends on how the players will form coalitions. In the simplest case, the coalition which includes the majority of the players wins the same prize regardless of who is in the winning coalition. In a somewhat more general situation, different “weights” are assigned to different players and a coalition with the preponderant total weight wins. One hypothesis on the formation of coalitions states that if two weaker players can combine their weights to defeat the third stronger player, they will do so. To what extent is this so and under what conditions?