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Rock Paper Scissors: Predicting and influencing opponent behavior

A talk with Jason Simmons, aka Master Roshambollah, arguably the most well-known Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) player in the world. Links to the episode:

Topics include:

  • Common physical indicators (i.e., “tells) that give you an idea of what an opponent will likely throw
  • Verbal and visual methods for influencing an opponent’s throw
  • What format/structure is used at RPS competitions
  • Why some players use randomizing strategies to level the playing field versus tough opponents
  • Do people gamble at Rock Paper Scissors?

Some resources/articles related to this episode:

TRANSCRIPT

[Note: transcripts will always contain some errors.]

Zach: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the People Who Read People Podcast. I’m your host, Zachary Ellwood. If you didn’t already know, I’m the author of a trilogy of books about reading, poker tells and behavior, and I also have a video series. You can learn more about me and my [email protected]. If you want to learn more about this podcast, check out my blog at Reading Poker tells video slash blog.

That’s where I have descriptions and links for all the episodes. If you like this podcast, please give it a rating or review on iTunes or whatever platform you listen on. This episode’s interview is from March 20th, 2020. I interviewed one of the most skilled and well-known rock paper scissors players in the world, Jason Simmons, AKA Master Roche Ebola.

Jason has been interviewed by Rolling Stone Magazine and National Public Radio about the competitive rock paper, scissors scene, rock paper, scissors is a very simple game. To many people, its [00:01:00] simplicity probably makes it seem boring and random with skill not playing much of a role, but many seemingly simple games can have a hidden depth with factors.

You only notice after playing a lot and taking it seriously. Poker is more obviously complex than rock, paper, scissors, but some of the same concepts apply. Many new poker players just don’t see how complex a game poker is, and they might lose a lot of money before finally realizing it’s not as simple as they first assumed.

In our interview, I talked to Jason about some of the edges that serious RPS players have found with a special focus on reading behavior and influencing opponents. Before I play the interview, it’d be good for you to understand that the RPS scene is a bit over the top and comical and tongue in cheek.

To show you what I mean, I’ll read a few paragraphs from an article by Alex Maasi found on the site pressonomics.com. The culture is so tongue in cheek that it’s dangerous to take anything in the RPS world at face value. The best [00:02:00] example of this is the Trio of Hands, a book by Wojak Smalla, which is supposedly the defining book about RPS.

Neither the man nor the book, however, seemed to exist yet when incredulous newcomers ask about the book, insiders assure them that the trio of hands does exist, and it is a delightful tome of RPS wisdom, or that small SOA is a lasu like figure who wrote poetically and quote had already attained a level of greatness by the late fifties and quote, even though no organized RPS competitions existed at that time.

Similarly, Pete Lovering, who won the first RPS tournament in Toronto in 2002, did so while wearing a bathrobe with the words 1974 world Champion taped in the back. Large RPS tournaments are full of competitors with ridiculous costumes and nicknames, which Brad Fox describes as quote, equal parts spectacle and strategy.

End quote, master Roen. Ebola adds that many players adopt [00:03:00] competition names just like in any sport, but he describes his persona, master Roen Ebola as a satire of the self-satisfied, self-promoting egotistical sports rockstar. And that’s the end of the article excerpt. I confess I didn’t know much about this aspect of the rock paper scissor scene before doing this interview.

You might notice I’m probably a bit too credulous and sincere in the early parts of the conversation. Jason does give what I think are some very interesting and cool tips about reading and manipulating people, but at the same time, you might want to use some judgment to separate the practically useful information from the spots where Jason’s maybe being a little over the top.

In other words, you should be skeptical of Master Roche Ebola in this interview, just like you would if you were getting ready to play him at Rock Paper Scissors. It’s smart to watch out for tricks. Hey Jason. Thanks for coming on.

Jason: Hey, Zach. Thanks for having me. Greatly appreciated.

Zach: Much appreciated. This, this will be an interesting one.

So, can you talk a little bit about your [00:04:00] past, your, your championships you’ve won in the rock, paper, scissors area?

Jason: Sure. Well, um, from an early age, um, I displayed a high level of mastery and rock paper scissors. I was kind of considered the, uh, the Bobby Fisher, uh, of rock paper scissors, if you will. I was.

