First-mover advantage in round-robin tournaments

We study round-robin tournaments with either three or four symmetric players whose values of winning are common knowledge. In the round-robin tournament with three players there are three stages, each of which includes one match between two players. The player who wins in two matches wins the tournament. We characterize the sub-game perfect equilibrium and show that each player maximizes his expected payo¤ and his probability to win if he competes in the …rst and the last stages of the tournament. In the round-robin tournament with four players there are three rounds, each of which includes two sequential matches where each player plays against a di¤erent opponent in every round. We characterize the sub-game perfect equilibrium and show that a player who plays in the …rst match of each of the …rst two rounds has a …rst-mover advantage as re‡ected by a signi…cantly higher winning probability as well as a signi…cantly higher expected payo¤ than his opponents. JEL Classi…cations: D44, O31 Keywords: All-pay contests, round-robin tournaments, …rst-mover advantage. Department of Economics and Business Administration, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, Israel. Email: [email protected] yDepartment of Managing Human Resources, Department of Practical Economics, Sapir Academic College, M.P. Hof Ashkelon 79165, Israel. zCorresponding author: Department of Economics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer–Sheva 84105, Israel. Tel: 972-86472309. Fax: 972-86472941.