Cannings C, Whittaker J C
Department of Probability and Statistics, University of Sheffield, U.K.
J Theor Biol. 1991 Mar 21;149(2):281-6. doi: 10.1016/s0022-5193(05)80282-6.
Iterated conflicts allow the possibility of co-operative-like behaviour in games such as the Prisoner's Dilemma. The present paper is an attempt to initiate the study of iterated conflicts when, (a) the number of iterations is fixed and finite and (b) the underlying payoff matrix is general, e.g. a mixed Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS) could occur in the non-iterated coflict. These assumptions are in contrast to the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. We consider a somewhat special case which none the less produces results of an interesting nature. For those cases where there is no internal ESS in the one trial case the two-trial case is easily resolved. When the former has an internal ESS then the two-trial case yields two ESSs whose supports are a partition of the space of strategies.