Game Theory and Poker
Learning poker is a continuous process. ie: learning starting hands, position, value bets, odds etc... Has anyone implemented Game Theory/Economics into their play? Poker is a non-cooperative game with incomplete information, I wonder if variations of Prisoner's Dilemma can be applied to poker. Any thoughts, suggestion, comments would be great. Maybe I'm way off on this idea...lol
Comments
"Theory of Poker" by Sklansky probably has the most direct discussion about how to incorporate game theory into a poker strategy.
John Von Neumann's "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior" has a chapter which applies game theoretic ideas to a generic version of poker where there is only one betting round. (Like 5 card draw, with 1 card and no draw.)
As far as I underatand it, the poker AI research at the U of Alberta (i.e. PokiBot), which will appear in the upcoming PC/console poker game "Stacked", also makes use of a healthy amount of game theory.
The most common place where game theory occurs in poker is in optimal betting vs bluffing strategies and counter-strategies. In fact, most poker players use at least some intuitive version of game theory when they play. If you've ever thought things like "Opponent A bluffs a lot, so I'm going to call him when I have a medium-weak hand more than I usually would", you've made a simple application of game theory to poker.
The Prisoner's Dilemma is an example from co-operative, non-zero-sum game theory, so I'm having trouble seeing how this might apply to poker, a purely competitive, zero-sum game.
ScottyZ