[MarkGritter]

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I think even an optimal strategy (in a game theoretical sense) for poker will have couter strategies that beat the optimal strategy.

Any strategy to be called a single strategy should be fixed. It can be 'raise 30%/fold 70% at random against a 20/15 opponent given this and that' so it is allowed to differentiate between a lot of variables that any person or computer could access. But within this information the strategy should be fixed.

In that case I think by definition the optimal strategy will be one that is least exploitable/most profitable against the entire range of possible strategies. But in that range are a few (probably themselves very exploitable strategies) that will beat an optimal strategy.

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No, the game-theoretic strategy is, by definition, nonexploitable. A game-theoretic optimal strategy exists for poker, just as one does for checkers... we just don't know what it is.

The game-theoretic strategy might not be the "best" to play because it does not exploit your opponent's mistakes to the fullest.

Heads-up poker is a two person game with finitely many strategies for each player. The payoffs of these strategies are random but their expected value can be calculated. So in principle poker can be solved, just like checkers. (The difference is that the optimal strategy for checkers is pure--- no random decisions--- while the optimal strategy for poker is likely to be a mix.)

It is fairly easy today to solve real poker games for a single street. A long-term research effort like that applied to checkers should be able to solve some multi-street games within 20 years. (I think single-draw A-5 lowball is a real game that is within reach.)