Introduction:

Intro to Game Theory

Game Theory in Smash
Summary and Applications of Game Theory
Introduction to Analysis
Fault Analysis
Success Analysis
Here is the point of all this

Introduction:

When thinking about any choice, it's important to make the best decision in order to make

sure you are being as effective as possible in the given situation. When choosing a car, do you

opt for a cheaper car, or a more expensive car thinking that the cheaper car will break down

sooner causing you to buy a second car sooner, costing you more money? Or do you take

immaculate care of your cars, so you know the cheap car will last long enough to keep the total

cost down? This is known as optimization, which Merriam-Webster tells us is, “An act, process,

or methodology of making something (as a design, system, or decision) as fully perfect,

functional or effective as possible,” I bolded some of the keywords that are important to what

will be discussed here. Although it is important to optimize in every point of your life, the point I

will be talking about is when you are in the middle of a high stakes game of Super Smash Bros.

In Smash it is incredibly important to optimize your game play. With all the decisions that are

possible in melee, with character matchups, stage matchups, and more, it can still be incredibly

useful to understand some key portions of psychology and math because they can help you

optimize your game play in a situation you may have never come across. These subjects are

game theory and decision analysis. Your smash skills, and more importantly, your skill against
real players can be improved by employing disciplines from game theory and psychology during

games, and decision analysis when reviewing your own matches.

Intro to Game Theory

To start off our section, I want you to keep in mind this premise. “…The optimal outcome

of a game is one where no player has an incentive to deviate from his or her chosen strategy

after considering an opponent’s choice,” (John Nash). This is the definition of a Nash

Equilibrium, and is incredibly important when determining what strategies are the best, given a

certain situation. In laymen’s terms it means a strategy for both players where if one player

switched strategies, it would be worse for that player. We’ve seeing many terms such as

“player,” “strategy,” and “game,” that you may recognize, but these most likely have a different

definition when placed in the world of game theory then the one you are used to, so to clear any

confusion, I’ll define these for you. A player is one of the few terms that stay pretty similar when

compared to its normal counterpart. In game theory a player is a person playing a game. The

only issue here is that a person does not have to be a human, it could be a corporation, or any

entity capable of making a decision. A game is a conflict between two players, consisting of

rules and limitations as well any of their strategies. Finally, a strategy is any choice a player can

make. It could be the choice to jump off a bridge, or to go to work and earn a million dollars. An

amazing choice is just as much a strategy as a terrible choice. Hopefully after these summaries

of definitions, you have a better grasp of what John Nash was saying. For those of you that

recognize that name, Russell Crowe played John Nash in the movie “A Beautiful Mind” which

you may have seen. John Nash worked in the field of game theory, so we’ll leave him behind,

although we’ll explore his findings later and look more at game theory as a whole. Wikipedia
defines game theory as “A study of strategic decision making.” Aside from the strategy “MASH

THE C-STICK,” there is quite a bit of strategy in smash, just as there is strategy in chess. You

must think about what moves your opponent can make, which move is best, and how to

counteract it. In order to help visualize a choice you might have, let’s start making some

examples. Lets play a simple game. Heads or tails. We both choose to orient a penny so that it

shows heads or tails when we open our hand. We keep our decision secret and do it

simultaneously so no cheating. Here is what the matrix will look like:

P2 Heads Tails

P1

Heads 3, 3 4, 1

Tails 1, 4 2, 2

Here, you are P1 and I am P2. If we both choose heads, we both get 3 points, if one of us

chooses heads and the other chooses tails, the person who chose heads gets 4, and the tails

gets 1 point. If we both choose tails, we both get 2 points. Now remember what we said

previously. We want to find a situation where we both can’t change strategies to get a better

score. To make things simple, that situation is tails-tails. See if you can figure out why. I’ll give

you the page to figure it out.

 Did you figure it out? Well, lets say that both are choosing heads. P1 can improve his

score by switching to tails. 3 -> 4. P2 can do the same thing. Now both players are on tails. If

wither switches to heads, they will both lose a point, and give the other person an extra 2 points.

So we have found a spot where neither player can improve their score. This is interesting

because there is an option where both players can get a better score (3 points), but neither can

choose that option for fear of losing a point from the choice of the other player.

