Market Making Games
Master the art of market making and taking with our interactive trading games
Make Me a Market!
Make markets on Facts and Guesstimates. Improve your market making skills with our Fermi Questions!
Probability Betting Game
Spot mispriced odds in dice, cards, and coin bets to grow your bankroll! Practice probability calculations and Kelly Criterion sizing.
Cards Game
Calculate expected values and trade on the sum of hidden cards. Combine probability, memory, and quick mental math to maximize your bankroll.
Fruit Market Making Game
Make markets on fruit baskets by rapidly computing cross-products and comparing to bid/ask spreads! Your mental math speed determines how many profitable trades you can execute.
Dice and Cards Game
Trade on products of hidden cards and dice! Combine probability, memory, and quick mental math to maximize your bankroll.
Basketball Game
Combine sports dynamics with real-time trading decisions, risk management, and reading information flow.
Market of Cards
Compete with AI traders by quoting bid/ask spreads and trading on theirs - all while inferring their cards and while hidden cards gradually reveal! Master both sides of market making in this multi-player information game.
ETF Challenge
Spot mispricings between an ETF and its underlying stocks, then trade the arbitrage before it closes! Manage price moves, news events, and competing bots to grow your P&L.
Next Card Betting
Predict whether the next card is higher or lower, inside or outside, then size your bets with the Kelly criterion to grow your balance!
Fermi Questions
Break down big estimation problems into simple factors and nail the right order of magnitude! Sharpen the guesstimate skills that power confident market making.
The Marble Olympics
Trade a live simulated marble football final in real time! Quote the product of the two team totals and one-shot side bets to grow your P&L.
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Why market making games matter
Once you've been through the initial stages of interviews, market making games become an important part of the hiring process for numerous trading firms. These games are frequently utilized by interviewers to assess a candidate's intuition, ability to handle stress, mental agility, short-term memory, and their capacity to derive valuable insights from provided information.
To ensure you perform exceptionally well in this vital component of trading interviews, our market making games provide the preparation you need to succeed. Our comprehensive training platform gives you the edge in interview preparation by simulating real market-making scenarios you'll face during the hiring process.
Pro Tips
- Facts & Guesstimates: follow a clear, consistent logic when adjusting your quotes so it's easy to recall them for any follow-up questions.
- Cards Game: scale your stakes to match your bankroll. Ever heard of the Kelly Criterion?
- Market of Cards: is there a smarter way to compute the true expected value (EV) of the table after the first round?
The full guide What market making games are, and how firms use them The two sides of the game, the formats firms run, and what an interviewer is actually scoring while you quote.
What is a market making game?
You can play a market-making game with virtually anyone, anywhere, anytime. Market makers follow market information to determine the price of a given asset. In a very rough sense, you can describe this as “guessing the real price of the asset.” This is exactly what you’ll do during a market-making interview.
The interviewer might ask you to “make a market”—for example, on the number of bikes in Amsterdam. This means you need to quote a bid and an ask based on how many bikes you think are in the city. If you estimate there are at least 500 000 bikes but no more than 2 million, you would make a market from 500 000 to 2 million. If the interviewer believes there are more than 2 million, they will buy from you. You are now one lot short at 2 million, and the interviewer is one lot long.
There are various ways the game can be played, and several paths it can take after the first trade. Most of what circulates about these formats is second-hand: a Reddit thread about a Jane Street round, someone’s recollection of how Citadel ran theirs. Our market making course walks through the formats themselves, and the games on this page let you play them instead of reading about them.
Playing the market making games
Our market making games help you accelerate your interview prep. Normally, you need a counterparty to assist you with your preparation, but this person may not always be available when you are. Explaining the rules to someone new takes time. Our games are ready whenever you are.
There are two ways to play the market-making game:
- From a market maker’s perspective
- From a market taker’s perspective
Market Maker’s Perspective
The classic “Make Me a Market!” game is played from the market maker’s side. You’re asked to quote a bid and an ask for something specific, for example: “Make me a market on the length of the Great Wall of China in meters!” You can use our “Make Me a Market!” simulator to practice. It mirrors real interview dynamics, complete with sudden “news flashes” that force you to adjust your quotes.
Market Taker’s Perspective
In the classic version, the candidate acts as maker and the interviewer as taker. Some firms flip the roles: the interviewer quotes prices, and you respond as the taker. These variants are often probability-based. We also have taker-side games like the Probability Betting Game and Next Card Betting, so you can practice from the market taker’s side as well.
Market of Cards – Be a Market Maker and Market Taker
Market of Cards is a strategic card game that blends market-making and market-taking into a single experience. Designed for multiple players (you plus AI agents), it tests your ability to predict, strategise, and trade wisely with limited information.
In Market of Cards, you switch between the role of a market maker and market taker while working with a standard deck of cards. It features a unique scoring system that assigns different values to red and black cards, and a trading mechanism where players bid and ask based on their cards’ expected values. The game offers endless strategic possibilities.
Whether you need maker drills, taker drills, or a hybrid challenge, the full set sits at the top of this page: Fermi Questions for more quoting practice, and the Cards Game, Fruit Market Making Game, Basketball Game, ETF Challenge and Marble Olympics on the taking side.
Why Trading Firms Use Market Making Games in Their Interview Process
Market making games thrust candidates into scenarios where they must make split-second decisions while balancing risk and reward. In these simulations, there are no perfect answers, only trade-offs. By observing how candidates adjust their bids, manage spreads, or respond to adverse price movements, firms get a window into how they might perform under the relentless pace of actual trading.
Testing Emotional Resilience
Trading is an emotional rollercoaster. The best traders know how to stay calm in the face of unexpected losses or erratic market behavior. Market making games, often presented by a real trader during in-person interviews, simulate these stressors by creating fast-moving, unpredictable conditions that mirror real markets. Candidates must maintain composure, avoid overreaction, and demonstrate mental toughness, all while keeping their strategy intact.
This kind of resilience can’t be assessed by asking, “How do you handle stress?” Watching someone in the hot seat provides far more insight into their temperament.
Assessing Market Intuition
Market intuition—an instinctive understanding of supply-demand dynamics, pricing anomalies, and market sentiment—is often what separates good traders from great ones. Market-making games can reveal whether a candidate has the knack for interpreting signals and adapting to shifting market conditions.
For example, if a candidate tightens their spreads aggressively during low volatility or pulls back quickly in high-risk situations, it may indicate a strong feel for the market’s rhythm. This kind of intuition is notoriously hard to measure on paper or in theoretical interviews.
Encouraging Creativity and Strategic Thinking
Market-making isn’t just about following formulas; it’s a dance between strategy and adaptability. During a market-making game, candidates must develop and adjust their strategies on the fly. Firms can evaluate how innovative their approaches are, whether they anticipate competitors’ moves, and how they manage the trade-off between volume and profitability.