[JaredL]

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You are under the mistaken impression that a game theory perfect strategy is optimal against everyone.

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No i'm not-My whole point is that this statement is wrong.

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Well, there's not much to say other than that you're wrong. "Game theory optimal" and "best" are not the same thing, particularly when "best" is defined by "highest EV", and the highest EV strategy also happens to have large exploitable flaws that the opponent is not expected to exploit.

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I don't know your background, but I have absolutely no idea where you got this idea.

I studied math and economics as an undergrad at the University of Oregon. I am currently a graduate student in Economics at the University of Pittsburgh. Without counting them I would estimate that I've taken a dozen courses (give or take a couple) that are either specifically about game theory or heavily involve game theoretic models. I have read all too many scholarly articles in theory as well as behavioral and experimental economics. I'm currently working on my dissertation which will be about modeling situations where there is one (or more hopefully, we'll see where this goes) informed agent who must decide whether to reveal her information to an uninformed agent.

In all of my courses and reading (and writing obviously), I have not even 1 single time come across the use of the term optimal as you are using it. Optimal means optimal. In equilibrium each player is acting optimally obviously. However, nobody I know of would ever refer to a strategy as optimal that is not a best response to whatever the other players are playing. In short, "Game theory optimal" and "best" are the same thing, and are pretty much always followed by "conditional on" or something similar.

The word you are looking for is "equilibrium," not "optimal."