Game Theory in Smash

This can also work in a smash setting. Now we’ll expand the matrix to have 3 options.

Don’t worry; we won’t be doing any math. Yet. Imagine you are playing as Captain Falcon, and

you just down threw Fox close to a ledge. He can’t edge cancel, but what this does is effectively

make tech in place and tech towards the ledge yield the same result. We’ll also assume that you

are not fast enough to react to a tech. Here is what our payoff Matrix will look like:

Fox Tech in Place or Tech towards Miss

Falcon Tech towards ledge center stage tech

Knee at ledge 4, -4 0, 3 4, -4

Knee in place 0, 1 4, -4 1, -1

Wait and react 0, -1 3, -3 1, -1

This may look like a massive wall of numbers and text, but don’t worry. It is fairly easy to

understand. The three options you have are Knee at the ledge, knee in place, or wait and react.

He can tech in place (or to the ledge), tech towards center stage, or purposefully miss the tech.
The number in front of the comma represents what your score will be after the exchange, a

higher number being better and the number 0 being even. The number after the comma

represents their point score after the exchange. If you are wondering where I got these

numbers, the truth is that they are completely arbitrary. I chose high numbers for outcomes

where you came out far ahead, middle numbers for situations that turned mostly equal, and low

numbers for unfavorable situations. For example, knee in place on tech to center is 4, -4

because you get a great reward and he gets screwed, whereas for wait and react with tech in

place, the outcome is 0, -1. Although you don’t get anything from the exchange, he is still

backed into a corner. There are ways to simplify these strategies. One of these ways is to

eliminate any strategies that are worse than other strategies. For example, for you, knee in

place is better in every sense than wait and react. For each option, knee either gets the same

point score for you, or better, so we can eliminate that strategy.

Fox Tech in Place or Tech towards Miss

Tech towards ledge center stage tech

Falcon

Knee at ledge 4, -4 0, 3 4, -4

Knee in place 0, 1 4, -4 1, -1

P2 can make the same choices, so we can see that missing the tech is worse than

teching in place, so we can get rid of that option as well.

Fox Tech in Place or Tech towards

Falcon Tech towards ledge center stage

 Knee at ledge 4, -4 0, 3

Knee in place 0, 1 4, -4

Now we have something manageable. We don’t have any Nash Equilibrium points, so we

will have to employ mixed strategies. These essentially mean mixing strategies to maximize

your profit. First lets mix your strategies as Falcon. I will do the math first, and then explain it

after so you can look back on something familiar.

EUtip is P2’s expected score from teching in place

EUttc is P2’s expected score from going to center stage.

PL is the probability out of 1 that you will knee at the ledge

1 – PL is the probability that you knee in place

We want P2’s two expected scores to be equal, which will tell P2 that, “no matter what

you do, you will get this score.” Here is the math.

EUtip = EUttc

EUtip = (PL * -4) + ((1 - PL) * 1)

EUttc = (PL * 3) + ((1 - PL) * -4)

We have three equations and three unknowns, so lets solve for PL

EUtip = EUttc

(PL * -4) + ((1 - PL) * 1) = (PL * 3) + ((1 - PL) * -4)

-4PL + 1 - PL = 3PL - 4 + 4PL

-4PL - PL - 3PL - 4PL = -4 - 1

-12PL = -5
 PL = 5/12

So here’s what we learned from this. In order to make your opponents choice not matter

you should knee at the ledge 41.7% of the time, and knee in place 58.3% of the time. I will tell

you that your opponent should tech in place or toward the ledge half the time, and then tech in

half the time. I’ll leave it up to you to figure it out. This of course does not take into account

habits of your opponent, for example if they always tech in, then knee in place is super good,

but if they always tech in place, knee in place would be useless.

