Skill in Games

Patrick Larkey, Joseph B. Kadane, Robert Austin, Shmuel Zamir
1997 Management science  
Differences in players' skill are important determinants of relative player success in most real games such as poker, chess, basketball, business, and politics. Yet conventional game theory has concentrated primarily on games with no skill differences among players. This paper uses a simplified version of stud poker to better understand the concept of differential player skill in games. Players with very different strategies for playing this game are modeled algorithmically and pitted against
more » ... e another in simulation tournaments. and the Management Sciences LARKEY, KADANE, AUSTIN, AND ZAMIR Skill in Games social relationships among players. Beasley (1990) explores the mathematics of games of varying skill. This paper seeks to understand the concept of skill in games as an initial step toward building theories of real games capable of both predicting outcomes and advising play. The analytic core of the paper is a detailed analysis of a game of skill, Sum Poker. We posit players in the form of alternative strategies for play that differ in the information they use and in how they use it. The general behaviors mandated for player success in Sum Poker-observation, memory, computation, knowledge of the random device, misleading opponents about the actual strength of your position, and correct interpretation and forecasts of opponents' behaviors-are common to many "real games." The levels of skill and relative success of the different strategies are explored in computerized experiments.
doi:10.1287/mnsc.43.5.596 fatcat:o3ev64unw5h4bmjczbilnxbbxi