Mind Games
Dilemma Tournament
The most famous game in game theory, played live: each round you and a partner secretly choose TEAM UP or BETRAY. Both team: +3 each. Both betray: +1. Betray a teamer: +5 against their 0. The twist that changes everything: partners stay together for a BLOCK of rounds — and they remember. Watch the room's cooperation rate collapse in one-shot mode, then climb when memory arrives. Solo Strategy Gym + live class rooms.
For Educators
Built for the classroom
The Prisoner's Dilemma and the evolution of cooperation. One-shot logic says betray (it strictly dominates) — and the whole room betraying earns crumbs while the whole room teaming earns triple. The fix is MEMORY: with partner blocks, betrayal has a tomorrow, and cooperation becomes rational (Axelrod's tournaments, 1980 — Tit-for-Tat won twice with four lines of code: be nice, retaliate once, forgive, be clear). The projector tracks the room's cooperation rate round by round; run one-shot first, then memory-3, and compare curves. The solo Gym trains the deeper skill: READING a partner's strategy from behavior.
Grades 6+ · partner memory: one-shot / 3 rounds / 5 rounds · 3–7 rounds per game · odd rosters pair with RoboTat (exact tit-for-tat).
Three ways to play
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Strategy Gym (solo)
Four mystery partners, ten rounds each, one hidden rule per partner (the six Axelrod classics). Name the rule after each match for +10. Score 120+ in one run to earn the license.
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Host a Room
Open a room on the projector; pick the partner-memory length — the whole experiment lives in that one setting. Every reveal shows the cooperation rate and the outcome counts.
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Join on any device
See your partner's name and your shared history for the block; choose in secret; change your mind until the reveal.
Run a live class in 5 steps
- Open the Room on one-shot partners (⚡) and play 4–6 rounds — watch betrayal take over.
- Open a SECOND room with Memory 3 (🧠) — partners now stay together and remember.
- Put the two cooperation curves side by side and ask: what did memory buy?
- Ask who betrayed a partner early — and what their next rounds with that partner looked like.
- Finish with the question the mathematicians ask: what happens if everyone knows which round is LAST?
Tip: host on a laptop or projector (the big screen shows the code, QR and leaderboard); students join on their phones or laptops.
