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Oh wow that's news to me, I had no idea there was a world competition for this ! Guess i'll have to edit my other comment now :-/ edit: wait something looks od

Oh wow that's news to me, I had no idea there was a world competition for this ! Guess i'll have to edit my other comment now :-/ edit: wait something looks odd at http://www.worldrps.com/ http://www.worldrps.com/ , is it really an internationally recognized competition ?

klenwell 6y ago
It's also apparently a college sport. From one of my favorite Metafilter comments: One chilly night in the fall of 2004, I chanced to find myself upon the streets of Toronto. I represented one half of the august top-rated debate team from a small upstate NY liberal arts school ([cough] named after a man shot by Aaron Burr), recovering from a day in which we had arrived at a debate tournament and discovered, 11 minutes before the commencement of Round 1, that we would be competing using a format heretofore unknown to us. A lot of hemming and hawing ensued, before we ultimately turned to face the task awaiting us, and swaggered to the podium to stare down the fate bearing down on us like a hawk on a rabbit. The night was not kind to us, and by 11PM, we had succeeded in drowning our sorrows in a heretofore unimagined selection of Labatt's higher-gravity options available at the corner pub. Which is when we were wholly taken aback to encounter none other than Syracuse University's internationally ranked (!!) team of rock-paper-scissors players, fresh off their top-32 finish in that year's invitation-only (!!!) tournament. I admit I was skeptical as to the provenance of their accolades, but a quick glance at the large medallions hanging off two team members' necks was enough to assuage any doubts; these were our fellow Upstate New Yorkers, and they had come to win RoShamBo rounds and chew bubblegum, and they were all out of bubblegum. Naturally, we did what any self-respecting half-in-the-bag Americans would do upon meeting so-called champions of the rock-paper-scissors arena on the streets of a foreign nation, and challenged them to a duel on the spot. We proceeded to go a spectacular 0-24 against our fellow countrymen, before realizing that maybe there's more to the metagame than we had previously considered. It's only now, 15 years later, upon reading this description of the algorithm, that I have come to understand the instrument of our demise. https://www.metafilter.com/181225/Iocaine-Powder#7714208 https://www.metafilter.com/181225/Iocaine-Powder#7714208
- pierrebai 6y ago
  RPS in the strictest sense is a totally balanced game which cannot have a winning strategy if played completely logically. Yet, all the RPS algorithm starts from the same premise. The counter-intuitive reason why there can be winning strategy to RPS is that people try to devise winning strategies. Once you deviate from purely randomly choosing RPS, your adversary can try to analyze your past moves to create a model of your strategy and used that model to defeat you. As for us poor humans, we're really bad at choosing randomly, so the best RPS players are very good at picking up what type of players you are. PS: and in any population of players in a tournament, the mere presence of a few that want to have a non-random strategy will win over those without strategy. The strategy-less will just have a random streak of wins and losses no matter who they are facing. Of those with a strategy, the one with the best analysis of their opponent will win.
nogabebop23 6y ago
>> No one has yet dominated Rock Paper Scissors like Tiger Woods dominated golf; no winner of the RPS world championship in Toronto has ever won twice. According to Fox, however, So no one has used math to back up their claims of skill, but one anecdote says "there's totally skill involved"...

klenwell 6y ago

It's also apparently a college sport. From one of my favorite Metafilter comments: One chilly night in the fall of 2004, I chanced to find myself upon the streets of Toronto. I represented one half of the august top-rated debate team from a small upstate NY liberal arts school ([cough] named after a man shot by Aaron Burr), recovering from a day in which we had arrived at a debate tournament and discovered, 11 minutes before the commencement of Round 1, that we would be competing using a format heretofore unknown to us. A lot of hemming and hawing ensued, before we ultimately turned to face the task awaiting us, and swaggered to the podium to stare down the fate bearing down on us like a hawk on a rabbit. The night was not kind to us, and by 11PM, we had succeeded in drowning our sorrows in a heretofore unimagined selection of Labatt's higher-gravity options available at the corner pub. Which is when we were wholly taken aback to encounter none other than Syracuse University's internationally ranked (!!) team of rock-paper-scissors players, fresh off their top-32 finish in that year's invitation-only (!!!) tournament. I admit I was skeptical as to the provenance of their accolades, but a quick glance at the large medallions hanging off two team members' necks was enough to assuage any doubts; these were our fellow Upstate New Yorkers, and they had come to win RoShamBo rounds and chew bubblegum, and they were all out of bubblegum. Naturally, we did what any self-respecting half-in-the-bag Americans would do upon meeting so-called champions of the rock-paper-scissors arena on the streets of a foreign nation, and challenged them to a duel on the spot. We proceeded to go a spectacular 0-24 against our fellow countrymen, before realizing that maybe there's more to the metagame than we had previously considered. It's only now, 15 years later, upon reading this description of the algorithm, that I have come to understand the instrument of our demise. https://www.metafilter.com/181225/Iocaine-Powder#7714208 https://www.metafilter.com/181225/Iocaine-Powder#7714208

pierrebai 6y ago
RPS in the strictest sense is a totally balanced game which cannot have a winning strategy if played completely logically. Yet, all the RPS algorithm starts from the same premise. The counter-intuitive reason why there can be winning strategy to RPS is that people try to devise winning strategies. Once you deviate from purely randomly choosing RPS, your adversary can try to analyze your past moves to create a model of your strategy and used that model to defeat you. As for us poor humans, we're really bad at choosing randomly, so the best RPS players are very good at picking up what type of players you are. PS: and in any population of players in a tournament, the mere presence of a few that want to have a non-random strategy will win over those without strategy. The strategy-less will just have a random streak of wins and losses no matter who they are facing. Of those with a strategy, the one with the best analysis of their opponent will win.

nogabebop23 6y ago

>> No one has yet dominated Rock Paper Scissors like Tiger Woods dominated golf; no winner of the RPS world championship in Toronto has ever won twice. According to Fox, however, So no one has used math to back up their claims of skill, but one anecdote says "there's totally skill involved"...