Mixed extensions of generic finite games embedded into products of real projective spaces

Abstract

Finite games in normal form and their mixed extensions are a corner stone of noncooperative game theory. Often generic finite games and their mixed extensions are considered. But the properties which one expects in generic games and the existence of games with these properties are often treated only in passing. The paper considers strong properties and proves that generic games have these properties. The space of mixed strategy combinations is embedded in a natural way into a product of real projective spaces. All relevant hypersurfaces extend to this bigger space. The paper shows that for all games in the complement of a semialgebraic subset of codimension at least one all relevant hypersurfaces in the bigger space are smooth and maximally transversal. The proof uses the theorem of Sard and follows an argument of Khovanskii.