Breaking down Rock-Paper-Scissor-jack

  • In this paragraph, I will examine the seemingly simplest game in the world that almost every human being knows how to play: Rock Paper Scissor. Although it is not monetized by any specific company, it is worthwhile to look into how the simple rules not only have fun AND practical values, and how people have been voluntarily teaching this specific set of rules to later generations since 206BC. It is also important to our game, since our game built on top of Rock-Paper-Scissor, and create more complicated rules to form “sets” that would reward players with points, and allow a pair of “rocks” to beat a set of 3 of “scissors”.
  • There is almost 0 make-believe or narrative, but just a simple challenge: Can you guess what hand the other player is going to play in the next round, and beat that other player and win? The outcome of the game is fast and easy to determine, and thus offers practical values when people need to make a decision.
  • What I find most interesting is the fact that people always attempt to find a pattern to their opponents next-hand by using information on what their previous hands were. For example, if I played scissor this round, my opponent would be subconsciously influenced by the fact that he wants to “beat my hand”, and would have a more than 50% probability of using a “rock” in the next round, of which I can take advantage of. There is a similar concept applied to our game during the “passing” phase. On the surface the extra “scissor” seems like a gift, however, since the information of the card is public, everybody on the table knows that the person being passed the card now has a higher probability of having a full set of 3 “scissors”, and will launch an attack whenever they can. I believe these attempts to find patterns within the game and use these psychological tricks to your advantage has a major influence on the “Challenge” aspect of rock-paper-scissor, and would create always-evolving strategies based on the player you are playing. Because at the end of the day, Rock-Paper-Scissor is about the players playing, not the rules themselves.

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