Best of 2014: How to Win at Rock-Paper-Scissors
In April, the first large-scale measurements of the way humans play Rock-Paper-Scissors revealed a hidden pattern of play that opponents can exploit to gain a vital edge.
If you’ve ever played Rock-Paper-Scissors, you’ll have wondered about the strategy that is most likely to beat your opponent. And you’re not alone. Game theorists have long puzzled over this and other similar games in the hope of finding the ultimate approach.
It turns out that the best strategy is to choose your weapon at random. Over the long run, that makes it equally likely that you will win, tie, or lose. This is known as the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium in which every player chooses the three actions with equal probability in each round.
And that’s how the game is usually played. Various small-scale experiments that record the way real people play Rock-Paper-Scissors show that this is indeed the strategy that eventually evolves.
Or so game theorists had thought.