The psychological concept of "losing move" in a game of perfect information.
From a game-theoretic standpoint, in any two-person game of perfect information, each position is won, lost, or drawn, and a move is to be considered an error only when it transfers the game from a more favorable to a less favorable state. A psychological concept of error is quite different, in that it must take into account the fallibility of the players as information processing systems. This paper introduces a psychological concept of error in such games based on the distinction between "obvious" and "problematic" moves, and proposes a formalism for this concept that appears to capture, at least to a first approximation, the notion of "losing move" as that phrase is actually used by players in games like chess.
Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213.
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Simon