Time to Give Poker Superstars 2 Another Chance?

[Trebor the Mad Overlord]

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If you're supposed to fold the nuts in order to progress, I have to confess, I'm not a huge fan.

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I agree that the PS2 playoff format is flawed, but what I found interesting is that none of the players in last night's episode played anywhere near optimal strategy given what they needed to do to progress.

For example, anytime Carlos or Dewey found themselves HTH with Todd, if Todd has more chips than they do, they could have taken the pot by pushing; Todd cannot call, because if he wins, he loses.

Seems to me that they more or less decided that it would be lame to do stuff like that, so they just "played poker".

Thinking through the game theory is quite interesting. It's sort of a 4-way prisoner's dilemma. It will be interesting to see if any of the other playoff groupings are ruthless about exploiting the quirks of the format.