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Poker Game Theory – How You Should Think About The Game

This article is written by an online NLHE and PLO grinder and poker writer Rory Corrigan. The article talks about the application of game theory in the game of poker. The card requires players to be aware of costs and benefits of playing their next move. Every step in poker influences the win-rate of the player, even if it may be an innocent check. By using the game theory, players can counter their opponent’s moves to put themselves in a better situation. Game theory provides the baseline of responding to your opponent and its up to the player in the end to use it at the optimal time. A good example used by the article was the element of bluff. By identifying the certain benefits and costs of using bluff in poker, the author narrows down to the optimal usage of game theory when playing poker. E.g. in a scenario where you bet $100 in a pot of $100, and your opponent has to call that $100 to win $200. The bluff-to-value ratio brings us to the conclusion that using bluff 33% of the time would create the optimal chances of having a net profit. Overall, striving for a perfect GTO strategy might seem like the logical conclusion, but the truth is nobody plays an entirely game theory optimal strategy.

I believe the article walks the reader through the rationale quite well. By applying game theory and using certain examples experiences in poker, the article provides a good representation of the practical application of game theory. However, I would suggest that beyond the scope of the theory, poker has a lot to do with the amount of people playing and also how well you know your opponents. There are numerous factors that play into the decision made by each player. Nevertheless, the optimal application of game theory suggests the right situation to use the theory in poker.

In class, we learnt through the prisoner’s dilemma about the strategies that prisoner A could use considering the decision made by prisoner B. The article focuses on just that by highlighting the scenario where you have a certain idea of the dominant strategy on your part while considering the options of the opponent. However, in poker the decisions by the opponent are not limited as the opponent would have a different strategy dependent on what cards they have in hand. Also, some players opt to randomize their decisions in pursuit to confuse their opponents which undermines the application of game theory in certain cases. Nevertheless, by basing the foundation of the certain game being playing on game theory and calculating certain probabilities allows the opportunity to enhance your chances of winning.

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