Ciaffone and Game Theory

[gilly]

All I am saying is that it is possible for game theory to have a more important role in one's analysis of the situation.

You should be able to apply it (to your benefit) in any situation, given some, none, or a lot of information about your opponent. Saying that it does not apply in certain situations is like saying probabilty does not if we play poker with a 50 card deck short 2 hearts and Ace and a King. It still works, you just have to apply it, just like game theory can still work under different situations.

[rigoletto]

Ups my mistake. That we're talking about mid limit doesn't change my point when I said:

Seems to me that Bob is in essence saying, that you should fold to a turn raise more often ag. unsophisticated players in these situations then you would in a thougher game. And I don't think anybody can really disagree with this.

The point being that by analyzing Bob's statement, his defence on the hand problem turns out to be a limitation of the circomstances where his suggested play applies.

When I say 'I don't think anybody can disagree with this' it should be read sarcastically; you can't really learn much from the obvious.

[BruceZ]

You should be able to apply it (to your benefit) in any situation, given some, none, or a lot of information about your opponent.

Tell me how I can apply game theory to my benefit when I know that my opponent calls less or more than optimal in a given situation. The optimal decision is to always bluff or to never bluff, and I don't need game theory to tell me that.

[Piers]

I am [img]/forums/images/icons/blush.gif[/img] to admit I find Mason’s criticism of Middle Limit Hold’em reassuring.

After reading Ciaffone and Reuben’s pot limit book [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] I had a lot of respect for his opinion, and was slightly disconcerted with how I felt with some of Ciaffone’s limit hold’em ideas [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img] .

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Rigoletto:

You wrote:

Seems to me that Bob is in essence saying, that you should fold to a turn raise more often ag. unsophisticated players in these situations then you would in a thougher game. And I don't think anybody can really disagree with this.

I disagree completely. Against unsophisticated players, assuming you play well, you should know what to do. That is it should be clear that they bluff too much or too little. (In fact, it's been my experience that most relatively novice players bluff too much in these spots.)

The problem occurs against the sophisticated players. Now you're not so sure what to do. But one thing is virtually certain, constantly folding against this type will cause you trouble.

Best wishes,
Mason

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Everyone:

Again, this is exactly the flaw in the Ciaffone quote. You should virtually never be using Game Theory to make your decisions at the poker table.

Best wishes,
Mason

[BB King's]

Mason:Again, this is exactly the flaw in the Ciaffone quote. You should virtually never be using Game Theory to make your decisions at the poker table. This exactly what Bob C is not doing !!!

Bob C:The fact is, it can easily be a poker mistake to play according to game theory. To do so means you are not optimizing your play against an opponent who does not play according to game theory.

[AceHigh]

"we are generally refering to using an optimal strategy "

I prefer the term unexploitable strategy. Optimal strategy is only optimal against opponents who play very well. Most opponents call too much, at least on the river, so if you use optimal strategy you may be bluffing too often. At least in my games, YMMV.

[gilly]

OK. This is just beating a dead horse. This is basically semantics. You are using game theory as a term to define a very very narrow thing, whereas I was just suggesting that there is a much more broad use.

And in reply to your previous post where you asked:
Tell me how I can apply game theory to my benefit when I know that my opponent calls less or more than optimal in a given situation. The optimal decision is to always bluff or to never bluff, and I don't need game theory to tell me that.

My response is that game theory tells you that. If you looked at this as a problem in a game theory setting you would figure that your optimal strategy is to always bluff or to never bluff. The fact that you do not need game theory (in this case) is absolutely beside the point. The odds of getting tails on a fair coin is 1/2 and given that I just got tails the odds of getting tails again is 1/2. I do not need statistical analysis to tell me this, but if I decided to use statistical analysis I would still get the same answer.