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by One Sentance Cork on November 8th, 2005

One Sentance Cork

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What is the origin of the "rock, paper, scissors" game?

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  • by snowflake1556 on November 11th, 2005

    snowflake1556

    Rock, Paper, Scissors

    Rock, Paper, Scissors chartRock, Paper, Scissors (sometimes with the elements in its name permuted and/or Rock replaced with Stone and/or Paper with Cloth, but also known as Roshambo, Rochambeau, Row-Sham-Bow, Ick-Ack-Ock, Janken, Mora, Morra Cinese, Gawi-Bawi-Bo, JanKenPon, Ca-Chi-Pun, Farkle, Ken Ken Pa, or Kai Bai Bo) is a popular hand game most often played by children. It is often used in a similar way to coin flipping, Odd or Even, throwing dice or drawing straws to randomly select a person for some purpose, though unlike truly random selections it can be played with skill if the game extends over many sessions, because one can often recognize and exploit the non-random behavior of an opponent.

    Various sports, including ultimate frisbee and university debating, may use Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine which team gets the opening play (rather than a coin toss). Similarly, uncertain calls, or even the whole game in case of rain, may be decided by the game. It is also often used as a method for creating appropriately biased random results in live action role-playing games, as it requires no equipment.


    Game play

    Each of the three basic hand-signs (from left to right: rock, paper and scissors) beats one of the other two.
    Two players each make a fist. They count together "1 ... 2 ... 3 ... Go!", "Rock ... Paper ... Scissors ... Shoot!", "Rock ... Paper ... Scissors!", or "Ro ... Sham ... Bo!" while simultaneously bouncing their fists. On "Shoot", "Go", or "Scissors", each player simultaneously changes their fist into one of three hands (or weapons):

    Rock (or Stone): a clenched fist.
    Paper (or Cloth): all fingers extended, palm facing downwards, upwards, or sideways (thumb pointing to the sky).
    Scissors: forefinger and middle finger extended and separated into a "V" shape.
    The objective is to defeat the opponent by selecting a weapon which defeats their choice under the following rules:

    Rock blunts Scissors (rock wins)
    Scissors cuts Paper (scissors win)
    Paper covers Rock (paper wins)
    If players choose the same weapon, the game is a tie and is played again.

    Often times, the short game is repeated many times so that the person who wins two out of three or three out of five times wins the entire game.

    Australians often play the game as "scissors, paper, rock!" or "paper, scissors, rock!", with emphasis placed on the word "rock", or as "hammer, scissors, paper!", with similar emphasis. The throw is made on the final word (either rock or paper) so that players only have two calls to synchronize the play.

    Due to the influence of the Japanese-Brazilians, Brazilians prime the game as "jan ... ken ... po!", with emphasis placed on the "po". The throw is made as "po" is called, so that as with the Australian variation, only two calls are made before the play.

    In Taiwan, there is commonly no priming. Both players simultaneously throw the hands after a count of three, with no hand-bouncing. This is often confusing to visitors—seeing that the fist-bouncing can be interpreted as rock, most Taiwanese start with paper when playing foreigners.


    Strategies
    Strategy between human players obviously involves using psychology to attempt to predict or influence opponent behavior. It is considered acceptable to use deceptive speech ("Good old Rock, nothing beats that!") to influence your opponent.

    Mathematically optimal play (according to game theory) is a simple matter of selecting randomly, and so the game may be considered trivial in that sense when played in a way that eliminates psychology, as with a computer. But "optimal" in this sense means only "incapable of being defeated more than expected by chance", while it does not imply that the random strategy is best at taking advantage of a suboptimal opponent. In fact, if the opponent is human or a non-random program, it is almost certain that he plays suboptimally and that a modified strategy can exploit that weakness. This is easily demonstrated by Roshambot, a computer program that easily defeats some human players (as does its author Perry Friedman, who won an $800 competition against seven opponents including former world poker champion Phil Hellmuth in August 2001). Poker player Darse Billings of the University of Alberta organizes a computer Roshambo competition to explore these possibilities, and their application to computer game play in other fields (notably poker, in which exploiting an opponent's non-random behavior is an important part of strategy).

    One high-profile strategic opinion came in 2005 from Alice Maclean, age 11. When rival auction houses Christie's and Sotheby's agreed to play rock-paper-scissors to determine the rights to a highly valuable art collection, Maclean's father Nicholas, a Christie's employee, asked her for advice. As later told to reporters, her strategy was summed up thus: "Everybody knows you always start with scissors. Rock is way too obvious, and scissors beats paper."


    Cheating
    One of the first tricks learned by a Roshambo novice is to hold back a throw of paper until the last possible moment to dupe an opponent into believing that you may actually be throwing a rock. This allows you the extra few milliseconds for fine-tuning your approach and delivery. Both paper and scissors also have this ability; however, unless you are employing a "double-back" strategy, cloaking a paper throw is likely to draw an instinctive paper from your opponent.

    The opening ritual before the actual throws are made ("1 ... 2 ... 3 ... Go!"), called "priming", is intended to get both players in sync so as to ensure simultaneous delivery of throws. This can be used to an advantage when two players are meeting for the first time, since it is often unclear as to what the priming speed will be. The tendency is to default to the priming speed of the faster player. This allows the faster priming player the luxury of dictating the flow of play and causes their opponent to dedicate more energy to "catching the prime" rather than concentrating on delivering an effective throw.

    I got the above from http://www.answers.com/rock%2C%20paper%2C%20scissor

    Comments

    • For greater madness, see <http://www.umop.com/rps15.htm> & <http://www.umop.com/rps25.htm>

      Anonymous

      by Anonymous on November 11th, 2005

    • I still want to know where this game comes from!

      pinkpanther212121

      by pinkpanther212121 on November 12th, 2005

    • it doesn't really tell you how this game came about, it just tells you how when it is used.

      Marisol Hernandez

      by Marisol Hernandez on November 16th, 2005

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