Can You Beat a Computer At Rock-Paper-Scissors?

tekgoblin writes "The New York Times has created a game that uses artificial intelligence to outsmart you. It uses a simple game called Rock-Paper-Scissors which is pretty much known by everyone on the planet by now. The computer tries to mimic human reasoning by building on simple rules and statistical averages. So based on the rules of the game and your previous moves, the computer tries to make predictions on your next move. The game has 2 modes, the first being Novice, where the computer learns the game from scratch, and Veteran, where the computer has experience of over 200,000 rounds of previous experience."

Re:The Princess Bride

[martyros]

The game was entirely random, but Westley won by cheating, he poisoned both cups.

He wasn't cheating -- he never said only one was poisoned. He asked, "Where is the poison? The game ends when you choose and we both drink."

If Vencini wasn't so full of himself, he might have reasoned that there were four possibilities:

• Poison in the cup in front of me
• Poison in the cup in front of the masked man
• Poison in neither cup
• Poison in both.

Once you realize that, you can reason about it. Poison in neither cup would be compeltely pointless -- we both drink, and then we're in the same position we were before. Poison in one of the cups? Very risky. Essentially random, with a 50% chance of him dying. At any rate, it's certainly only a game of chance, not a game of wits. Poison in both cups? Seems pretty crazy -- then we both die. Ah -- but do we both die? What if he has an immunity or an antidote? Then if I fall for his trick, it's 100% -- I die no matter what I pick, and he lives. No, you bastard -- the poison is in both cups; I'm not drinking. I win the battle of wits by not falling for your trick.