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In Optiver's trading interviews — typically from the second round onward, after the 80-in-8 math test — you play a live market-making game: the interviewer asks you to quote a bid and an ask on an uncertain quantity, often the sum of playing cards, and then trades against your prices as cards are revealed. They are checking specific things: that your spread is proportional to your uncertainty, that you update your fair value as each card flips, that you manage the position you accumulate, and that you notice when the person trading with you knows more than you do. Quoting tight to look confident is the classic way to fail it.
This page is a free, original simulation of that format. You sit at a poker-style table where every seat holds two hidden cards and three community cards flip one street at a time. Each street, every seat posts a two-sided market on the total value of all cards in play, and after each quote a short take window opens — the AI traders lift or hit anything mispriced against their own (informed) view, so you experience real adverse selection, not just spread math. The scoring rule changes every hand, so you re-derive fair value from scratch each time.
At settlement the hidden cards flip, every trade is marked against the true total, and you are scored on P&L plus discipline — the same two axes the interviewer is grading. The same format shows up at SIG, IMC, and Flow Traders, so reps here transfer beyond Optiver.
The interviewer asks you to quote a bid and an ask on an uncertain quantity, commonly the sum of cards drawn from a deck. As cards are revealed, you re-quote and the interviewer trades against you. You are judged on whether your spread reflects your uncertainty, how you update fair value, and how you manage your position.
It varies by office and role, but the market-making game typically appears once you reach interviews with traders — usually the second round or later, after the online numerical tests such as the 80-questions-in-8-minutes math test.
Compute the expected value of the cards you cannot see, center your quote there, and set a spread proportional to the remaining variance. Tighten as cards reveal, keep trade sizes small while uncertainty is high, and skew your quote to reduce a position rather than to chase trades.
No. It is an original, free simulation of the generic make-a-market-on-a-card-sum exercise used in trading interviews at firms like Optiver, SIG, IMC, and Flow Traders. The rules, scoring, and AI traders here are QuantVault's own.