TITLE: Why is game theory formulated in terms of equilibrium instead of winning strategies?
QUESTION [26 upvotes]: Game theory, on the outset, seems to invite the questions,
"what can I do to win" or "how do I beat my opponent?"
So many people who are not familiar with game theory look to game theory as some sort of instruction manual to beat their opponents.
In practice, however, game theory says,
"if everybody plays according to a Nash equilibrium, then there is no incentive for me to change my strategy, no matter how horrible my current position is."
The second answer seems to be pessimistic and also places a very strong assumption which is that all the other players are playing at the Nash equilibrium, hence it has questionable real life significance.
So my question is, why the emphasis on equilibrium finding as opposed to winning strategies? Are these equivalent in some sense?

REPLY [2 votes]: My guess is that the real reason is that game theory is not really about games.
Game theory as we know it today started with the book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by von Neumann and Morgenstern, a mathematician and an economist. And economics is much more interested in finding an equilibrium than about beating your opponent.
(This is only a guess because I have not read the book and do not know very much about economics.)