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We study a generalization of hide and seek game of von Neumann [14], where each player has one or more resources. We characterize the value and Nash equilibria of such games in terms of their unidimensional marginal distributions. We propose a \(\mathcal {O}(n \log (n))\) time algorithm for computing unidimensional marginal distributions of equilibrium strategies and a quadratic time algorithm for computing mixed strategies given the margins. The characterization allows us to establish a number of interesting qualitative features of equilibria.

We study Nash equilibria of a symmetric Colonel Blotto and Colonel Lotto games. In these game two players, with \(N \ge 1\) units of resources each, distribute their resources simultaneously across \(K \ge 2\) battlefields. We introduce a characteristic of equilibria in this game called spectrum which stands for the fraction of battlefields receiving given numbers of units. We provide complete characterization of spectra of Nash equilibria in Colonel Lotto game as well as necessary conditions on spectra of Nash equilibria in Colonel Blotto game for the case of \({K}\! \mid \!{N}\).

Two players are endowed with resources for setting up N locations on K line segments of identical length, with N > K ≥ 1. The players alternately choose these locations (possibly in batches of more than one in each round) in order to secure the area closer to their locations than that of their rival’s. The player with the highest secured area wins the game and otherwise the game ends in a tie. Earlier research has shown that, if an analogous game is played on disjoint circles, the second mover advantage is in place only if K = 1, while for K > 1 both players have a tying strategy. It was also shown that these results hold for line segments of identical length when rules of the game additionally require players to take exactly one location in the first round. In this paper we show that the second mover advantage is still in place for K ≥ 1 and 2K − 1 ≤ N, even if the additional restriction is dropped, while K ≤ N < 2K − 1 results in the first mover advantage. Our results allow us to draw conclusions about a natural variant of the game, where the resource mobility constraint is more stringent so that in each round each player chooses a single location and we show that the second mover advantage re-appears for K ≤ N < 2K − 1 if K is an even number. In all the cases the losing player has a strategy guaranteeing him arbitrarily small loss.

We consider the Hotelling-Downs model with n ≥ 2 office seeking candidates and runoff voting. We show that Nash equilibria in pure strategies always exist and that there are typically multiple equilibria, both convergent (all candidates are located at the median) and divergent (candidates locate at distinct positions), though only divergent equilibria are robust to free entry. Moreover, two-policy equilibria exist under any distribution of voters' ideal policies, while equilibria with more than two policies exist generically but under restrictive conditions that we characterize. In this sense, our analysis suggests that two-policy equilibria are the most prominent outcomes.

Two players are endowed with resources for setting up N locations on K open curves of identical lengths, with N > K greater than or equal to 1. The players alternately choose these locations (possibly in batches of more than one in each round) in order to secure the area closer to their locations than that of their rival's. The player with the highest secured area wins the game and otherwise the game ends in a tie. Earlier research has shown that, if an analogical game is played on disjoint closed curves, the second mover advantage is in place only if K = 1, while for K > 1 both players have a tying strategy. It was also shown that this results hold for open curves of identical lengths when rules of the game additionally require players to take exactly one location in the rst round. In this paper we show that the second mover advantage is still in place for K greater than or equal to 1 and 2K -1 less than or equal to N, even if the additional restriction is dropped, while K is less than or euqal to N

We study a non-symmetric variant of General Lotto games introduced in Hart (Int J Game Theory 36:441–460, 2008). We provide a complete characterization of optimal strategies for both players in non-symmetric discrete General Lotto games, where one of the players has an advantage over the other. By this we complete the characterization given in Hart (Int J Game Theory 36:441–460, 2008), where the strategies for symmetric case were fully characterized and some of the optimal strategies for the non-symmetric case were obtained. We find a group of completely new atomic strategies, which are used as building components for the optimal strategies. Our results are applicable to discrete variants of all-pay auctions.