PRISONER'S DILEMMA 2.0

 We won ALL of our bets yesterday that we publicly posted publicly Raiders +2.5; Steeler/Ravens Under 42.5; Jets +16.5; and  Jags +15.5. No other tout publicly post their picks and has the record we have. We don't just have a talent for trying cases. 

We also WON our FF championship game, 155-108 against De La Fins. It was a little skill and a lot of luck and we will take being lucky over being good any day of the week. It's why we play the lottery.  We are the first TWO TIME REGJB FF LEAGUE CHAMPION. That and eleven bucks gets us a Latte and a muffin at Starbucks. 

If you stayed up and watched the last game of the 2021 regular season you saw Game Theory and Prisoner's Dilemma at work. The game went to overtime naturally. In OT both teams scored a FG, and with less than two minutes less, with the game tied, the Raiders had the ball at midfield. If the game ends in a tie, BOTH the Raiders and the Chargers make the playoffs. But neither team could communicate their intentions. The best result was a cooperative strategy, but neither team could afford to cooperate for the tie, because if the other team did not cooperate, the cooperative team would lose. 

We (as criminal defense attorneys, not us personally) face this situation all the time in co-defendant cases. If both clients remain silent and proceed to trial they can often do better than if both plead guilty. But with the advent and imposition of minimum mandatory penalties in state court, and the general trial tax in federal court, the prosecutors and judges have managed to tilt the playing field, jeopardizing the Sixth Amendment right to trial, and rewarding the first in the door to surrender.

There are mathematical solutions to this formula. However, while they apply in investment and business decisions, it is harder to apply them to individual cases and clients where individual lives are at stake. 

For now, if you listened to our tried and true advice and avoided setting cases for trial in the first two weeks of January- made easier by the Omicron unofficial ban (it has to be unofficial because the Florida Supreme Court, locked behind large wooden and hermetically sealed doors in Tallahassee cannot understand why fifty or sixty people would have an issue showing up in a small and windowless room for a jury selection)- then you are set up to try a whole bunch of cases between February (when Omicron hopefully has burned itself out) and the Memorial Day -July Fourth start of summer vacations. 

Until then, stay safe, wear your mask, and bet as much as you can afford on our playoff picks. We are on a roll.  

NFL WEEK 18 2021 PRISONER'S DILEMMA EDITION

UPDATE: Your first repeat champion in the world famous REGJB Fantasy Football League is none other than....drum roll please....RUMPOLE! Another stellar performance by WR Cooper Kupp (26.60) and TE Tyler Higbee (23.50) allowed us to survive De La Fins Brady (36 to our Josh Allen's 29 at QB).  Our late-season pickup at RB Rashad Penny (28, mostly in the fourth quarter) allowed us to prevail and become a two-time champion 138-104 at the time of this writing. Congrats to regular season best record Born Tua Be Wild (13-2), and championship runner-up De La Fins. We were lucky, pure and simple. It's good to be good. It's better to be lucky and we will take the luck and the win. 

Welcome to the very first NFL regular season week 18! The NFL expanded the season this year. The Dolphins are O..U...T out of the playoffs. They play a mostly meaningless game today against the NE Cheaters to close out the season. In our opinion, this will be their last meaningless end-of-season game for a while. This is a team headed in the right direction. 

Another team playing a totally meaningless game is the Tampa Bay Bradys. They are headed to playoffs and with a fifty-something QB, we are calling on coach Bruce Arians to SIT BRADY! 

Our Opponent today in the REGJB Fantasy Football championship game, De La Fins is grimacing, as his hopes rest on the arms of the aging and aching QB12. If he sits or takes it easy, we win. This has been our most challenging and satisfying FF season. We blew the draft, picking in the first round at six Giants Running Back Barkley who has done nada. We backed into the playoffs with a losing record, and yet here we are. Win or lose, it's been fun. 

PRISONER'S DILEMMA is a game theory analysis we have written about before. It applies not just to the work all of us do in criminal law, but to many decisions made in the real world. The setup for the dilemma is - imagine two people arrested for a crime and in separate interview rooms.  One is being beaten by the City of Miami/Hialeah detective, the other is being crammed with coffee and McDonalds and cake and cookies by the Miami Dade Detective. Woops! Wrong scenario. We will get to that one another time. 

Both prisoners A & B are in separate rooms; they cannot communicate what they have decided to do. 

1) If both remain loyal and don't speak, they will each get two years on a lesser charge; 

2) If A speaks but B is loyal, A goes free, B gets eight years- and vice-a-versa. 

3) If both A & B rat each other out, they each get five years. 

