Playing an Unfamiliar Game
Firms deliberately invent games you have not seen. Jane Street's dice and resource-division games, SIG's expected value games with cards and coins, Akuna's alphabet-table betting round: the specifics change every cycle, and the point is to watch you handle something unfamiliar rather than to test recall.
So the deliverable from this course is not a catalogue of solved games. It is a procedure.
The five questions
1. What are the payoffs? Write down who the players are, what each can do, and what each gets for every combination. Ask about anything ambiguous before you start: how ties are settled, whether the game repeats, whether the opponent sees your choice. Interviewers leave these unstated on purpose, and asking is not a weakness.
2. Does anything dominate? Look for an action that beats another in every column. If one exists you are finished with that part of the problem and you needed no beliefs to get there. Say so explicitly, because it is the strongest kind of answer available.
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