Game Theory

[zinn0]

Can anyone recommend a good book for Game Theory? It's highly appreciated if you can!

[tame_deuces]

Theory of Poker explains it pretty eloquently for simple poker use. Apart from that, if you want a deeper understanding of it I guess some study books in economics might have good chapters on it.

Alot of the good stuff of game theory for SNG and MTT use is as far as I know being written by online authors. The 2+2 online magazine have alot of focus on it in some of their articles, though digging for information on 2+2 is like listening to preachers&politicians...it can be hard to figure out what is crap and what is good, because it all sounds alike.

[zinn0]

Yea, I have ToP. I was hoping to find something that goes into more detail...

bleh--I'm taking an economics course...I really hope we don't go into game theory. I might lose interest

[Muck]

I thought game theory was quite interesting, I must be sad

There’s a mind reader guy in the UK called Derren Brown who does a lot of suggestion stuff. I.e. He subliminally implants a number/image/name/place in your head then “guessesâ€

[DeadlyDaniel]

[quote="Muck"]I thought game theory was quite interesting, I must be sad

There’s a mind reader guy in the UK called Derren Brown who does a lot of suggestion stuff. I.e. He subliminally implants a number/image/name/place in your head then “guessesâ€

[mrcfkane]

Can anyone recommend a good book for Game Theory? It's highly appreciated if you can!

i read part of a "real" game theory book in the library. it will not help esp for NL. you will need real good math skills to understand most of the concepts (which tend to break into general types of games, not poker specifically). i am a math major and thought that reading game theory was tougher than most math texts.

[lwestatbus]

I've had just enough exposure to game theory to be dangerous to myself and to others. This is really doctoral-level economics stuff (where I covered it) and there is a problem with applying it to poker.

Game theory casts different situations where participants in a 'game' (or situation) make a sequence of decisions. It uses the payoff structure for different outcomes of the decisions and the nature of the game (one-time vs repeated, etc.) to attempt to select an optimum course of action (sequence of decisions) based on the circumstances. So far so good in its applicability to poker.

The problem (in my opinion) is that in some (most?) 'games', you have the incentive to take suboptimal action since the optimal action is predictable to your opponent who can then take his optimal action based on your optimal action. Except that your opponent can also realize the dilemma you are in and your incentive to take sub optimal action and adjust accordingly. But you also realize this and so should then take the original optimal action.....

I believe that the whole thing boils down to a rock-paper-scissors (Rochambeau) game where you just flat have to guess. And, in poker, everything from slow playing to mixing up your game to bluffing are strategies designed to disguise the true nature of the world (your hand) from your opponent and to interfere both with his decision making and, most importantly, with his confidence in his decisions.

I would guess that understanding game theory helps to cast the situations you encounter in poker into a familiar context but doesn't really help you with your decisions unless your opponent is unbelievably predictable. But it is probably better to study the application of these techniques directly in their poker context rather than going out and studying game theory.

A final for what it's worth: I actually find that attitudes and strategies I learned in other aspects of my life are much more applicable to poker than game theory. My experience with strategy as an Infantry company commander along the Fulda river, facing a Soviet Guards Tank Army, are very applicable to multi-table tournaments. My study of guerrilla warfare has a lot of bearing on the conduct of a single table game, whether ring or SnG. And my college fencing background is particularly applicable to heads up play. But I don't recommend that anyone go out and join the Marines or buy a sword so they can play better poker.

[pokerfiend]

I just made a website regarding what I used to do for two years at the online poker rooms. It's all free so take your time and read it. What I did was take the statistical theory approach. As long as you had a system developed to always give you the edge (>51%), then you will win on the long run so long as enough samples are taken. So I developed a system for which in every occassion, I would have a favorable odd, mostly around 70%, then I just played like crazy with this system: 4-6 tables at once and 4 hours a day for 12 months. I played the $1/$0.50 tables first at party poker then after they stopped accepting US customers, I played at full tilt... the end result was surprising...

PF

[Muck]

the end result was surprising...

I don't think I'm going to be surprised by the end result of all this site and system pimping

[supafrey]

I can't believe that much time was wasted to make that stupid of a website.

[Muck]

So I developed a system for which in every occassion, I would have a favorable odd

Nuff said

Just to go back on topic for a moment the Wiki page on game theory is quite good.

I didn’t learn much that I could apply to poker but one of the other topics I browsed to “Nuclear Strategyâ€

[Adamm]

Bump.
Read the Mathematics of Poker by Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman. It's absolutely fantastic in its approach to poker and game theory.
It's not an easy read my any means though. I've been going through with a pencil and paper trying to just get the notation down, but I feel like I'm learning a lot. A lot.
There's my glowing review.

[xDiamond_CutteRx]

Bump.
Read the Mathematics of Poker by Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman. It's absolutely fantastic in its approach to poker and game theory.
It's not an easy read my any means though. I've been going through with a pencil and paper trying to just get the notation down, but I feel like I'm learning a lot. A lot.
There's my glowing review.

I ordered it recently from the FPP store on Stars. Hopefully it gets here soon.