Is RPS a game of skill?
If you do a 2/3, or 3/5, etc, then maybe. Numberphile did an episode on how you're more likely to win by following a particular strategy:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rudzYPHuewc
Presumably this works best if the other person is not following the same strategy. The paper that they reference (PDF):
I was wondering how a human can generate random numbers while playing. One way could be if you can hear your heart beat, the number of beats between plays mod 3 would allow you to play randomly enough to throw off your opponents strategy.
You could also memorise a recently generate sequence of random numbers!
Reminds me of Iocaine Powder: https://web.archive.org/web/20100131080653/http://ofb.net/~e...
The contestants were written in C, you see, and all rounds of play executed in the same process. Obviously there's all kinds of ways you could cheat in this environment but Fork Bot struck me as especially clever.
Fork Bot, on its turn, would fork() twice and return a different move in each of the three resulting processes. On its next turn, it would look back to the previous turn and see if it won. If not, it would exit(). So only the process where it won every round would survive...
Though, it ran into a problem with one of the other cheaters: "Unfortunately, since all three moves lost to the Psychic Friends Network after the first turn, the program exited and the remainder of that match was declared forfeited."
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Humans really suck at producing randomness.
But humans are bad at making truly random choices. If your opponent isn't random, you can exploit what they're actually doing.
And if you're exploiting what the opponent is doing, then you're not random anymore and your opponent can exploit what you're doing.
Considering that you can get a robot that will beat RPS 100% of the time, I would consider that a yes.
https://newatlas.com/unbeatable-rock-paper-scissors-robot/29...
The only edge you can get is if your opponent is making their sign early while their hand is still up. People do that unconsciously.
That being said, the game can have an element of strategy if it is played many rounds (hundreds), but humans don't wager beyond one or three rounds. Ain't a fun game if you need paper and keeping track of scores.