You’re On!!!

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Cut on Dotted Line

At last!  From the World RPS Society, a comprehensive strategery and guide to champion-level Rock, Paper, Scissors.  Memorize these few simple steps and you’ll be sure to win at RPS with every throw-down.  With this handy guide, people will think you’re a Rock, Paper, Scissors savant.  You’ll want to immediately cut out this guide to study at great length.

Just think!  You’ll be able to best your three-year old and leave him crying, No Fair!, especially when you mix it up with the very clever and confounding Spock & Roll.  Of course, you’ll be disqualified, but at least you’ll go out fighting.

If this is your first RPS game, you’ll want to remember these easy tactics:  (1) If you’re playing with a guy, they usually throw out a rock on the first toss because guys always go for the heavy lift, so counter them with a delicate paper, which serves to madden and confuse them right off the bat;  (2) Paper is thrown least often, so use it as a surprise weapon; (3) Inexperienced RPS players subconsciously tend to repeat the item that previously won; and (4) A double rock is rare and should not be feared … especially after the first unsuccessful attempt by your opponent.

Obviously, there is some psychology that can be used to foresee predictable moves.  But that would seem to work only at the most basic level. Once it gets beyond that — a situation in which both competitors fully understand the basic psychology and predictability — it seems it would get pretty random again. Once both players are that deep into the logic chain (i.e., He would do X here, so I’ll do Y, but of course he knows that I know that, so he’ll instead do Z), then basically it’s just back to a matter of chance.

Just to be clear on what I mean by “it gets back to being a matter of chance” … when the logic chain on a given play is so lengthy (indeed infinite), then it’s really just a matter of which step in the chain each player chooses to stop.  One happens to stop at step 6 (“he knows that I know that he knows that I know that he knows”), the other at step 4 (“he knows that I know that he knows”), and thus, the outcome becomes random.

Finally, if you see that your opponent is gaining the upper “hand” (so to speak),  simply throw down a surprise “Dynamite” which is even more illegal than the Spock & Roll and sure to move the competition into a grim and fearsome match of Thumb Wars.

Good luck and good playing!