Regularly beating players who were, you know, two to three times my old, my own age as a child. And, uh, from there I took a lot of that natural ability, uh, worked through with a lot of training. Uh, I played probably more matches of rock, paper, scissors than anyone currently on the planet. Um, and so, yeah, so a lot of that gave me a little bit of initial credence.

Um, I actually hosted the first ever rock paper scissors tournament, which was the, uh, burning Man Open in 2002. The most recent tournament that I won was a, uh, kind of a professional only invitational tournament in, uh, in Philadelphia. But early on in the sport, um, I, I announced my retirement, uh, before sort of the modern era.

Of world championships began in order to focus on, um, a career in broadcasting for the sport. Uh, there was a definite conflict [00:05:00] of interest. You know, you can’t be providing the color commentary in a tournament that you’re competing in. And several of the, the main tournament organizers at the time had asked me to stand down saying that if I was playing in the tournament, they were worried nobody else was gonna show up.

Uh, so for the good of the sport as well as to focus on, you know, again, a career broadcasting, uh, I, I did announce my retirement, but that’s only really been from, um, from tournament competition. I still do private matches, still do personal matches, and, uh, you know, of course when you’re spending time with other rock, paper, scissors professionals say, invariably you’re gonna throw hands.

Mm-hmm.

Zach: So, uh. Where is the World Championship held?

Jason: Um, the World Championships, uh, are currently on hiatus. Uh, but, uh, the, they had been held in, uh, in Toronto, uh, Canada, uh, for, for al the better part of a decade. Uh, and again, there is a current hiatus. Uh, I, I suspect that there are some things going on in that front, but really the, uh, there’s been a great, uh, diaspora of, of rock paper, scissors, tournament play.

You can find, uh, every, every [00:06:00] small town has had at least one rock paper, scissors tournament. And you assume that the, the bigger towns and bigger cities have had, you know, bigger and better ones. Mm-hmm. Um, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot going on, but really the, the people who want to organize the sport have, you know, are continuing to organize you.

You can, it’s, it’s not too hard to find, imagine any city.

Zach: So, and worth mentioning, you’ve been interviewed by Rolling Stone. You’ve been interview by, interviewed by NPR, uh, and some other media outlets. So yeah, you’ve gotten, you’ve gotten some Good Press cot coverage there.

Jason: Yeah, absolutely. And, um, you know, that that was one of the things, uh, too, is when, when I first started competing, you’re competing at the world championship level, uh, because I was a known player, you know, I’d written the, the forward for the official strategy guide, uh, you know, things like that.

I was kind of a natural go-to when it came, uh, to getting these player interviews and at, at the high levels of the sport. Like so many times I would get interviewed by like, like let’s say I was going to play a tournament in Chicago, the local Chicago News would interview me, uh, as, as well as some many of the other top players.

And at a, at a certain point in that [00:07:00] level, the, the interviews kind of take on, um, the function of a pregame. So let’s say if I’m wanting to, if I’m going into a tournament and, um, let’s say I’m wanting to try and get my, the other players to open with rock, you know, I’ll go in and say, you know, Hey, hey, rock is really the best.

Thing to open with, uh, you know, I’ll go into, into the interviews like that. So a lot of times the information that you’re getting, you’re putting out there in interviews, you know, after a while, uh, it is to, you know, hopefully control or at least influence your opponents in the course of a match. Uh, ultimately I found that where I’ll be playing someone in the same stance, I’ll throw a losing throw and then I’ll change my stance.

They assume that I’m gonna switch it up, but I throw the same, that losing throw a second time and, you know, nine times outta 10, I turn that losing throw into a winning one, just, just by changing my stance to try to get them to think I’m changing everything else too.

Zach: Hmm. Talk quickly about, if you could, about the structure of the, when you play the, the tournaments and, and, and competitions.

Is it like. You know, a [00:08:00] bunch of short ones, best out of three? Or how exactly, exactly does that work?

Jason: Sure. Well, different tournaments have different formats, uh, and there are different, sort of like different parts of the world, different cultures, uh, approach the rock paper, scissors game very differently.

So if you’re a professional player, uh, of course you adopt, uh, whatever the local standards are. Uh, generally speaking, most of the tournaments that I’ve seen, uh, throw on four. So it’s 1, 2, 3, shoot, uh, for a very specific time, uh, on the West Coast, specifically in California. More of a one two shoot was favored.

