Spend time at Two Sigma and you’ll find scenes that might seem out of place at a financial firm: researchers hunched over backgammon boards, engineers debating chess positions over lunch, a group dissecting the expected value of a poker hand.
But look closer and these things aren’t out of place at all.
There’s a Link Between Games and What We Do
We’ve been playing games for a long time here. Twenty-five years, to be exact. Not because gameplay is a job requirement, but because it’s what happens naturally when people who can’t let a good problem go to waste come together under the same roof. Our yearly (and often more frequent) tournaments have grown organically from how we operate: gravitating toward a challenge and questioning the reasoning behind a solution as much as we pursue the outcome itself.
Games actually strengthen the same mental muscles and processes we use to solve the toughest challenges in finance. The skills required to analyze game theory and work through complex puzzles are the same skills that drive strong quantitative research. Both demand formulating hypotheses, testing against evidence, adapting when data contradicts assumptions, and staying humble.
And who doesn’t love some friendly competition?
A Few of Our Favorites, in No Particular Order
Poker is perhaps the closest analog to investment decision-making. You’re working with incomplete information, estimating probabilities, managing risk, and distinguishing between good decisions and good outcomes. A brilliant play can still lose to variance. Learning to evaluate your process rather than just your results is a skill that serves quantitative researchers—and plenty of other roles—well.
Backgammon adds another layer: the dice introduce irreducible randomness, forcing players to think in distributions rather than deterministic outcomes. You can’t control what you roll, but you can position yourself to capitalize on favorable outcomes and limit downside when luck runs cold.
Chess removes randomness entirely, making it a pure test of calculation and pattern recognition. The game rewards deep preparation and the ability to think several moves ahead while staying adaptable when your opponent surprises you. That balance closely mirrors how we approach technological innovation.
Connect 6 isn’t as well-known, but has a dedicated following here. Played on a Go board, each player places two stones per turn, aiming to get six in a row. Its obscurity is part of the appeal. There’s less established theory to draw on, so players must develop their own frameworks through observation and experimentation.
A Place for Problem-Solvers
Our poker tournaments have been running for more than two decades and have just made their post-pandemic return to in-person tables. Backgammon and chess competitions have become long-standing traditions in their own right and newer additions like Connect 6 have been a part of the mix since 2012.
We’re not suggesting backgammon proficiency is a resume qualification or that poker rankings predict research output, but observing how people spend their free time often reveals something real about how they think. The mental habits that make someone formidable at the game table are often the same ones that drive rigorous research: patience with complexity, comfort with uncertainty, and a refusal to stop at the first plausible answer.
So, if you’ve ever lost track of time analyzing a position, or stayed up too late thinking through your next move, you might already think the way we do.
Jump over to Careers to learn more about joining us.