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The Colonel Blotto game

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Abstract

In the Colonel Blotto game, two players simultaneously distribute forces across n battlefields. Within each battlefield, the player that allocates the higher level of force wins. The payoff of the game is the proportion of wins on the individual battlefields. An equilibrium of the Colonel Blotto game is a pair of n-variate distributions. This paper characterizes the unique equilibrium payoffs for all (symmetric and asymmetric) configurations of the players’ aggregate levels of force, characterizes the complete set of equilibrium univariate marginal distributions for most of these configurations, and constructs entirely new and novel equilibrium n-variate distributions.

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Correspondence to Brian Roberson.

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I am grateful to Jason Abrevaya, Dan Kovenock, James C. Moore, Roger B. Nelsen, and three anonymous referees for very helpful comments. A version of this paper was presented at the 2005 Midwest Economic Theory Meetings. This paper is based on the first chapter of my Ph.D. dissertation

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Roberson, B. The Colonel Blotto game. Economic Theory 29, 1–24 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-005-0071-5

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