Exploiting The Prisoner’s Dilemma in the Game Show ‘Golden Balls.’
The British game show ‘Golden Balls’ contains a classic prisoner’s dilemma where two players can either choose to share a sum of money or steal. If both players share, the money is split 50/50 between the two players. If one shares and one steals, then the player who steals gets all the money. And if both players steal, then they both get nothing. The payoff matrix is relatively simple to imagine, with 0.5, 0.5 at both sharing and 0, 0 at both stealing and 1, 0 or 0, 1 at one player stealing. With this payoff matrix it seems like a typical prisoner’s dilemma where you can’t be certain of what your opponent is going to do.
However, what’s different here is that players can converse with each other, presumably because the show would be boring if they couldn’t talk. With this being the case, psychological tricks can be employed. On one episode of ‘Golden Balls’ a player named Nick told the other player Ibrahim that he was definitely going to steal and then split the money after the show. While this strategy seems strange at first it is extremely effective as the other player is almost forced to split. While they might be skeptical, it isn’t worth it for them to steal and risk losing the whole jackpot. With the other player nearly guaranteed to split, the user of the strategy can split with confidence and both players can walk away happy. Using this psychological trick can almost be considered a dominant strategy as it is the best strategy to employ and it prevents the outcome of getting nothing.
Perhaps this exploit is why the prisoner’s dilemmas and payoff matrices we observe in class specify that players cannot converse with each other.
https://bigthink.com/thinking/game-theory-golden-balls/