game 5 of 16 · measures learning
Iowa Gambling Task
Inside TELLS it's “The Decks” — four decks — some kind, some cruel. Draw, learn which ones pay, and ditch the bad ones.
part of the full 16-game test · about 12 minutes
What the Iowa Gambling Task is
Four decks of cards. Some pay reliably; some pay big and then rob you. You draw 18 times and your job is to figure out — from wins and losses alone — which decks deserve your money. Bechara and Damasio introduced the Iowa Gambling Task in 1994 to study decision-making, and it became famous for showing that your behavior often learns the bad decks before you can explain why.
What it measures
TELLS watches how many draws you waste on punishing decks after the evidence is in. Ditching them fast is adaptive learning — you update on pain. Going back to a deck that's already robbed you twice is the tell of someone who decides how the world works once, then stops listening.
Once you've decided how it works, you stop updating.
You change course — but you need to feel the burn first.
You spot the pattern fast and ditch what isn't paying.
Why hiring assessments use it
The IGT pattern (learning from feedback under uncertainty) is exactly what hiring platforms mean by their 'learning' factor. It separates people who adapt from people who double down, using nothing but card draws.
TELLS is an independent project — not affiliated with pymetrics, Harver, or any employer's assessment. This is the fun version.
Archetypes this game exposes
The learning axis is load-bearing for these three.
See what your play says about you
This game is 1 of 16. Play them all and the engine reads you onto 1 of 18 archetypes — free, sharable, no account.
Find my archetype