Re: Need help with game theory and bluffing.
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am i missing something here disaster? and not many people know/care about game theory?
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Correct, most people don't really know. Further, it seems to me that the people that know game theory don't apply it very often because any "solution" to a game (i.e. Sklansky's ToP chapter) will depend critically on the assumptions of the game. The assumptions often differ from the reality of the poker room (online or otherwise) so if you learn that "I should do this in this situation" based on the math, the answer could be wrong if you assumed your opponent was a rational player and in reality he's very drunk or distracted or a mediocre card player in general. Further, games often assume that the payoffs are known, but in poker all we have is quick estimates of our payoffs based on what we hold, what our opponent might hold, how much he might bet/call on the next street, etc. So there are several limitations to the theory.
In my opinion the most applicable aspect of Game Theory to poker are games of a Bayesian type, where one play is unsure of the opponent's "type." This is applicable because although we may now if a player is generally TAG, LAG, Calling Station, etc, we don't know how strong he is in that hand. Solutions to these types of game often have players behaving in a way that all types respond the same way, all types respond different ways, etc. Since there are often more than one possible solution, we would like to think about it and pick a solution that matches our needs. For example, it is a mistake to make a bet on the end that only hands that beat us can call (this would be a seperating equilibrium where strong types call, and weak types fold). What we would like to do instead is to either make a bet where all types call and the loss we take when stronger hands call is compensated by when weaker hands call (this is an example of a pooling equilibrium when all types call) or if we can't figure out a bet to get us to a pooling eq, then we check behind.
Basically, I would hold off on strict game theory studying right now, because as you can probably tell above, most good players do this sort of thing without having had to learn about Bayesian Games first.
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