Randomantic How to play
- Tap Rock, Paper, or Scissors.
- The computer reveals its random throw at the same time.
- See who won and watch the scoreboard update. Keep playing as long as you like.
The rules, and a bit of strategy
Rock crushes scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper covers rock. Against a truly random opponent there is no winning strategy — it evens out over time — which makes rock paper scissors a perfectly fair way to settle a small decision, pick who goes first, or just pass a couple of minutes. Against human opponents, people are famously not random, which is where reading patterns comes in.
Humans are terrible at playing randomly
Against a computer picking at random, nothing you do changes your odds — you will win about a third, lose a third, and draw a third, forever. Against a person it is a different game entirely, because people cannot generate random sequences. The documented tendencies are consistent enough to exploit:
- Rock opens. Inexperienced players, and especially players who are annoyed, throw rock first far more often than a third of the time.
- Win-stay, lose-shift. Players who win tend to repeat the throw that won; players who lose tend to switch to the thing that just beat them.
- Avoiding triples. Almost nobody throws the same sign three times running, because it feels insufficiently random — so after two identical throws, you can usually rule that sign out.
The one strategy worth knowing
From the lose-shift tendency comes the standard competitive counter: if your opponent just lost, expect them to play whatever beat them, and play the thing that beats that. If they lost by throwing rock against your paper, they will likely switch to paper — so you throw scissors. It is not foolproof, but against a casual player it does measurably better than chance, which is more than can be said for any strategy against the computer on this page.
The counter-strategy, if you suspect someone is reading you, is to deliberately play what you just lost with. And the only genuinely unbeatable approach is to pick at random — which is what this page does, and why it is a fair tie-breaker rather than a game of skill.
Why it works as a decision maker
Rock paper scissors settles things faster than a coin because both people act at once, so neither has to concede the toss to the other. It also scales to a small group: everyone throws at the same time, and anyone beaten by any other sign is out. That said, three-way rounds draw constantly — if you have more than four people, a wheel spinner or coin flip will be quicker.
Variants
Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock adds two signs and ten outcomes, which cuts the draw rate from a third to a fifth — the real reason it exists. Best of three is the standard tournament format and does not favour either player, it just reduces the chance of a fluke. Roshambo with forfeits turns it into a party game: the loser of each round draws a truth or dare.