> All iterated games in the real world have a first game as well They effectively don't, because the way things work in the real world is that you become known

> All iterated games in the real world have a first game as well They effectively don't, because the way things work in the real world is that you become known to the competitive scene long before you reach a top level tournament and people will have definitely played against you in some capacity. If you could somehow become a top pro without interacting with the rest of the scene, then you would most definitely have a massive advantage against other top pros for a little while before they figure out your tendencies. This is based on my experience and knowledge of real-time games like SC2 and Dota, so it may not be as applicable to Chess since the action space is considerably smaller and I don't know if knowledge of opponent tendencies is as important (I assume it is though). I wouldn't necessarily agree all of this means it wasn't a game of perfect information, but the first match of an iterated game in the real world is almost always either inconsequential or you have access to information from a secondary source.