When "Better" is better than "Best"

Abstract

We consider two-player normal form games where each player has the same finite strategy set. The payoffs of each player are assumed to be i.i.d. random variables with a continuous distribution. We show that, with high probability, the better-response dynamics converge to pure Nash equilibrium whenever there is one, whereas best-response dynamics fails to converge, as it is trapped.

8 pages, 1 figure