Skill in Games

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 one another in simulation tournaments.