Options two and three where the prisoner makes the individual decision to speak are in the best interests of the individual, wherein they can employ the game theory "mini-max" strategy-  by speaking they minimize or in this case exclude the worst possibility (8 years). However, by speaking they exclude their chance for the best cooperative strategy- two years, but they maximize their chance to obtain the best non-cooperative outcome- case dismissed. 

Today, the Raiders are playing the LA Chargers in a 4pm game. IF the Steelers (who have a tie this year) win AND the Jags upset the Colts, the the following rules apply to the Raiders/Chargers game: 

1) If they both agree to not try and play for a 0-0 tie, they both make the playoffs; 

2) If one tries for a tie but is ambushed at the last moment by the other team, then the team that scores goes to the playoffs and the other team goes home; 

3) If both try to win, then only one makes the playoffs. 

As Commander Spock would say- "Fascinating". 

We highly recommend game theory as a course of study for many areas of life, not the least of which is investment decisions. Understanding the "Nash Equilibrium" is central to the concept of making Game Theory work for you. 

PICKS

We like the Raiders as a home dog at their new magnificent stadium (where we have seen a game this year) to not tie and to beat the Chargers +2.5.

Steelers/Ravens under 42.5. Big Ben's last game (unless the Colts are upset by the Jags). A great player who probably left at least two super bowl championships on the table, but a sure first ballot hall of famer who never got the credit he was due. At his best, he was head and shoulders above his contemporaries like Eli Manning and Phillip Rivers. He and the Steelers could just never beat Brady and the Cheaters when it mattered. 

Speaking of Colts at Jags, let's have some fun and put fifty on the Jags +15.5. That's a big line. 

J...E..T..S Jets Jets Jets! at Bills. We like Gang Green +16.5. We need Bills QB Allen as much as De La Fins needs Brady,  as Allen is our FF QB today. The Bills need this game to secure a first-round home game. But a ten- or twelve-point win seems a likely outcome here. 

It has been another fun NFL season, providing the kind of distraction that sports often provides, and we so need in these Covid times. For the many of you who play every year in our world-famous survivor pool, thank you for your participation.  We wish our blog friend Judge De La O the best of luck today in our fantasy football showdown. He plays every year, recruits players (not by ordering his young PDs or ASAs to signup) and this year ran the league as co-commissioner and made every decision and set the rules and made the trains run on time as is his wont. Thank you. 

Our Super Bowl Pick? 

A couple of teams could get hot and go on a run. Green Bay is the favourite. But if there is an Arizona Cardinals / Buffalo Bills Super Bowl, you heard it here first. 

PRISONER'S DILEMMA

Long time and careful readers of this blog know that Rumpole has a modest expertise in Game Theory, with a keen interest in the Nash Equilibrium and it's application to real life legal decision making. 
In Prisoner's Dilemma, we examine the situation of two individuals arrested and charged with a crime. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement and unable to communicate. The prosecution lacks the evidence to convict both on the main charge.  Each prisoner wants to get a year in jail in a lesser charge. Two prosecutors are dispatched to meet with each prisoner (and their counsel of course, this isn't Miami-Dade) simultaneously. The prosecutors offer each prisoner a deal. Each prisoner must then decide whether to cooperate with the outcomes as follows: 

If P1 and P2 each agree to rat the other out, each will get two years. 

If P1 rats out P2 but P2 remains silent, P1 gets off and P2 gets 3 years in prison. 

If P1 and P2 each remain silent, they each will only  be convicted of a lesser charge  and serve one year. 

Here is the dilemma: If each prisoner acts in their rational self-interest, then each betrays the other and they each get two years. 
If each reject their inclination toward rational self-interest then they each get the desired outcome of one year. 
Acting in rational self-interest and being a rat  leads to a worse result than in remaining silent. However, since by cooperating with the prosecution  the prisoner can possible go free or at worst do two years and eliminate the possibility of the worst outcome- three years,  being a rat is what is called the dominant strategy. And yet, the rational self interested choice to be a rat yields a worse outcome than the non-self interest choice to remain silent. So acting rational is irrational. Oy!

The Nash Equilibrium yields a solution for the dilemma but we will discuss that at another time. 

Let play a little Game Theory. 
Say you are a lawyer. And say you have damaging information on the President of the United States. Say your name is...Cohen. 
What do you do? Remain silent and risk three years (actually more) or cooperate and possibly get two years or walk free? 

Say you are the President of the United States. Being a rational actor do you:
1) Blame Obama; 2) Blame the failing NY Times, Failing CNN, failing MSNBC, and fake news? 
3) Bomb Syria? 4) Make a peace treaty with North Korea and agree to a joint North Korean -US military strike at the Seychelles Islands?  5) Stay in bed all weekend, eat cheeseburgers, watch FOX TV and fire Nicky Halley? 

From Occupied America, even Presidents have dilemmas they cannot reason their way out of. Fight the power and don't be a rat!