I've been looking for a good book on game theory

[cbruno]

Try checking out this book
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...ce&s=books

No poker, just game theory--all the equilibrium concepts.

No really usefull for poker--except heads up. Aids in understanding the inportance of bluffing frequency to increase EV.

[alThor]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone know of a good introductory book for game theory? I've been looking for a book that emphasizes a pure mathematical approach to game theory.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not many introductory books would be overly rigorous.

At one extreme is Fudenburg and Tirole, which is a graduate level book for economists. Hard core. I don't recommend that to anyone other than a PhD student with lots of time to study it.

At the other extreme, I would recommend Dixit and Nalebuff. This is not mathematical, and introduces game theoretic reasoning by examples. Basically written for MBA-types.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...72815?v=glance

In the middle are books by Myerson and by Binmore---more mathematical, and at the advanced undergrad level. Dated but good. The Gibbons book someone already references is also good; a quicker read than any of these, it introduces basic ideas.

alThor

[jtr]

I'll second the Binmore recommendation: his text "Fun and Games" is very solid, in my opinion. Technical but still readable.

If you don't already know a lot about game theory, you may be disappointed to find that it won't help you with your poker game except in a very general way, or in very specific situations. Binmore actually uses some of the classic poker examples (von Neumann himself was a player it seems) but they are all restricted to a radically simplified, heads-up form of the game in order to keep the calculations tractable. If you play a lot of heads-up matches, you might gain something directly from this type of analysis, but for full-table low-limit ring games, game theory is not really required.