If the rules require that full and exhaustive agreement be reached, then in the tacit game the players are dependent on their ability not only to divide the total value of the objects in coordinated fashion but to sort out the 100 individual objects into two piles in identical fashion. If, then, one of the players has demanded specific items worth 80 percent of the total and the other player has refused, the former has an advantage in the tacit game. The only extant proposal for dividing the 100 objects is the one player's specification of 80 that would satisfy him; the chances of their concerting identically on any other division of the 100 objects, equal or unequal between them, may be so small that they are forced for the sake of agreement into accepting the only extant proposal in spite of its bias.

DEFINE: Illustrates how focal points (Schelling's coordination mechanism) force agreement onto extant proposals even when biased.

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, loc. 628