So from this little expo on game theory, you have seen its uses both in game and out of

game. You may know be thinking, “Yeah. This is great. Now all those people that can do

Algebra mid match in an instant without losing focus can now punish me super hard. But other

than that one person, this is semi useless.” That may sound true, but in reality we have learned

quite a bit. We have learned that:

● Kneeing in place is a little better than kneeing at the ledge if you don’t have a read on

where they usually tech. This is because if you knee at the ledge and he techs in, now he has

center stage, and you are close to being edge guarded. Bad for Falcon, whereas if you knee in

place and miss, you can still keep him out and maintain stage control

We also learned something else interesting. Lets say that you have been getting your

knees on reads at the ledge. If you want to condition your opponent to start teching in place,

start kneeing in place. This will alter their expected payoff from teching in place, so they will use

it more often. To see the math of this, go back to our equations for

EUtip = (PL * -4) + ((1 - PL) * 1) and EUttc = (PL * 3) + ((1 - PL) * -4), and plug in 5/12 as PL

and see what EUtip and EUttc equals. They should be the same. Now if you want them to tech in

place more, simply alter PL. Make it 3/12, and see how the values change.1 Your opponent

1
For those of you that would like to see the Calculus behind it, just comment and I will post a picture
going through and showing how the value changes using the variables instead of the numbers.
should get a better score for teching in place. This teaches us that by altering our own game

play, we can change an opponents expected payoff for each of his strategy, thereby forcing him

into a form of play that he may deem optional, but will be hard to break once we start to exploit

it. A good player should be one who is good at breaking a habit an opponent has forced on

them, and even better at forcing choices back on them.

Summary and Applications of Game Theory

We have also learned some general tips from our payoff matrix, these being:

● Some options are better than others in every way, so never use the worse option

● It is best to randomize your strategies when you can’t predict your opponent

● There are some situations where no matter what you do, you have to keep doing the

same thing, because if you change, your opponent will profit, and if he changes, you will profit

● We can change how we play to favor one strategy, and your opponent will logically

change his strategy, which you can then exploit yourself. Mindgames.

These are all ideas you can adapt to mid match. For example, never falcon punch when

you can do a knee. It is better in every situation except very specific places that you almost

never come across (M2K. Ruining my premise with his falcon punches). If you randomize your

strategies, your opponent will have a harder reading you. This does not mean that you should

randomize every move ever. As you saw in the matrix for falcon, he is not using knee in place

and knee at ledge equally (50-50). He opts for kneeing in place a little more than half the time.

That is still random, but it favors a strategy that is a little better than the other. We also found

that if you find a strategy where your opponent has difficulty getting out of (Falco off stage), then

you keep putting them back into that situation. If they deviate (stop recovering) they will lose
many points and if you deviate (don’t edge guard them) you will lose points. All this is dealing

with our initial topic. Optimization. Tafokints has some excellent things to say about optimizing

punishes in one of his articles, which I suggest you read. If you’re worried, don’t be. It’s MUCH

shorter than this. We have already gone over some of the cons of game theory before, such as

math being unusable mid match; just remember these are its uses.

● Study scenarios and find optimal choices

● Mindgame your opponent

● Find scenarios where your opponent is at a major disadvantage and put them there

● Find scenarios where you are at a major disadvantage and avoid them

There are also games you play where one player makes a move then another player

makes another move. Also known as non-simultaneous play. These are normally easier to solve

than simultaneous, but can provide some challenges. I will not focus on these games since

melee has many situations where you have to predict your opponent, and only a few where you

have to react to your opponent. Tech chasing is an example of a reactive game, and although it

happens a lot in melee, it is only one part of the game (albeit a large one) and it can also be

explained well enough as a predictive game.

Introduction to Analysis

On the road to improving, analyzing your matches is a big part. When analyzing your

game play, one common way to help find areas of improvement is by asking for help. I can’t

count the number of “Critique me” threads there are on r/smashbros, let alone the number I

myself have made. It is a great idea. You get an outside perspective looking at your game play

and comparing it to professionals, which gives you ways to improve. However it is also
important to self criticize. You are your most powerful critic, so you can sometimes find failures

where others can’t. One problem is that you are not playing well, so it’s difficult to find faults with

yourself, because if you knew the fault, you would be opting not to make those faults. There are

two areas to analyze so you can help yourself analyze your own matches, and even others. The

two areas are fault analysis, and success analysis. Fault analysis is looking at your faults and

finding what is wrong with them and trying to patch them. Success analysis is looking at your

successes and finding what was good about that choice. Since fault analysis is much easier, we

will start with that.

