How To Win (Almost Always) At Rock-Paper-Scissors

Rock-Paper-Scissors is the perfect way to decide who's making dinner, picking up the tab, driving the kids to school or washing the dishes.

It is also a highly unpredictable and  easy game to play. The rules are simple; paper covers rock, scissors cuts paper and rock beats scissors.

Researchers at Zhejiang University may have it all figured out.

This is how to win at rock-paper-scissors all the time. Well, almost all the time.

The only problem with this plan is figuring out what choice your opponent is going to go with first, but according to The Week, "you can assume that if they win, in the second round they will likely use the same play. If they lost, they will probably switch "in a clockwise direction," so rock becomes paper, paper turns into scissors, and scissors morph into rock."

Here's an example from the Washington Post:

Round 1: Emily plays paper, I play rock. She wins.
Round 2: Emily plays paper, I switch to paper. We draw.
Round 3: Emily plays scissors, I switch to scissors. Another draw! I lose.

But if I had kept the probabilities from this Zhejiang University study in mind, I could have changed my gameplay like so:

Round 1: Emily plays paper, I play rock. She wins.
Round 2: Emily plays paper, I switch to scissors. I win.
Round 3: Emily switches to scissors, I switch to rock. I win again!"

Researchers also believe that this is a game of "conditional response". Meaning that there is a certain way that we are going to play and the smarter or sneakier players will always have a leg up in the rock-paper-scissors game.

I tried this method out. How did I do? See for yourself.