I have a question: When people imagine (or play) this scenario, do they give any consideration to the AI player's portrayal, or do they just take "AI" as blanket permission to say anything they want, no matter how unlikely?

[The anonymous player believes] that the mental skills necessary to beat him are orthogonal to most forms of intelligence. Most people willing to play the experiment tend to do it to prove their own intellectual fortitude, that they can't be easily outsmarted by fiction. I now believe they're thinking in entirely the wrong terms necessary to succeed.

I can easily believe that Tuxedage's strategies are strongly tied to a creative imagination and being able to think like a human does, more so than any empirical argument. (I also imagine his scripted list of strategies are strongly designed for the typical LWer and would not work on an "average" person.) Programmed AIs, as opposed to EMs, are likely to have thought processes once again orthogonal to any or all human-like thought processes, including but not limited to human-metric intelligence, intuition, or social understanding (to the depth shown in player testimonies.)