Fault Analysis

Fault analysis is built on the principle of deductive reasoning, which is when you take a

few true premises, and using reason determine some true fact. For example,

● All Falcon players SD for style

● S2J plays Falcon

So from there, we can say with certainty that S2J will SD for style points. Which is true. If

our two premises were false (All Falcos use fair and I play Falco) then our conclusion (I use fair)

is false. Which is true, I never use fair. There are two ways to use this sort of logic of examining

premises and determining facts to help with your matches. Use your 5 whys in game and your

why-because analysis. The 5 whys are basically designed to very quickly find a root cause of a

problem.

● I died

● Why?

● I got hit by Marth’s Fsmash

 ● Why?

● I missed my tech

● Why?

● I got grabbed and mashed using L and R

● Why?

● I wasn’t using safe shield pressure

● Why?

● I haven’t practiced

And from there, we have learned in a few seconds that I need to use better shield

pressure. The 5 Whys way of analyzing is good for after a death, or in between matches in a

set. There are a few problems with this logic. For example, Marth’s Fsmash will not always

knock you offstage, so it is obvious that there are some Whys that we are missing. This is where

Why-Because analysis comes in. This is for more in-depth coverage of what you are doing

wrong. I like to go back through and make a flowchart using this analysis, find my weak points.

Here is the match I will be analyzing, and here is the flowchart I made. As you can see, my

game play is fairly beginner status, but that is good, because if I were the best player ever, the

flowchart would have only 3 things. As you see in the flowchart, I start with a simple premise. I

died. Then for each death I had, I made a branch off with the reason I died. I keep going down

the line coming up for causes. At each node (e.g. side b below ledge) you have to ask yourself

two things. “Without this cause, would the effect still have happened?” and “Will this happen if all

discovered causes happen?” The first question makes sure that the cause you have is

significant. For example, if my causes for dieing were getting hit by an up smash from fox, not

DI’ing, and being white, there is a problem there. I ask myself, “without this cause, would the

effect still have happened” and I discover that I would NOT have died if the up smash had
whiffed, but fox doesn’t care what my race is, so it will still kill, so now my only cause is fox up

smashed me. The second question is designed to determine if you have discovered all causes.

So with the causes “I got up smashed” and “Not DI’ing”, I ask, “Will this happen if all discovered

causes happen?” The answer is no. I won’t die every time a fox up smashes me and I don’t DI.

If I’m at 0% it won’t work. Now if fox Up smashes me at kill percent and I don’t DI, I will die every

time, so you know that you have discovered all causes. As you uncover causes you ask the

question again of each of them, so it branches out more and more, and you discover more

problems you may have. It helps to slow your video down so you can see what is really

happening before you died.

Success Analysis

Success analysis is the other aspect of self-criticism, and although is a little tougher, it

can also yield some interesting results. I will warn you that I am developing this myself, so this is

a fairly experimental technique for analysis. Success analysis, as an opposition to failure

analysis, uses the principle of inductive reasoning, which is taking a set of facts and finding a

rule that fits these facts together. I’ll show you some examples of how this works, and some

problems that it can cause. Here are some facts:

● Falcon whiffed an Fsmash

● Falco punished with a shine

So the rule we could glean from this is that when Falcon whiffs an Fsmash, punish with

Falco’s shine. This is a fairly useful rule, and will most likely apply in every situation. But imagine

this scenario (I’ll use a P:M example for this):

● Pit is spamming arrows

● Falcon punishes the missed arrow with a Falcon punch

 So from this we have learned to punish Pit’s arrows with a Falcon punch. As you can see,

this is a terrible idea. It may work occasionally, but 99 times out of 100, it won’t. Maybe 99.99

times. So make sure to analyze what you come up with in order to see if it’s ridiculous or not.

The questions you should be asking yourself when analyzing for positives are:

● How did Player X do action A?

● What results did Player X get from Action A?

● Is Action A safe for Player X? (Alternatively, how did he make it safe?)

● Is there an action that would have increased my results (Save this for later analysis)

I will now give you a small example of this analysis on the Zhu v Hax match at Zenith

2014. Zhu’s first kill is at 2 minutes with a dair spike. Here is the chart I made to analyze it. This

one is a little bit more complicated than the other. Here the blue squares are how the Player

(Zhu) accomplished the action above. For example, Zhu got Hax offstage by hitting with a bair.