Um, there’s some places I played in Hong Kong before, for instance, where it was just one throw in and out. There was no even priming convention. So you gotta get the, you know, and the World Rock Paper Scissor Society, uh, as a whole really works to standardize the approach. At the very least, figure out how you play before you start playing that.

That’s usually good advice. And it shows, it shows class. You know, no one wants to go into a city you’ve never been before and start saying, okay, we’re doing a race to five, we’re throwing on four when everybody else does a race to three. Um, [00:09:00] but when you look at big tournaments like, uh, the World Championships in Toronto, um, typically they would do a best two outta three throws wins a set best two outta three sets wins a match.

Um, that, that kind of was adopted as the standard tournament format for many years. The Minneapolis hustlers who are, uh, a very well known crew of rock scissors players. Uh, started promoting what they called hustler style, which is a race to 10, first player to win 10 throws, wins the match. Um, almost overnight, all the top players started playing this format.

Uh, most recently I played a match against professional, uh, poker player, Perry Friedman. Uh, we played a couple of race to tens for, uh, the ESPN coverage of the Moxie Games, which we can, uh, discuss a little later. But amongst most professionals these days, a lot of them seem to prefer the half Hustle, which is a race to five first player who wins five wins the match.

It’s long enough. You can get some interesting long-term strategies, but it’s still, it’s friendly for television. You know, you’re not gonna sit there and watch five minutes of a race to 10 match. So

Zach: let’s talk a little bit about throwing specific, uh, throws. Most people [00:10:00] know that, uh, rock is the most commonly thrown one, right?

Is that pretty commonly known? Well,

Jason: yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s commonly known and, um, you know, against certain players. Um, that’s, that’s gonna be the case. But, uh, I, I’ll, I’ll go so far as to say that that’s not as much of a truism as it was. Say even 10 years ago, you know, and, and again, a lot of it was, uh, that certain players, uh, you know, were, were putting out there even certain organizers putting out that rock was the most popular throw.

So then of course, if you’d, if you’d seen that interview, right,

Zach: it was the difference. I guess there’s, there’s a lot of difference between playing an amateur, you know, player, somebody who doesn’t take it seriously versus playing somebody at a, at a tournament.

Jason: Well, well, that’s true as well. But at the same time, um, you know, there’s the, the first ever world championship, uh, the adventure, uh, eventual winner, master Pete Lovering, one of the, the greatest players of all time, uh, won the whole tournament with rock.

It was known as the rock curd round the world. And, uh, and it was really a statement when, for, uh, especially for a [00:11:00] player like Kim, who favors a very zen. Approach. You know, he’s, he’s not playing versus his opponent. He’s playing with his opponent and the game becomes, um, greater than the two of them combined.

At least that’s what he tells his, uh, his paying students. Uh, but in, in any case, uh, sure, you know, rock, a lot of times when people say, oh, rock’s the most common throw, and they say, okay, well what makes you say that? It’s like, oh, well there’s a study that we did online. We took, you know, a sample of a hundred players.

These are always small samples, and in some cases mm-hmm. Just the very way that the information is put out there. If you click on a button and rock is the far left option, a lot of people might just click on that because that’s where, that’s where the browsers are in the first place. So it’s Right. It’s more of how the information is picked up, more so than anything else.

But, but you will notice, like I think a lot of times, um. At certain events that, uh, that would sell beer or alcohol. A lot of times the, the more intoxicated a player is, the more likely they are to throw a rock. I’ve definitely noticed that, you know, a lot of times if someone is clenching their fist really tight before the match, I’ll notice that they’ll go with [00:12:00] rock.

Mm-hmm. And a lot of times if your opponent, and this, this is just a weird observation on my end, if a, a player looks happy, like if they look just really, really happy, especially when they’re losing, odds are they’re gonna, they’re gonna throw rock. Uh, there, there’s just something about that happy go lucky mindset that just makes ’em up, you know, screw it.

I’ll just throw the rock out there and let my cards, let the cards fall where they may, you know,

Zach: it was kind of interesting when I did a, I did a Twitter poll. It got 500 entries and it’s, and I asked people. Ask someone you’re with to do rock, paper, scissors and report what they threw first. Like 60% said that the other person threw rock, which I thought was, you know, obviously way high.

