A strategic move in game theory is an action taken by a player outside the defined actions of the game in order to gain a strategic advantage and increase one's payoff. Strategic moves can either be unconditional moves or response rules. The key characteristics of a strategic move are that it involves a commitment from the player, meaning the player can only restrict her own choices, and that the commitment has to be credible, meaning that once employed it must be in the interest of the player to follow through with the move. Credible moves should also be observable to the other players.
Strategic moves are not warnings or assurances as they are merely statements of a player's interest, rather than an actual commitment from the player.
The term was coined by Thomas Schelling in his 1960 book, The Strategy of Conflict, and has gained wide currency in political science and industrial organization.
Famous quotes containing the words strategic and/or move:
“The strategic adversary is fascism ... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”
—Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
“All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.”
—Terry Eagleton (b. 1943)