[Alan McIntire]

Years ago I read a relatively simple book on strategy, "The Compleat Strategyst", by John Davis Williams. I was disappointed to find that in most 2*2 games, and in a lot of other relatively simple games, your "best" strategy not only guarantees a minimum expected win rate, but this result is also guaranteed that same result to your opponent regardless of how poorly he played. In contrast, games like chess allow plenty of sub-optimum strategies for your opponent to pick and go wrong.

I don't know if there is a perfect strategy for a multiple player game. Such a strategy assumes that your opponents don't make bad plays, but several could act together, in effect colluding in their stupidity, to make a good play bad. Dan Harrington gave such an example in one of his books, where the top 4 finishers win an equal prize. 4 are tied at $4000 and 2 are tied at $1000.00.

A perfect mixed strategy for heads up Hold'Em poker must exist. I wonder if it would do better than break even against an expert, or your perfect strategy would make the game a coin flip. Are there any plays you should NEVER make which are sometimes employed by experts? This would be the only way you could have a positive expectancy.- A. McIntire