How the cards game works
Four face-down decks sit on screen. Each time you pick one, the card shows what you won and sometimes what you lost as well. You are not told how the decks differ, but some pay better than others over time. It looks random at first; there is a pattern to find.
The game is reported to be based on the Iowa Gambling Task, a research task for studying how people learn from wins and losses when they decide under risk.
How to learn the decks
Build up a picture of each deck as you go:
- Try every deck a few times early on, so you have something to compare.
- Keep a rough sense of what each deck has given and taken, not just its last card.
- Judge decks by their average over many draws. One big win or loss says little on its own.
- Once a deck looks worse, draw from it less.
Worked example
Two made-up decks, ten cards from each. Deck 1 pays $100 a card, so ten cards bring $1,000, but along the way it takes $1,250 in losses: you end $250 down. Deck 2 pays $50 a card, so ten cards bring $500, and it takes $250 in losses: you end $250 up.
Deck 1 feels better on most draws because each win is bigger, yet it is the one costing you money. Counting what a deck takes back, and not only what it pays, is what learning from feedback means here.
Tips for the real cards game
- Do not switch decks wildly after one loss. Give each deck enough draws to judge.
- Expect the pattern to take a while to show. Early draws are a poor guide.
- Use a computer or the Pymetrics phone app, not a tablet.
Practise the cards game on CogniPrep
Our Cards game gives you 100 draws from a $2,000 start, from decks A to D. Each draw shows the reward, the penalty and the net change, and your balance stays on screen. The decks pause for about a second and a half after each draw so you can read the result, and there is no clock. The values behind each deck are ours and are hidden while you play; the end screen shows how quickly you learned which decks pay.