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# Science: if you keep losing at a game, it may be because your brain is not smart enough
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/science-if-you-keep-losing-game-it-may-be-because-your-brain-not-smart-enough/
- Published: 2013-01-15T15:13:36.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T14:43:06.000Z
- Description: Researchers at the University of Manchester and Oxford University have discovered that players of games of sufficient complexity – like chess and poker – do not always, or even often, make rational decisions, because it’s simply too difficult for their brains to measure all of the available options:
- Author: Joseph Bernstein
- Tags: News, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/previously/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/jim.jpg)

Researchers at the University of Manchester and Oxford University have discovered that players of games of sufficient complexity – like chess and poker – [do not always, or even often, make rational decisions](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130107151259.htm?ref=killscreen.com), because it’s simply too difficult for their brains to measure all of the available options:

> Much of traditional game theory, the basis for strategic decision-making, is based on the equilibrium point — players or workers having a deep and perfect knowledge of what they are doing and of what their opponents are doing.  
>  
> Dr Galla, from the School of Physics and Astronomy, said: “Equilibrium is not always the right thing you should look for in a game.”  
>  
> “In many situations, people do not play equilibrium strategies, instead what they do can look like random or chaotic for a variety of reasons, so it is not always appropriate to base predictions on the equilibrium model.”

The number of players of a game also influences whether or not people make rational decisions; the researchers suggest that the more players in a game, the less rationally players act. This may explain why you have a harder time making the right decision in a 16-player game of *Halo* on a huge map than in a four player game on a small one.