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Vertasium has a great video talking how Tit-for-Tat (Copycat) wins as a strategy (and how there was a math competition that proved it as well)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM

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This seems like a nice rebuild of the math competition performed years ago (as talked about in the video link above).

Direct link to that part of the video: https://youtu.be/mScpHTIi-kM?si=yzZxyeYw4cJA-i37&t=583

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Tit-for-Tat with occasional Forgiveness and occasional Defection (abuse of trust) often performs better than pure Tit-For-Tat, especially in the presence of random error. Tit-For-Tat falls into "permanent mutual Defection" tar-pit when playing against a Tit-for-Tat-like opponent that Defects once (perhaps in error) and is non-Forgiving.

Humans are pretty good at repeated-game theory, intuitively.

The ncase.me game goes into the forgiveness part

The success of tit-for-tat is a common misunderstanding; it is only the most successful within the makeup of Axelrod's tournament. The OP explains that the strategy is entirely dependent on the environment, and tit-for-tat may not always be the optimal strategy.

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