This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Social choice and welfare. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00355-018-1164-y.The Nakamura number is an appropriate invariant of a simple game to study the existence of social equilibria and the possibility of cycles. For symmetric (quota) games its number can be obtained by an easy formula. For some subclasses of simple games the corresponding Nakamura number has also been characterized. However, in general, not much is known about lower and upper bounds depending on invariants of simple, complete or weighted games. Here, we survey such results and highlight connections with other game theoretic concepts. © 2018, Spr...