The FishMarket Tournaments

The previous sections described the workings of the auction protocol. So, we have been already provided with some very important information like how much time our agents have to deliberate between two consecutive offers, and between two consecutive rounds. In addition to this, we would also need to know which goods are to be auctioned, and who our rivals are, i.e., what other buyers are participating in this tournament.

With respect to the goods to be auctioned, these are grouped together into what we call lots. The auctioneer will open a new auction every time that a new lot is meant to be sold. During a given auction, the auctioneer will auction off the fishboxes within a lot one by one. Therefore, every time a new fishbox is to be sold, the auctioneer will open a new round and then will start calling prices till any of the situations described by the downward bidding protocol arises.

What do buyers know about the goods to be auctioned? Before starting off the tournament, buyer agents only know the types of goods to be auctioned, the minimum and maximum number of fishboxes of each type of good, the minimum and maximum starting prices, and the minimum and maximum resale prices. In other words, precise information about the composition of each lot is not provided, but some orientation information instead. Buyer agents will be sent detailed information about the composition of lots at tournament run-time via their remote controls as explained in the next section.

To summarize, when talking about the fishmarket world description we will be referring to the following information *:

* For the sake of simplicity, we have introduced a simplified version of the fishmarket world which does not thoroughly fulfil its theoretic counterpart as proposed elsewhere.