The green boxes are the results from doing this action. By hitting Hax offstage, Zhu increased

Hax’s damage, got him offstage, and got the chance to edge guard him. Finally, the red boxes

are what can be learned from that tree. This is the difficult part, because depending on your skill

level; you could learn different things from a certain exchange. There you can analyze what is

being done well, congratulate yourself, and possibly find areas to improve. This technique, and

more importantly Fault Analysis, can be used to improve your play mid match, but it requires a

little trimming down of the procedure, since you can’t very well whip out a pad of paper, and a

pencil and demand for your opponent to pause the game so you can crush them. That won’t fly.

An easier way to analyze mid match is, after every death, ask yourself how you got in that

situation and what you can do to avoid it the next time. This way you make little adjustments

and improve slightly. Also, whenever you get a kill, ask yourself how you got that kill, and try to

do the same thing again. If they adapt, adapt with them and that’s how you grow. Many
complaints of these two types of analysis boil down to, “These strategies are great for

beginners, but the analyses you have are fairly basic and not useful at higher levels of play.”

The great thing about this type of analysis is that it scales with you! As you get better, you notice

more failures and more things that led to your death, and you also have an easier time providing

advanced ideas on how to avoid a negative situation. So in reality this strategy of using

flowcharts is useful at all levels.

Here is the point of all this

Game theory, decision analysis and psychology can all be used to help improve your

game play by showing you which options are best, providing some general knowledge on

optimization, finding your strengths and weaknesses, and helping to alter your opponents play

to your benefit. Game theory is used to help find which option will yield the best outcome, how

you will fair against an opponent, and who will come out on top overall for a given situation.

Also, by understanding how your payoffs determine how your opponent plays, you can alter

your strategy to alter theirs. Pretty Meta. One thing about really great players is that over the

years, they have learned what options are the best in certain situations. Using the matrix solver I

linked below and developing some payoff matrices for a scenario you have trouble with, the

math will tell you what is the best option in that situation, so you get to reduce the amount of

time it takes to learn those optimal choices that the top level players have spent years learning.

A great book on learning game theory is The Compleat Strategyst by J.D. Williams. It explains

some of the basics of strategy very well, but I would more suggest for beginners Game Theory

101, which is an amazing series on youtube that does a great job of explaining all the math

behind game theory, some tips for quickly solving games, and some common games you’ll see,
as well as other interesting trivia. Finally, decision analysis is used to help you find faults in

yourself and find what you and others are doing well. It helps find a way to break down all the

information that is hitting you in one match of smash. One thing that is incredibly important is to

have a big bank of knowledge. Knowledge is your best friend and it will always help to know a

certain match up a little more. Hopefully you can incorporate these techniques into you daily

smash life, and have a better chance of becoming the GOAT! And to finish up this bible-length

paper, here is a little summary of some quick tips for optimization.

Way Before:

● Use game theory to find optimal situations in scenarios you have trouble with

● Use Fault analysis (Why-because) to find problems to work on

● Use success analysis to find tactics that work, by examining high level players

Before:

● Remember what you learned in the way before stage

● Imagine how you will feel winning the tournament

● Remember to Play to learn, don’t play to win

During:

● Whenever you die, use the 5 whys to find out why you died

● Find a way to avoid that situation

● Between sets analyze what things worked against your opponent

● After every kill, remember how you killed them

● “People are stupid until proven smart” – Lucien. Lucien says that unless they are a high

level player, they won’t know what you are going to do. And that is true.

Right After:
● Congratulate your opponent and hit start.

● Think of all the ways you died and how you will avoid those scenarios

● Find general techniques you did well, and use those again.

● Sometimes its better to play safe because if you go for the optimal choice, let’s say a

shield drop uair with Falcon, but you are bad at shield drops, you are just going to screw

yourself. Make sure you are comfortable doing techniques in matches.

Way After:

● Use fault analysis to find what you did wrong

● Practice those techniques

● Use success analysis to find what you did right

● Work on those techniques as well

● Use game theory to see if you picked the right option

● Go back to the way before stage

 Links

Game Theory definition

Great Game theory book

Game Theory series for those interested

Why-Because analysis

5 Whys

Sample Fault Flowchart

Deductive reasoning

Inductive Reasoning

Sample Success Flowchart

Matrix Solver (For large matrices)