Rock Paper Scissors - A Study

Rock Paper Scissors, for those who don't know, is a simple game of mixed origins. It is usually played with two people, who with their hands behind their back will count down from three and bring out a hand in the shape of either a rock, a sheet of paper, or a pair of scissors. Scissors beats Paper, Paper beats Rock, Rock beats Scissors. In the event of a tie (players bringing forth the same shape) they play again.

In Key Quest, players can get the delightful opportunity to play Rock Paper Scissors when their token lands on a space already occupied by another player's token. Alternatively, the Battle Dice power-up can be used to begin an RPS duel with any player on the board.

So why don't those guides have anything good to say about RPS? Because it's random, right? Because there's an equal chance of you winning something nice from the duel as there is of your opponent winning something nice, and it's usually better to keep things as they are than risk somebody getting ahead in the game.

Actually, it is not random.

No, we aren't talking probability. We are talking psychology. Do you have a whimsical attachment to one of the three choices in particular, or some other non-scientific method of deciding whether to pick Rock, Paper, or Scissors? Perhaps you tend to go for Rock, because it's on the left and you are left-handed. Or maybe you choose Paper because it's the most like you, since you spend a lot of time drawing or reading.

People – you and me – do this sort of thing a lot. It's human nature. That, along with a tangling rhododendron of superstition, is why we have 'lucky numbers' and other things along those lines. There has been major research done on which numbers people decide are 'their' lucky number, and the results were nowhere near being an equal spread. People think alike.

I still don't know much about the relationship between people themselves and which they choose in a game of RPS. But I am certain that there is something there. When I found myself wondering about this, I looked it up. I discovered, for starters, that there are actual Rock Paper Scissors championships out there (who'd have thought it?). I also found talk of women being more likely to go for Scissors, for whatever reason, while men may be more likely to choose Rock.

Well, I thought, I have the beginnings of a study already: I'm a woman and I have always chosen Scissors, though all the while knowing that there was no sensible reason for it. The only thing I did know was that when I stick to my choice every time, I feel less annoyed with myself when I lose.

So back to Key Quest. I decided I was not going to pick and choose who to play by checking each player's gender beforehand. All I wanted to know was whether using one or another choice every time could actually give me better results. I had felt I was winning more than fifty percent of the time while using Scissors, but I know it is ridiculously easy to get a misinformed hunch about these things. (Have you ever decided to work on obtaining a particular avatar, and then started seeing other people using it all the time? This isn't life taunting you. They were probably there in the same numbers before; you just didn't notice as much.)

So I started to write things down. Ten games of RPS for each, I decided, would be a start. Ten wouldn't hold up as any kind of proof, but any more and I would grow bored before I'd gotten anywhere in my research.

Factors that might be offsetting my results in some way:

• My games of Key Quest took place any time from 00:00 to 10:00 NST. Most likely between 01:00 and 07:00.
• During October, 2009.
• Almost all games took place on the Ti-Key board.
• Five Key games only.

I'm fairly certain I did not face the same person more than once. Also, during these first results, when there was a tie I would just keep using the same choice.

Ten Games With Rock:

• Wins: 3
• Losses: 3
• Tie and Wins: 0
• Tie and Losses: 4

Ten Games With Paper:

• Wins: 2
• Losses: 4
• Tie and Wins: 4
• Tie and Losses: 0

Ten Games With Scissors:

• Wins: 7
• Losses: 2
• Tie and Wins: 0
• Tie and Losses: 1

You can bet the Scissors results had me hopeful. But what was most interesting were the tie results for Rock and Paper. Could this mean the mentality that would pick Rock or Paper was the same mentality that would waver and go for a different one given the chance? Or did it mean they were the sort of people who would try to guess how their opponent's brain was working and aim their own choice to catch them out? If so, the Rock people were far better at it.

So the next step, I decided, was to see if there was anything at all in those strange tie results. I would do Rock and Paper again, this time switching to Scissors whenever there was a tie. This should reverse both tie results, giving me more wins with Rock and less with Paper.

Below were my results (October to November).

Ten More Games With Rock:

• Wins: 2
• Losses: 4
• Tie and Wins: 1
• Tie and Losses: 3

Ten More Games With Paper:

• Wins: 3
• Losses: 2
• Tie and Wins: 3
• Tie and Losses: 2

I don't think it worked, do you? The tie results are more spread out than they were previously, but I wouldn't say there's a significant difference.

Time to return to my original intent: to discover if one was generally better than another to use. I needed more than ten each.

It took a while, but I finally had my full results:

Factors that might be offsetting my results in some way:

• My games of Key Quest took place any time from 00:00 to 10:00 NST. Most likely between 01:00 and 07:00.
• During October, 2009, to January, 2010.
• Almost all games took place on the Ti-Key board.
• Five Key games only.

50 Games With Rock (including previous 20):

• Wins: 13
• Losses: 18
• Tie and Wins: 9
• Tie and Losses: 10

50 Games With Paper (including previous 20):

• Wins: 18
• Losses: 15
• Tie and Wins: 7
• Tie and Losses: 10

50 Games With Scissors (including previous 10):

• Wins: 26
• Losses: 10
• Tie and Wins: 6
• Tie and Losses: 8

And now let's condense that and make some percentages:

Rock:

• Overall Wins: 22 (44%)
• Overall Losses: 28 (46%)

Paper:

• Overall Wins: 25 (50%)
• Overall Losses: 25 (50%)

Scissors:

• Overall Wins: 32 (64%)
• Overall Losses: 18 (36%)

Well. I don't know about you, but I will be sticking with Scissors.