Abstract Many researchers have used simulation to study the cognitive processes that underlie the decision‐making skills of expert athletes. However, we have seen that these studies used an explicit‐memory paradigm that does not uncover the processes responsible for the emergence of decisions made during a game. They have primarily been concerned with describing elementary operations rather than with identifying the nature of the processes involved. We therefore chose a priming paradigm, in an attempt to identify the decision‐making processes implemented during a simulated game. The results showed that the nature of the processing depended on the characteristics of the decision‐making task being considered. When the task required a one‐step decision, low‐level processes were utilized; when it required a series of planned actions, expert players implemented high‐level processes.