Nontransitive game

A non-transitive game is a game for which the various strategies produce one or more "loops" of preferences. In a non-transitive game in which strategy A is preferred over strategy B, and strategy B is preferred over strategy C, strategy A is not necessarily preferred over strategy C.

A prototypical example non-transitive game is the game rock, paper, scissors which is explicitly constructed as a non-transitive game. In probabilistic games like Penney's game, the violation of transitivity results in a more subtle way, and is often presented as a probability paradox.