Is there a legitimate strategy to Rock Paper Scissors?
In: Mathematics
I always play 2 out of 3. I actually look people in the eye and tell them what I am going to choose. Then I do it. Then I tell them again and depending on what happened the first time I may or may not throw what I told them. Really ups the mind game.
[removed]
yeah it’s a mind game but I usually win if I go w rock every time until my opponent thinks I am going with rock and then I change it to scissors. To me it’s about baiting some outcome and going w what beats it [Better In depth strategy here though ](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gvym4x/game-theory-rock-paper-scissors)
Against a truly random opponent? No.
Against a human? Yes. Because humans lean towards choices based on which one appears stronger (rock appears stronger, I will play rock first), based on previous decisions (I played paper a few times in a row, I’d better play rock now), or based on an opponent’s previous decisions (he just played rock, I’ll bet he plays rock again). If you take advantage of these, you can do better than 50%.
If your opponent’s selection is purely random, then no. If you have some way of predicting the choice (based on your knowledge of that person, tells, etc.) then yes, you can try to predict what he will do and make the appropriate choice to counter it. It helps that people are generally quite bad at behaving randomly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can predict what they will do.
Sort of.
Depends on the set up.
If it’s a one-off, just pick paper. People pick rock on their first try more than 30% of the time, so paper has better odds of winning than anything else.
In a 2/3 or more; start with paper, but then it becomes a mind game.
There is a slightplly-better-than-even chance that our opponent will react by throwing whatever *would* have won last round.
So if paper won last round, they will (slightly better than even odds) choose paper. So your second choice should be scissors.
Repeat as needed.
Studies have shown that when someone wins at RPS, they are most likely to keep the same pick again, and if they lose, they are most likely to move to the next choice in the line (rock->paper->scissors->rock).
Once you win, you can substantially increase your chances of subsequent wins by moving BACKWARDS through the line to counter your opponent’s moving forwards. You can pretty reliably beat regular opponents with this technique but you have to practice to do it without pausing in between matches (or your opponent will have time to analyze and may second-guess their pick).
In competitive RPS, most people know about that and it goes back to calling bluffs.
I know how to let you win once against any person. It’s not math though. For some reason we associate scissors and red, so before you play bring the red into the conversation, using more R and S letters you can in the sentences. The most used method is: “do you have a red t-shirt on?” If you don’t let him understand it’s a trick, he’ll pick scissors the first time (80% prob)
Latest Answers