Special Session LIRa Seminar on Logic and Games

In the art of modeling, it often holds that ‘small is beautiful’. I will discuss various logical models for analyzing games, and the dynamic logics they give rise to, trying to make upward jumps in complexity only when really needed. I also relate this to best design for a ‘Theory of Play’.

I will talk about a class of games in extensive form where players take strategic decisions while not having access to the terminal histories of the game, hence being unable to solve it by standard backwards induction. This class of games will be explored along two directions: first, by providing an appropriate refinement of the subgame perfect equilibrium concept, a corresponding extension of the backwards induction algorithm and an equilibrium existence theorem; second, by showing that these games are a well-behaved subclass of a class of games with possibly unaware players recently studied in the literature. What I will present is joint work with Davide Grossi, University of Liverpool.