Hi,

I want this thread to last at least few hours before Rusty closes it, so I made a bit of research about his posting times in the last month.


Here it can be seen, that he never posts between 5:00 and 13:00 CET, so it's likely that's when he sleeps. I'm posting this at 5:05 for that reason.

To the topic:

I'd like to know more about a situation, that sometimes happens in poker or in real life.

IRL example:

V and Hero find a magic button (IRL lol), that they can each press 1 time.
If V presses the button he gets 100€ and H loses 100€.
If H presses it, They both lose 200€.

Hero tells Villian, that if V uses the button, H will use it aswell, and it will be -EV for both of them.

Villian doesn't believe and presess the button anyway.

Hero is in a hard situation now. Should he press his button?

I mainly want to know if there's a name for this situation. (example: GTO, Prisoner's dilemma...)


After some boredom math (waiting for Rusty to fall asleep), I'm pretty sure the GTO (is it called GTO?) solution to this problem would be for H to press the button 50,1% of the time, assuming that V will find 2 more buttons in his life on average...
Is this correct?

Yes there are situations you may find yourself in real life where every option is -EV.

In those situations you minimize the loss, not compound it.

In your example hero would walk away. There's no other option.

This is similar to a game of chicken, with villain doing David Sklansky's favorite strategy of throwing his steering wheel out the window.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN VILLAIN WILL FIND 2 MORE BUTTONS IN HIS LIFE ON AVERAGE?

If we never get in this situation again with Villian, there is no reason for us to press the button and punish him.

What I stated earlier would be GTO, if V could somehow control the ammount of buttons he ever finds.

Because he can't control it, we will in reality either 100% press the button or 100% not press it. Depends on how likely it is, that this situation happens again in future. (Assuming opponent will learn from his mistake)

At least that's how I understand it.

Yeah, this is indeed similar. Thanks! "throwing his steering wheel out the window" would be the optimal play there, but is kind of cheating (not always possible).
It's not 100% the same though. At chicken, both players are in the same situation. In my example one of them acts first though (and has advantage unlike poker). So if one of the drivers could see 5 sec into the future, he would actually have a disadvantage

If that situation will never happen again, I agree. But I assumed in my example, that there is a chance, that the situation will repeat in the future.

Why do you think I would want to close it?

There are quite a few famous problems similar to this, and also it's pretty much the exact same as spite calling regs in tourneys.

basically the equilibrium assuming both players are perfectly rational is him pressing the button and you doing nothing.

In a reiterated game one could make the argument that there's incentive for hero to scare villain by following up on his threat to press the button. The problem is if both players have the same marginal utility curve (happiness value of money), there's no reason villain can't equally be threatening hero. So the outcome will still be the same, hero has to just accept that he's going to lose 100€.

The game starts to get interesting/complicated if there are clear differences in the utility curve. For example if hero is a billionaire, and villain is a near-broke family man, both players know villain has much more to lose. You can no longer make the argument that both players can equally threaten each other because one of those threats clearly isn't credible. Hero will push until villain capitulates and stops pushing.

Rusty just close this down please.

I've just seen you close/move alot of threads that weren't exactly about poker theory.
I was right about your sleep times though weren't I?

Ah yes, I think I understand. V can say that he will always press the button in the future, no matter if H presses it afterwards. Therefore it's always best for H to just give up.


The main reason why I created this thread was because I got into a business situation like this IRL.
Basically, there are 3 of us in the "company".
I want to do something (changes) that will hurt person A, and benefit me (it's fair).
Person B is on my side, because it's the fairest option.
However, Person A is now saying that if we do that, he will do something else, that will hurt all of us (person B 2 times as much) financially.
Now there's a good chance, that person B will change his position, and A wins.

Now that I think of it...
This situation is called "revenge" IRL

More or less?

Anyway I think you've made like 8 or 9 threads over the years, have never closed any of them. I mostly close stuff that is either way too generic or way too specific/strategic.

Lmao!!

I woke up at about 3am central time and couldn't get back to sleep. Clearly this thread summoned me.

Isn't your play to make an equal threat back?

That's actually what I did yesterday. I made a threat that was even worse, than what A was threatening with. For now it seems I won (changes happened).
It was very risky though.

What if somebody just threw the button back in villains face, refused to play such a idiotic game, and refused to pay ANY money to anyone, ever, when it comes to it?

Holy ****, you did it, you solved it when no one else could. Kudos. Really, man, I can't believe you did it. Amazing.

Actually this is my strategy whenever i lose a hand in poker

The way to win this scenario (because Villain presses the button around 95% of the time, regardless of you pressing it) is to tell villain you'll split the money. That if he presses the button, you'll press yours anyway, and that if you press the button first, that you'll actually give villain half the cash.

isnt this the "prisoners dilemma?"

or "crab bucket mentality"... if I can't have it, then nobody should...?

My point was just that it's an unrealistic concept and thus can't be "solved". And if it ever was realistic in any way that's how most people would respond.

Cool, so you don't know anything about game theory. This is my surprised face.