Second mover advantage games

I'm sure there's plenty of practical solutions out there. Here's a trivial solution that proves the existence of such games:. Let's say we play a game where starting from 0, each person gets to add a number from 1 to 9 to the running total. The winner is the person who makes the total be ten. Consider the chess position with white king on a5, black king on c4, white pawn on b4 and black pawn on b5. The player on turn loses. Consider any game along the lines of tic-tac-toe, where two players compete to form certain configurations, except that, opposite to tic-tac-toe, the player who forms one of the specified configurations is the loser.

It should be clear that it is generally advantageous to move last in such a game. For a specific example, consider the game of Sim. The board is six dots. Two players, Red and Blue, take turns. A turn consists of a player connecting two not-connected dots, with a line of that player's color.

A player who completes a triangle of their own color loses immediately. It's easy to see that this game cannot be a first-player win, by an argument very similar to usual strategy-stealing argument : in summary, if the first-player had a winning strategy, the second player could claim the win by ignoring the actual first player's move, pretending to be the first player, and using the hypothetical first-player strategy.

The extra first-player move on the board can't hurt them, and might help. Once one shows that Sim never ends in a tie, this completes the proof that the game is a forced win for the second player to move, although the second player's actual winning strategy is quite intricate.

A simple example is Nim with two equal piles. In this game, the second player has the advantage. The advantage to moving second is that you can mimic whatever your opponent does to one pile on the other pile. Thus, he'll have to clear one of the piles first, and then you'll clear the second pile and win. Some massive companies that sell products all over the world would not be where they are today had they not been first-movers.

Perhaps the best example of an ultra-successful first mover is the Coca-Cola Company Coke. Coke was invented by John S. Pemberton in When Caleb Bradham launched Pepsi-Cola thirteen years later, customers were already purchasing over one million gallons of Coke each year. Over the past century, Pepsi has been trying to play catch-up with Coke, but Coca-Cola, the first-mover, has always had that edge. Other examples of successful first movers are e-commerce giant eBay, and Kleenex, the brand name for a variety of paper-based products such as facial tissue, which today belongs to Kimberly-Clark.

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon. It was the very first online bookstore. Book Stacks Unlimited was sold to Barnes and Noble. In this EHow Finance video, business consultant Alexis Guerreros explains what the advantages and disadvantages are for first-movers. What is first-mover advantage? Definition and examples First mover advantage or FMA is a notion from game theory that the first to enter a market can obtain a massive advantage such as brand name recognition, customer loyalty, market share, etc.

The term today is often referred to as technological leadership. Being a first-mover is only worth it if the risks are outweighed by the rewards. First-mover advantage elements First-mover advantage is typically not just one single advantage, but rather a cluster of advantages that the innovating company gets by being the first one in.

First-mover advantage and disadvantage As is the case in all business ventures where the potential for big profits exists, there are also significant risks.

The advantages of being the first mover are: — The first mover can develop a huge competitive advantage through learning by doing — making it prohibitively difficult and expensive for other rivals to enter. Asked 3 years, 4 months ago. Active 3 years, 4 months ago. Viewed times. Improve this question. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Think of this as a way to achieve a Pareto superior vector of payoffs. Improve this answer. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook.

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