Re: Is having the initiative a fundamental advantage?
Hi,
I don't want to address all your points, only your question of whether it exists against a perfect opponent.
1. Who really cares? There is no such thing as a perfect opponent. But it is real against imperfect opponents and that's what's important.
2. And I believe it does exist even against a perfect opponent, by the very mechanism which I tried to laid out not too articulately above. And this is the mechanism of psychological expectation and risk. If both opponents have the expectation that the guy w/ 'initiative' will be more tenacious, then it does become riskier/costlier for the other guy to try to steal the pot. And if our 'perfect opponents' are risk-adverse (don't know if a perfect opponent must also be risk-neutral), then he would be slightly more likely to surrender with nothing than to continue to play as if he was ignorant of previous action.
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