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The multi-player version of minimax displays game-tree pathology

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Methodologies for Intelligent Systems (ISMIS 1991)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 542))

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Abstract

It is widely believed that by searching deeper in the game tree, the decision-maker is more likely to make a better decision. Dana Nau and others have discovered pathology theorems that show the opposite: searching deeper in the game tree causes the quality of the ultimate decision to become worse, not better. The models for these theorems assume that the search procedure is minimax and the games are two-player zero-sum. This report extends Nau's pathology theorem to multiplayer game trees searched with max n, the multi-player version of minimax. Thus two-player zero-sum game trees and multi-player game trees are shown to have an important feature in common.

This research was supported by NSF under grant IRI 89-10728, and by AFOSR under grant 90-0135.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Tennessee, 37796-1301, Knoxville, TN

    David Mutchler

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  1. David Mutchler
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Z. W. Ras M. Zemankova

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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Mutchler, D. (1991). The multi-player version of minimax displays game-tree pathology. In: Ras, Z.W., Zemankova, M. (eds) Methodologies for Intelligent Systems. ISMIS 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 542. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-54563-8_70

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-54563-8_70

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-54563-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-38466-3

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