Introduction

Game Theoretic Strategic Thinking in many cases produces correct and solution-generating decisions which by usual consideration will be seen as impossible and even unacceptable. The use of mixed strategies in antagonistic conflicts in a zero-sum game analytical framework yields rich varieties of such examples. Optimal decision making process involving multiple conflicting parties provides a rich pool of cases in which seemingly correct intuitive thoughts/behaviors could be proved to be completely wrong and totally ineffective by mathematically rigorous game-theoretic analysis and logic.

More complicated situations arise when interactive decisions by many parties have to be made dynamically over time. In this case to optimize the outcome which depends on the joint decisions of all involving parties negotiations with each other have to be made. The result of this negotiation will be an optimal joint strategic decision which is supposed to be adopted throughout the entire game period. However, it has been shown that very often the optimal decision taken and agreed upon in the beginning of the process will loose its optimality and attraction over the time (with a few trivial exceptions). Game theoretic thinking helps to overcome this problem, which is often called time-consistency problem in economic literature.

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