Why Do LLMs Struggle in Strategic Play? Broken Links Between Observations, Beliefs, and Actions

arXiv:2605.00226 · cs.CL, cs.AI, cs.GT · Submitted 2026-04-30 · Read on arXiv

cs.CL, cs.AI, cs.GT

Submitted: 2026-04-30

Updated: 2026-09-17

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Accuracy — 17× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Steering — 15× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Interpretability — 8× in this paper · explained in 15 episodes
• Nash Equilibrium — 8× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Transformer — 6× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing — 5× in this paper
• Mechanistic interpretability — 5× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Bayesian Coherence Coefficient — 4× in this paper
• Consistency — 4× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Activation Steering — 3× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Alignment — 3× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Cooperation — 3× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Large Language Models (LLMs) — 3× in this paper · explained in 6 episodes
• Linear probe — 3× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Adam — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Benchmark — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Decode — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Multi-hop Reasoning — 2× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• World Model — 2× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Action Bias — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Action Space — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Agent Architectures — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Bayesian Framework — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Calibration — 1× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Core — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Embeddings — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Failure Modes — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Foundation Model — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Foundation Models — 1× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Generalization — 1× in this paper · explained in 13 episodes
• Generative AI — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Latent Space — 1× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Positional Bias — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Principal Component Analysis (PCA) — 1× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Self-consistency — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Sycophancy — 1× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes

Sources

• Demonstrating specification gaming in reasoning models
• TextArena
• The Llama 3 Herd of Models
• Qwen3 Technical Report
• gpt-oss-120b & gpt-oss-20b Model Card
• Do LLMs Strategically Reveal, Conceal, and Infer Information? A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis in The Chameleon Game
• Layer by Layer: Uncovering Hidden Representations in Language Models
• Locating and Editing Factual Associations in GPT
• The Bias is in the Details: An Assessment of Cognitive Bias in LLMs
• Steering Language Models With Activation Engineering
• Is GPT-OSS Good? A Comprehensive Evaluation of OpenAI's Latest Open Source Models

Related papers

• Exploring Solution Divergence and Its Effect on Large Language Model Problem Solving
• Ishigaki-IDS-Bench: A Benchmark for Generating Information Delivery Specification from BIM Information Requirements
• Subliminal Steering: Stronger Encoding of Hidden Signals
• MedStruct-S: A Benchmark for Key Discovery, Key-Conditioned QA and Semi-Structured Extraction from OCR Clinical Reports
• The End of Transformers? On Challenging Attention and the Rise of Sub-Quadratic Architectures
• Untangling the Mechanisms of Misleading Context in Medical Question Answering