He designed the physical and online card games Yomi, Flash Duel, Codex, and Puzzle Strike.
Sirlin has been described as a "renowned game theory author" by Forbes magazine,[6] and as an "arcade guru" and "internet-renowned Street Fighter tournament player" by Ars Technica.
A frequent contributor to Gamasutra, he is relatively infamous for his sometimes unpopular opinions towards the way companies choose to enforce rules in their games,[9] as well as for his articles on Playing to Win.
[10] Sirlin's website, Sirlin.net, was profiled in Katie Salen's Rules of Play (2004), which commended the site for its "surprising amount of thoughtful commentary and analysis".
[11] In addition to this, he has published a book called Playing to Win: Becoming The Champion, a book that explores the concept of competitive gaming and the mindset of actively playing to win, also drawing examples from the different kinds of gamers that exist by selectively choosing and analyzing both chess and Street Fighter players.
He has particularly condemned collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering for hiding strategically critical components behind the random distribution of booster packs and popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game League of Legends for its "forced grinding," calling it "fraudulent" and disrespectful to players.
More recently Sirlin has been involved in the design and production of his own games—particularly, a range of tabletop games, most taking place in and featuring characters from the Fantasy Strike fictional universe he created.