The other side of the trade
is thinking too.
Probability treats the world as a machine that doesn't care about you. Game theory treats it as a person who does. Game Table teaches that shift: read a payoff matrix and find what survives when everyone is reasoning at once; walk a game tree backwards to separate real threats from bluster; understand why a rational bidder shades their bid and why the winner is so often the one who was most wrong; and finally design the rules yourself, so honesty is the dominant strategy. This is the layer under every negotiation, auction and market you will ever price.
Two decision-makers, one moment, no communication. Meet the payoff matrix and the vocabulary built on it: strictly dominated strategies you can delete outright, the best-response logic that defines a Nash equilibrium, the mixed strategies that exist when no pure one does, and the classic 2×2 games whose shapes recur everywhere in finance.
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Level 1 · ▶ NEXT What Makes It a Game ★★★ ◆◆
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Level 2 Dominance ★★★ ◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L01
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Level 3 Nash Equilibrium ★★★ ◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L02
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Level 4 The Classic 2×2s ★★★ ◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L03
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Level 5 Mixed Strategies ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L04
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👑Level 6 · SHOWDOWN The Matrix Showdown ★★★ ◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L05
When moves happen in order, who goes first matters and so does what everyone believes will happen next. Draw the extensive form, solve it by backward induction, and learn the idea that does the most work in practice: a threat only changes behaviour if carrying it out would be in your interest at the time. Then repeat the game and watch cooperation become possible.
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Level 7 Games in Sequence ★★★ ◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L06
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Level 8 Backward Induction ★★★ ◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L07
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Level 9 Credible Threats ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L08
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Level 10 Commitment ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L09
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Level 11 Repeated Games ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L10
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👑Level 12 · SHOWDOWN The Tree Showdown ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L11
Auctions are where game theory meets real money, and the format is never neutral. Work through the four classic designs and what each does to a bidder, separate private values from common values, meet the winner's curse in the setting that made it famous, and see why revenue equivalence holds — and the assumptions whose failure is where all the interesting bidding lives.
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Level 13 The Four Formats ★★★ ◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L12
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Level 14 Private Values & Shading ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L13
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Level 15 Common Values & the Winner's Curse ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L14
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Level 16 Revenue Equivalence ★★★ ◆◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L15
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Level 17 When the Assumptions Break ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L16
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👑Level 18 · SHOWDOWN The Auction Showdown ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L17
Now stop playing and start designing. When one side knows more than the other, markets can unravel — that is adverse selection, and signalling and screening are the two responses. Mechanism design turns the question around: given that everyone will act in their own interest, what rules make truth-telling the best move? Finish with the result that says you cannot have everything.
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Level 19 Asymmetric Information ★★★ ◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L18
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Level 20 Adverse Selection ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L19
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Level 21 Signalling ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L20
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Level 22 Screening ★★★ ◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L21
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Level 23 Mechanism Design ★★★ ◆◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L22
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👑Level 24 · SHOWDOWN The Final Showdown ★★★ ◆◆◆◆◆ 🧩 Builds on L23
Take the Table
Clear all 24 levels and the four showdowns and you'll be able to do the thing strategic reasoning is actually for: look at a situation with more than one decision-maker in it and work out what happens. You'll find equilibria in simultaneous games and know when there are several, work a tree backwards to see which threats survive contact with self-interest, price the winner's curse into a bid instead of discovering it afterwards, recognise adverse selection and the signals that survive it, and read a set of rules for the behaviour it will actually produce. Then you'll sit opposite an opponent who is doing all of that to you.
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