Why I Built a Tiny Repeated-Game Poker Analysis Tool
Most poker solvers answer one question very well: given a single hand and a single decision tree, what is the equilibrium strategy? (Yes, there is subgame solving, node locking, and plenty more — but the default frame is still one hand, one equilibrium.) I kept getting stuck on a different one. What if the same kind of spot shows up over and over, and a player can commit to a fixed strategy across those repetitions? In a few toy games I had a hunch, worked out by hand, that committing to a fixed strategy could change its value relative to the one-shot picture. I wanted a tool that could make that commitment value precise — to actually analyze it rather than just believe it. (Whether any of this rises to a repeated-game equilibrium is a much stronger claim, and one I am deliberately not making here.) I'm still learning software engineering, so until recently I couldn't implement this — I was stuck reasoning about toy games on paper. AI tooling made the analysis feasible, so I finally started building it: repeated-poker-analysis . It's a small research project: write one narrow model down, run small examples, and record what the model does and doesn't justify. What repeated-poker-analysis is It is an experimental Python toolkit for small abstract poker games. The current MVP covers: fixed Hero commitment candidates, exact Villain best-response diagnostics in small finite trees, candidate generation and filtering, T_deadline , an economic adaptation deadline, local T_detect , an observable-distribution sensitivity estimate, analysis reports and Markdown summaries. It is small on purpose. It is not a full solver and it is not wired to real solver ranges. It starts from one toy game — a river spot — that is tiny enough to inspect and test by hand. That toy spot is one where showdown always chops but rake still bites. In a single-hand view, putting more money into a raked pot can be locally unattractive. Across repeated occurrences the same spot raises a commitment questi