How would you organize a global Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament?
A friend and I were bantering about how we should organize a RPS tournament, where the LOSER advanced and was ultimately kicked in the bum by the "winner" of the final round, and also given $10 as a pity for being the "greatest loser".
This quickly morphed into daydreams of a global event, culminating in the grand finals at the Mandalay Bay, with coverage by ESPN 12, sponsorship deals, trading cards ("Joe is known for his southpaw stance and shooting from his off-hand which greatly throws off his opponent." and per-year statistics of Win % by rock, paper, and scissors); the whole nine yards.
But it got us thinking... in today's age, would it be difficult to organize a simple RPS tournament GLOBALLY? What technologies would you use? Could you approach it 100% digitally? How would you verify the loser for advancement?
Let's even say someone was willing to put up $20k or even $100k to actually fly winners from each continent or major population region and put them up at the Mandalay Bay (btw - that hotel just came to mind because it was the first to come to mind in Las Vegas) for a 1-day event. Would that change anything?
RPS because the absurdity of it and the zero cost to entry.
We await your thoughts...
My first rule would be you have to bring someone to play against for your first round. If you expect to succeed in this tournament, you must first be willing to defeat someone you know. Someone close to you. Feel your rock crushing down on their scissors. Only then may you move on to face the rest of the competitors.
And I would need it to be face to face. Because I need seventy cameras, catching every angle, with doves flying in the background... Hell, we can release a different type of bird for every matchup or something.
Got me thinking about the old Highlander slogan "There can be only one".
There would need to be a pre-match interview with every player. It can cover the basics like "how are you feeling heading into tonight's matchup?" but MUST always include "what are you throwing tonight?" If you're the second in line, aka the challenger, you might get something more like this: "I just spoke with Dazzlefingers Frank and he told me he's throwing paper against you tonight. How will you respond?"
Then all the number-crunchers start tabulating which players forecast their actual moves, and correlate that to wins/losses. People start analyzing the interview videos for microexpressions, any tells that might give something away early.
Then comes the corruption. Players taking cash under the table in exchange for making certain calls, or throws. The rise of the golden RPSer who just keeps winning, well beyond statistical reason. Everybody whispers he only got that far because somebody wanted him to... but officially he's just really lucky. Or skilled, depending on who you ask, since there's clearly more to this game than random chance. And was there any truth to those rumors of reaction-quickening drugs backstage? Nah, couldn't've been.
Bravo, I need this novel asap.
"You know, we just got to go out and give it everything we have, you know, it's like, I'm just happy to be here playing with others at this level, you know, we just got to follow through and get the "W", you know, that's what this is all about, you know."
“Just gotta get out there and give it 110%.”
There already is a world RPS tournament, with a $10k cash prize. They also host an annual tournament in Vegas.
https://wrpsa.com/rock-paper-scissors-the-fun-game-with-serious-prize-money-up-for-grabs/
This might be the closest asynchronous example to a digital Rock Paper Scissors gauntlet.
https://youtu.be/PmWQmZXYd74
FYI trying not to be spoilers. Whichever result you get, click the link for the result video!
This is really easy if you're okay with doing it actually digitally, rather than trying to do analog RPS over zoom.
Make a website that automatically pairs people, and where every [time period] the contestants log in and submit their play for that round. Plays are hidden until both players have submitted something. If you don't submit one in time, you're considered to have lost (as if you just stood there completely still in a physical tournament while your opponent makes hand motions at you).
This time limit would have to be pretty damn long to allow for the competition to be truly global, though.
24 hours seems reasonable. At the current population of the world, we could be done in 33 days, ignoring ties.
I suspect ties will be a non-negligable increase but yeah I think 24 hours would make it work if you don't mind the contest being long lmao
They become very problematic if two players have a deterministic strategy that is synced, eg they both only throw rock, or they both follow some predictable cycle (rock-paper-rock-paper-etc). The system would have to have a mechanism for dealing with that.
yes I agree.
But, even ten seconds is enough time to select since the computer will only tell you your move and keep the opponents hidden. You select you move and it doesn't need to automatically throw it.
I mean yes but there is no ten second window in which you can guarantee any two players will definitely both be awake at the same time regardless of their locations, so you need a long period of time in which people are able to select their move so that no one is disadvantaged due to their location in the world.
Or, just have to be logged into the tournament at a certain time (e.g. You're notified of your 'time slot' in advance) and your moves for the next hour or so pop up. You might get a few buy slots while it finishes your bracket or something but if everyone was given 10 seconds with another 20 for the next round of matchmaking you'd be able to get through tons of people in an hour.
How do you ensure that the time slot each player is given is fair to all players? Are you artificially limiting matches so that I don't get assigned a timeslot of 4am in my timezone but I can only compete against those in relatively nearby timezones? Or are you running a truly global tournament but inherently disadvantaging a huge proportion of players by not taking where they live into account when assigning them a time slot.
Finally the killer app for blockchain technology!
If you aren't doing one at a time or having an official watch every match, give everybody paper bracelets that they write their name on. When they win, they get the loser's bracelet.
There are organised RPS leagues because, contrary to popular belief, RPS is skill-based which means skilled players do consistently perform better than one choosing random moves. Apparently it's about mind games and predicting what the opponent predicts you will do etc. Don't really get it myself, but it sounds fun.