I will follow ForexTrader line so it will be easier to explain my thoughts.
Quote:
So, HU poker vs chess
- in poker, your opponent has 3 strategies to start: fold, limp, raise(when he's on the BTN); fold, call, 3bet when he's OOP
- in chess you have way more than 3 opening strategies
The flop(poker), after the first moves(chess)
- in poker again, you have 3 strategies: call, fold, raise.
-in chess, let's assume your opponent's opening strategy is N. Depending on the variety of opponent's opening strategies you have at least N defending strategies which you can employ. Also if N is his opening strategy, that leads to n*y battle strategies. By battle strategies I am talking about the lines he takes. This is waaaaaay more combinatorically complex than poker, because in chess you have more pieces of different strengths. In poker you have 2 cards against opponent's range which on average is in 7 states in term of equity(rounded off) : 80/20, 70/30, 60/40, 50/50 and vice-versa. You have more choices in chess to adapt, by applying n+X strategies, in which X is a multitude of strategies+experience gained over z number of games or strategies known. In poker you have a limited number of combinatoric situations( for ex: if you call flop you have 3 other variants for turn: fold, call, raise and so on.. Don't know or want to calculate the numbers now because I am drunk.$
In chess you have way more combinatoric situations that can be applied if we give all pieces and moves a mathematical vlue times(x) strategies.
Your analysis on poker strategies is extremely simplistic. I will try to explain my view on poker complexity on what kind of analysis the perfect player should do to achieve the best possibly "strategy" (ps.: I am assuming that the perfect player will not play GTO , but exploitative poker):
Let's assume this perfect player is on a NLHE HU match against an opponent that he has played before.
While preflop game may seem very simple, it's actually extremely mindblowing diabolic complex to play perfectly. Just like in chess where a master will try to setup a winning position from the very first move, a perfect poker player should take into account every single variable to construct his preflop range and betsizing. This goes from stack sizes, to villain´s check raise range on the river. The profitability of every action a player takes preflop is affected by how his opponent will react on future streets. This by itself requires a giganormous ridiculous amount of calculations and analytical thinking. Quoting wikipedia> A somewhat less trivial exercise is an exhaustive analysis of all of the head-to-head match ups in Texas Hold 'em, which requires evaluating each possible board for each distinct head-to-head match up, or 1,712,304 × 207,025 = 354,489,735,600 (˜354 billion) results./quote. That is just the number of different cards combinations. If we take into account stack and betting sizes the number of calculations approach infinite (Theoretically there is no limit to the size of stacks).
The fact that poker is a game of incomplete information only adds to complexity. While all the calculations above would still take place, the perfect player have to estimate his opponent´s range before making such calculations. And the process of estimating someone's range from preflop to river, considering all variation of moves and betsizing, is probably more complex than to construct the perfect range to play against this estimated range, just in a different way. The perfect player will use statistics, pattern recognition, psycology knowledge, metagame and a lot more stuff to make the best estimate possible of what villain's range will be on the next hand, and with infinite knowledge he could actually make the perfect estimation every single time. We know that is impossible in the real world, given the number of variables, but there is virtually no limit to how accurate someone can estimate another player's range.
The point is: There is no limit on how much analysis you can put into a poker game, while in chess there is probably a point where it doesn't matter if you make more calculations or analysis, the result won't change (will draw against another extremely capable opponent with approximate the same knowledge, and win against every other).
I am sure high-level chess players put much more analysis on each game, than high-level poker players overall. But that is just because professional chess has been around for many years, there is countless books and studies on the game and more important: there is almost instant feedback on someone's skill. If you lose a chess game you are probably worse than the other player, while the variance aspect in poker will give very slow and possibly not meaningful feedback, making its learning curve much bigger.
Is Pelé better than Michael Jordan? Is Magnus Carlsen better in Chess than Phil Ivey is on poker?