Rock Paper Scissors World Championships

Competitive Rock, Paper, Scissors

Article by: © Michael J. Rosen 2012

"All You Need Is an Arm and a Wrist and Fingers. It Is Best to Wear Loose Fitting Clothes...Pre-Game Stretching and Manicures Are Strongly Encouraged."

-from The World RPS Player's Responsibility Code

According to a new documentary on competitive Rock, Paper, Scissors, the sport is "a combination of Halloween, Mardi Gras-really, a Star Trek convention with binge drinking and much better-looking women." The World RPS Society also offers another description: "The Wimbledon of lazy, drunk decision-making. Imagine Agassi if he loses, goes to the bar, gets shit-faced, and then comes back and heckles the guy who beat him."

Despite such self-deprecation, less-than-sober hilarity, and bountiful unsportsmanlike conduct, the Society has established its very own Responsibility Code; among other things, it advises competitors to "establish what is to be decided or whether the match is to be played for honor."

They've also created a new lexicon (see chart) out of the 27 possible "gambits," or three-move sequences in the game that has been "serving the needs of decision makers since 1918." Despite your neighborhood's own version, to win a competition RPS tournament, the best two of three throws wins a set, and the best two of three sets, clinches the victory. And while they may govern what appears to be the dimmest negotiating tool this side of One Potato, Two Potato, both USARPS and the World RPS Society have also devised strict rules, with penalties given for invented throws such as the chimerical "live long and prosper," the devilish "Texas longhorn," and the ineffective but potentially offensive "I've got your nose."

RPS tournaments are held internationally, including the USARPS Championships, sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, which features tournaments in bars nationwide, producing regional winners, who eventually compete in Las Vegas for a $50,000 prize. The World Championships, where the winner pursues a share of the measly $13,000 purse, are held in Toronto and attract able-fingered competitors from countries as distant as Norway, Australia, and Singapore, all of whom consider themselves "ambassadors of the World RPS Society." (All that international détente for naught!) But no matter how high the stakes, the Society advises players to "think twice before using RPS for life-threatening decisions."

Visit www.worldrps.com or www.usarps.com, where they remind us all that "recycled paper still beats rock."

No Dribbling the Squid

Rock Paper Scissors World Championships Dates, Location and Further Information

Annually in October at the Kool Haus in Toronto, Canada

More Rock Paper Scissors World Championships