That is indeed a good point. I guess the counterpoint is "if town think they're going to play below EV, they can just agree to random-lynch" (which is where IIRC the commonly seen rule against provable randomness comes form), so if you assume that the players are perfectIn post 8828, mith wrote:I think there's a temptation to argue that with optimal play, town can do better than random, but this neglects the fact that EV assumesbothsides are playing optimally.
In practice, of course, players often suck at strategy in addition to sucking at scumhunting, and scum have counterplay in practice that can make town's strategy worse (for example, many players (correctly or not) believe theory discussion to be a scumtell, and thus you can sometimes argue towns out of agreeing to follow a breaking strategy). It's rare for towns to random-lynch even when that would be their best option, which is one common reason for towns to play below EV.