Bounded Versus Unbounded Rationality: The Tyranny of the Weak

International audienceWe examine the case of a two-person repeated game played by a boundedly rational player versus an unboundedly rational opponent. The former is restricted to strategies which are implementable by connected finite automata. It is shown that the "rational" player has a dominant strategy, and that in some cases the "weaker" (boundedly rational) player may exploit this fact to "blackmail" him. It is also shown that for a repeated zero-sum game, the rational player has a strategy which drives the automaton player's limit payoff down to his security (maxmin) level, even if he may choose any finite automaton