Winning Algorithms For Rock, Paper, Scissors 65
Celarent Darii (1561999) writes "The probability of winning at Rock-Paper-Scissors is about 1 in 3. However, people do not play entirely randomly, a study has revealed. People tend to follow hidden patterns that can be used to win more games. A short article on the BBC gives hints on the strategies to be used to get a competitive advantage with your Rock-Scissors-Paper nemesis." Remember, these strategies are for use against people, not robots.
This is useless (Score:2, Funny)
When I play rock, paper, scissors with someone, we just play once unless it's a tie, so there are no patterns.
Re:This is useless (Score:4, Insightful)
This may come as a surprise to you, but you're not the only person in existence.
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This may come as a surprise to you, but you're not the only person in existence.
Thanks, imaginary person, for your imaginary post.
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Telling a Pinocchio? (Score:3)
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When I play rock, paper, scissors with someone, we just play once unless it's a tie, so there are no patterns.
I guess that now that you know there are patterns, you'll play it for hours on end.
Re:This is useless (Score:5, Funny)
When I play rock, paper, scissors with someone, we just play once unless it's a tie, so there are no patterns.
If you play to the death there are no patterns either.
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A robot (Score:2)
Could watch you muscle movements and with sharper reflexes pick the winning option
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Maybe more like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Wait. What? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Because it isn't the case. You win, lose, or tie. Your chances of winning are 1 in 3.
Tie goes to the house.
Re:Wait. What? (Score:5, Funny)
When you play high stakes Rock, Paper, Scissors in a Casino in Las Vegas, the house wins on a tie. That's how they make their money.
Also note that in Las Vegas, they can boot you for life for trying to "play smart", like just happened to Ben Affleck, for allegedly counting cards.
It doesn't seem fair to me . . . if you are good at math, and can count cards, why shouldn't you be able to use your intellectual skills at a game?
Those Las Vegas Casinos are discriminating against geeks. Someone outta sue.
That's way too much of a house edge (Score:2)
When you play high stakes Rock, Paper, Scissors in a Casino in Las Vegas, the house wins on a tie.
Citation needed. The house has far less of an edge in craps, basic strategy blackjack, roulette, or regulated slots.
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Coin-op RPS (Score:2)
I wasn't quite sure if it was a joke. (Damn you Poe's law!) So here's another citation [wikipedia.org].
Now here's what brought it up: A local arcade has a coin-operated RPS machine called Fist Talks, and I wondered if casinos had been installing similar RPS machines that pay out. I know blackjack tables don't take pushes unless both the player and dealer bust, which provides the fundamental house edge in blackjack. Every rule that benefits the player (standing below 17, double down 10 and 11, split A-A and 8-8, increase
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... No.
Counting cards is fairly simple to take away the house edge, if you can count without using your fingers, its easy. You get the best performance counting when you're there from the start of the shoe, but you don't have to wait for a reshuffle to increase your chances by counting.
Its simple hi/lo/zero.
There are extremely complex methods, but they offer no major advantage to using them, arguably none at all beyond the theory that they are better.
Just because you watched some TV special about the chur
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The New York Times made a Rock-Paper-Scissors Flash-based bot [nytimes.com] a few years back. It's essentially exactly what the summary is talking about, since it learns your patterns and will in short order begin winning against you far more than merely 1-in-3 times. Alternatively, if you play the Veteran version of the bot, it has knowledge of all of the patterns from anyone who has ever played it, and it starts off beating you right from the start. If you could smuggle that into the casino, I'd be willing to bet that
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Will they fucking let this go already? (Score:1)
We got it, brains are pattern-based machines at thus have a hard time generating pattern-less random sequences.
Can we now leave this trivial game alone and do some real science please?
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We got it, brains are pattern-based machines at thus have a hard time generating pattern-less random sequences. Can we now leave this trivial game alone and do some real science please?
Exactly. Now as to the algorithmic approaches for winning Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock...
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Play Lizard 100% of the time.
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Oh, no! Someone is doing something that you think is a waste of time!
The horror!
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Does Chinese TV even show The Big Bang Theory?
Well, at least they know about it. [slashdot.org]
The brain evolved... (Score:1)
... to survive, find mates and have kids. Everything else we got is extra. No one should expect the brain to do much more than what it was originally selected to do.
Only most of the time? (Score:2)
Slashdot thinks I type too fast, so they won't take this comment until I wait a while. I can only guess that they want more drivel to fill the white space on the page.
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It's because you are typing too fast, if you had taken the time to follow all the links in TFS, you wouldn't have posted :)
But who RTFAs anyway, right ? :)
Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
Lisa's Brain: Poor predictable Bart. Always takes 'rock'.
Bart's Brain: Good ol' 'rock'. Nothin' beats that!
Bart: Rock!
Lisa: Paper.
Bart: D'oh!
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Well, I don't know.. (Score:3)
Rock!
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Scissors! Oh rats...
Friend of Mine and I Play (Score:3)
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Same here. I'm one step ahead of you. My friend and I play for "who has to go deal with the stupid user"... Last time we played, he said "wow. When you said you always pick rock, you really meant you _always_ pick rock"...
He's not a stupid man... So he could be setting me up anticipating that I will play scissors next so I should pick paper...
Good thing there's no iocane powder involved.
Win-stay lose-switch strategy (Score:2)
The win-stay lose-switch st
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Of course it is. That's how a neural network works.
It's hardly surprising that humans are terrible RNGs. It is, however, a good thing to keep in the back of your mind when in a competitive situation where that is relevant.
Doesn't everybody knows that already? (Score:2)
(obvisouly I did not RTFA.)
When I took Simulations in gradschool 10 years ago, one of our assignment was to train a markov chain to predict the player next move at rock-paper-scissors. Using simply as state "lastmove, lastoutcome" is enough to learn what humans (read the students of the class) do.
Am I missing something? (Score:2)
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that's what people tend to do, not the winning strategy. use the trend to your advantage. for example, if someone just beat your scissor with rock, he will tend to play rock again, so you should play paper next. whereas you might've been half-tempted to play rock also
Down here (Score:1)
Best 2 out of 3 (Score:2)
Next time I play, I'll suggest playing best 2 out of 3 so as to be able to use this tactic.
Maybe... (Score:1)
Not truly random (Score:2)
When players won a round, they tended to repeat their winning rock, paper or scissors more often than would be expected at random (one in three).
If it was truly random then anything could happen, including a game where the opponent only chooses scissors the entire time.
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Ouch. Muphry's law (not a typo - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]) strikes again.
There are 3 equally possible outcomes: win, tie (same choice), lose.
Did they consult Dr. Sheldon Cooper? (Score:1)