Source: Huntstock.com/Shutterstock “No washing dishes for me tonight,' I said after I beat my sister at a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS). I was 10, and RPS was our “go to” game of fate to decide all kinds of issues. Little did I know that RPS was not a game of chance, but a strategic system with a strong psychological foundation. RPS probably dates back to the Han Dynasty in China (206 BC – 220AD). The game, known as “sansukumi-ken” in Japan ( hand, three-way, deadlock), has used fingers and hands to represent a variety of different symbols in addition to rock, paper, and scissors, including slugs, poisonous centipedes, frogs, and hunters. By the 20th century, RPS had spread to the west. English names such as roshambo, ick-ack-ock, ching-chang-walla, or stone-paper-scissors have also been used.
RPS is technically a zero-sum hand game (meaning one person’s loss is exactly equal to another person’s gain) played between two people in which each player simultaneously creates one of three shapes with their hand. The shapes are “rock” (a fist), “paper” (a flat hand), and “scissors” (a fist with the index and middle fingers forming a V). Source: Neil Farber There are four possible outcomes: 1) tie; 2) rock crushes scissors; 3) paper covers rock; 4) scissors cut paper. (For those looking for an in-depth discussion of RPS, check out The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide by Douglas Walker and Graham Walker. Several of the strategies are based on this book and those found at the World RPS Society Website —yes, there is a.) Many people (including me) may have thought that RPS was similar to flipping coins or throwing dice—a useful method to choose something at random. However, there’s far more to the game than meets the eye.
RPS involves observation,, manipulation,, strategy, and skill. And some of that skill involves exploiting your opponent’s non-random behavior. If people were truly playing RPS in random fashion, it would be impossible to employ any strategy. You would do best to just choose your weapon at random. Eventually, you would have an equal likelihood of winning, losing, or tying. Several small-scale experiments have confirmed this strategy—where every player chooses the three actions with equal probability in each round—often seems to be in effect. Source: Neil Farber Then a at Zhejiang University suggested that RPS is actually a game of psychology more than chance, thus making it possible to exploit your opponent’s predictable patterns.
May 2, 2014 - Mathematicians have found a strategy that may give players of rock-paper-scissors a winning edge. Rock Paper Scissors (“RPS”) is one of the premier film and commercials editing companies in the world. Founded by Angus Wall and Executive Producer, Linda.