That’s like much higher than, you know. I, I, I’ve seen on the, uh, you know, the studies online and stuff, but I thought that was interesting, like, and that, and that’s a really, obviously a really amateur, uh, response too, because they were probably just asking whoever they were with at the time, you know? So I thought that was, uh, that was kinda interesting.

Jason: Yeah, no doubt. And, um, you know, again, there’s always things you can look at in studies like this and say, okay, well, did they figure out if they were throwing on three or [00:13:00] four? And if the person accidentally threw on three, was that counted as a rock accidentally? Uh, things like that. I, I think you showed a, a good format by asking, uh, an associate if whoever you asked, because otherwise I would say, you know, if, if they were all, you know, professional or amateur poker players, you know, they might be more inclined to throw a paper first, uh, for switch up for a variety of reasons.

It’s an interesting format. But again, uh, if, if, if you’re dealing with amateur players and professional players. You know, once the professional players get in and start pushing people around, you know, influencing people to, to make certain throws over others, that can definitely throw those numbers, um, completely out the window.

Mm-hmm. Uh, but again, as most professional players that I know are totally happy, maintaining the belief that rock is the most popular throw, because it kind of gives us, gives us an easy ground to, to, it starts the playground kind of tilted in our favor. There was an old, uh, quote unquote truism in the sport where you would see some of the, like tournament organizers early on say, well, you know, men tend to open with rock, and women tend to open with scissors, et cetera.

And it was just complete nonsense. Uh, everybody just mm-hmm. [00:14:00] You know, kind of believed it and took off with it. But it’s saying, you know, okay, if you’re arbitrarily splitting the gender world into only two options, but you have a game that has three options, I mean, what does that tell you about the validity of it as a, as a potential strategy?

Uh, Uhhuh and, you know, ul ultimately, I think, um, I. Looking at gender differences when it comes to making the throws as complete dead end when it comes to reading or influencing as, as professional play. It’s a, it’s a dead strategy. It’s just the, you know, people thought it was good copy for a while and it really isn’t.

Zach: Yeah. Not, not to beat this horse too much, but I was thinking of the, the, the various factors which might make it more likely for people to, to throw rock. And I had a few, and you’ve probably thought about this before, but I was thinking you, you know, they’ve talked about the toughness, the male factor. Uh, they talked about the fact that your hand is already in that rock position when you throw, they’ve talked about in, in the name rock paper, scissors, rock is the first one.

So people are probably more inclined to think of that first. Right. Do you think that’s an accurate, like, synopsis of, you know, what the factors that lead people in that direction?

Jason: [00:15:00] For sure. Uh, and you know, I think that’s, that is a big part of it. And those, those are all things that, that can, can definitely factor in.

But I would, I would say that, you know, none of those reads are gonna be against 100%. Of all people. Right. But if you find someone who falls into, starts falling into some of those multiple categories, it’s like, okay, this person, you know, is, you know, they, they, they look a little aggressive. They’re, they’re sort of, all their muscles are sort of tensing up.

They’re clenching their fists. You know, you, you, you can look at that person and read most of the time if they’re gonna, if they’re gonna throw rock or not. And, and you know, especially if you start saying them to them, things like, oh, I bet you’re gonna throw rock next time. Mm-hmm. Or even if you look at someone like that and you tell them, Hey, I’m gonna throw rock this time.

It doesn’t matter who you tell them is throwing the rock. You, you’ve mentioned the word rock a couple of times. Mm-hmm. And that’s, you know, that’s taking, let’s say if you put somebody on about a 50% shot of playing rock, you’re, you know, that’s already pretty good. But if by mentioning that you can even make them 10% more likely to play, all of a sudden you’re more likely to win.

Than you are to lose and uh, right. Just, but again, yeah, even [00:16:00] the rock players aren’t gonna play the same thing twice in a row that often, like you, you don’t see a whole lot of rock heads as we used to call ’em, going rock, rock, rock, rock, rock doing. We used to call the avalanche, which is three rocks in a row.

That’s more of a professional move. But you know, if you, you know, if, if you bring on a player who loves to open with rock and they never repeat the same throw twice, I’ll play that player all day long. You know, and then those are matches I’ll win all day long.

Zach: I was playing with some people, uh, recently, uh, played a few people in a row where they were more like academic intellectual types writers.

