My opponent and I faced each other across the white lines, separated by an arm's length in the dark, smoky bar. He planted his feet firmly, shoulder-width apart, while I fell into a fighting stance, right foot forward -- a natural response from years of taekwondo. The referee stood between us. The crowd looked on expectantly.
The rules were deceptively simple -- rules that people all over the world grasp as young children.
Paper covers rock. Rock crushes scissors. Scissors cut paper.
But like the game Othello, another childhood favorite, Rock Paper Scissors takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.
Rock Paper Scissors has gained a cult following in much of the English-speaking world over the last few years. The World Rock Paper Scissors Society, based in Toronto, says that its history dates to London in the mid-1800s and that its membership has grown to 2,300 from five since its Web site, www.worldrps.com, first appeared in 1995.
Word of mouth generated by the Web site, and by the world championships that the society has sponsored since 2002, have led to a spread of formal and impromptu tournaments in bars, fraternity houses, homes and high schools. A bar in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for example, held a tournament on Aug. 15 that drew 40 competitors. A tournament held for the past two years at the Roshambo Winery in Healdsburg, California, has attracted hundreds of spectators and competitors.
The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide, by the brothers Douglas and Graham Walker, the society's directors, will be published next month by Fireside Books, and Rock Paper Scissors: The Movie, a documentary about the world championships in Toronto last year, is to be released in January.
When I decided to compete in a local tournament and started training, some of my friends scoffed at the idea that the game could involve strategy. But this was not the Rock Paper Scissors of the playground, a hurried competition to see which team got the ball first, or even of the fraternity, to see who would go and buy the beer. This was tournament-style Rock Paper Scissors, in which the stakes are high, and expert players do well over time only because of skill and hard work.
There were 128 of us competing for the top three places in the DC National Rock Paper Scissors Tournament at DC9, a Washington bar. The first prize was US$1,000 and an XM satellite radio, a significant haul -- although modest compared with the US$31,000 BMW that was awarded at a tournament in Vail, Colorado, last April, or the 1 million shekels (about US$220,000) that a 13-year-old boy won by beating 700 other competitors in an Israeli tournament on Aug. 5.
Advice came to me from all directions. An office-mate offered wisdom gleaned from his days at the frat house: "The key is to throw scissors early and often." Aaron Hoffman, a math graduate student at Brown University, suggested that I counter the risk of overthinking my throws with a seemingly random sequence of numbers. "You could memorize the digits of pi in base 3," he said. "Zero is rock, one is scissors and two is paper." Sure I could.
I called experienced players to ask for tips, and learned about the common tells that can reveal an impending throw. For example, many people will open up paper early. I was told that most people have a go-to throw, reflective of their character, when they are caught off guard. Paper, considered a refined, even passive, throw, is apparently favored by literary types and journalists; I found I was no exception.
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