Strategy, Not Payoffs: A Behavioural Embedding of Normal-Form Games

arXiv:2607.27536v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Learning a strategic task changes more than what is directly taught: fine-tuning on one game can either enhance or degrade an agent's ability to reason in another. Understanding and predicting this transfer of strategic capabilities, however, remains a key challenge for large language models (LLMs). Normal-form games provide an ideal testbed for analyzing this phenomenon, as they feature explicitly defined payoffs and well-characterized equilibrium behaviours. In this work, we investigate whether game embeddings can explain and predict changes in LLM strategic capabilities following fine-tuning across different games. We propose a lightweight two-feature embedding that captures fundamental behavioural demands: the entropy of the Nash equilibrium and the sensitivity of optimal responses to an opponent's action. We show that while existing published structural embeddings primarily memorize game identities and fail to generalize, our behavioural embedding reliably predicts performance changes on held-out games. These results demonstrate that the transfer of strategic capabilities in LLMs is not dictated by the payoff geometry of a game, but by the underlying structure of the decision-making behaviour it requires.

Abstract:Learning a strategic task changes more than what is directly taught: fine-tuning on one game can either enhance or degrade an agent's ability to reason in another. Understanding and predicting this transfer of strategic capabilities, however, remains a key challenge for large language models (LLMs). Normal-form games provide an ideal testbed for analyzing this phenomenon, as they feature explicitly defined payoffs and well-characterized equilibrium behaviours. In this work, we investigate whether game embeddings can explain and predict changes in LLM strategic capabilities following fine-tuning across different games. We propose a lightweight two-feature embedding that captures fundamental behavioural demands: the entropy of the Nash equilibrium and the sensitivity of optimal responses to an opponent's action. We show that while existing published structural embeddings primarily memorize game identities and fail to generalize, our behavioural embedding reliably predicts performance changes on held-out games. These results demonstrate that the transfer of strategic capabilities in LLMs is not dictated by the payoff geometry of a game, but by the underlying structure of the decision-making behaviour it requires.

Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Machine Learning (cs.LG); Multiagent Systems (cs.MA)

arXiv:2607.27536 [cs.GT]

(or arXiv:2607.27536v1 [cs.GT] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.27536 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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Strategy, Not Payoffs: A Behavioural Embedding of Normal-Form Games

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