the prisoner’s dilemma

In 1950 two researchers at RAND, Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher, devised a game to model conflict and trust, and Albert Tucker later gave it its prison story. Two players choose at the same time whether to cooperate or defect. Whatever the other does, defecting pays you more in that round; but if both defect, both do worse than if both had cooperated. Here you play ten rounds against a computer opponent whose strategy is drawn at random and hidden until the end. You see its move only after you have made yours.