I won the short little contest by mostly throwing rock, and it seemed like they were all throwing paper and scissors. And it kind of made me think there’s probably some correlation with people that are more intellectual or academic to not throw the rock, because the rock seems kind of obvious maybe to them, and they’re like.

Oh, I like, you know, the paper and the scissors seem kind of, uh, academic, you know, in a, in a way. I wanted to hear any thoughts on that.

Jason: Yeah, no, I, I, I definitely, [00:17:00] uh, would agree with that. And I think, uh, I, I seem to remember an NPR interview that I did with someone once where I mentioned how most of the journalists I’ve dealt with open with, uh, with paper, uh, just because of the old, uh, newspaper, uh, associations to that.

So, sure, I’ve noticed that. And, um, you, you know, again, you can look at the three throws of rock paper, scissors as being sort of graphic of different stages of the growth of, um, of humanity as a whole, if you will, you know, from the, the cavemen bashing rocks together, uh, you know, and then you move on to.

Use of simple tools, which, you know, scissors aren’t simple tools, but you know, it’s still representative of that phase of humanity’s, uh, growth. And then, you know, paper, completely manufactured product, uh, you know, taking the world around us and changing it to shape our needs. And these things are definitely shown.

But I, but I’ve, I, I hear what you’re saying. There’s, uh, a lot of people who, who see the rock and, you know, the rock is shaped like a fist. And a lot of people, when they see that closed fist, it does remind them of aggression. Uh, sort of a very simple, you know, simplistic sort of, uh, bullying approach, if you [00:18:00] will.

And they don’t want anything to do with it. So they go, uh, paper or scissors. And, you know, in your case when you said you were at this party, uh, in the small group, mostly throwing rock. Mm-hmm. You know, had I been there, you know, I, I, I would’ve probably gone with a scissors heavy strategy myself, but sprinkled just enough rock in to keep the other players honest.

Mm-hmm. Um, because, you know, if everybody else is going scissors or paper, you know, if I’m going scissors, I’m gonna go for the tie and I’m gonna go for the win. Um mm-hmm. But of course. You know, if there are other people like Zachary Elwood there that are gonna be picking up on these tells, then I’ll, I’ll want to throw just enough rock in to keep them from getting a clear read, just enough to muddy the signal just a little bit.

Zach: Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah. If they’re throwing mostly scissors or, or paper, your best bet is to throw scissors. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah,

Jason: for sure. And what you’ll find too is at the very, some of the higher levels of the sport, top players are not only experts at reading physical tells, they’re also experts in putting out fake tells.

Mm-hmm. Uh, so I’m sure you see this in poker as well, you know, something and you have to build these [00:19:00] up over time. But, you know, let’s say if, uh, you know, you’ve been playing a lot of friendly matches and giving, uh, one of those obvious, uh, scissors tells, like, uh, let’s say an obvious scissor tell, just as a sidebar is when you take your thumb, you, you hold your, your thumb on top of the fist when you’re getting ready to play.

If you drop your thumb down to cover the second and third finger. You’re gonna be flicking those scissors out. That, and most people do that without even thinking about it. So that’s a good physical tell to read up on. But let’s say if I’ve been doing that against another top player for let’s say a year or two in friendly matches, you know, as soon as we’ve got an unfriendly match on the line, then I’m gonna give them that dropped thumb, making them think I’m gonna throw scissors.

And, you know, at, at that point I’ve got, you know, I know that they’re gonna throw rocks, so I’m gonna throw a paper. But you know, really you want to develop, uh, a really. Straightforward, very honest sort of reputation. Uh, so you can have that little bit of subterfuge there for when you, for when you need it.

Zach: Yeah. The more you, the more you use types of false, you know, deceptions like that, the less people will rely [00:20:00] on your, on your false deceptions or Yeah. And the way you want them to. Yeah,

Jason: exactly. And, and of course when you notice that happening, that’s the best time to go honest. Again,

Zach: say you’re playing people another player that’s, you know, top-notch world class, I would imagine like in poker, where, uh, it’s just very unlikely to have those kind of deceptions because you’re both operating under, under the assumption that there’s not gonna be value to trying find that information.

So does it just revert in those situations to just trying to have a completely random selection in that case, you know, assuming you’re playing another topnotch player, or are you still looking for edges even against a topnotch player?

Jason: Well, you’re still looking for edges. Uh, but your, your introduction to the topic of, of randomness is, um, is, it’s a very interesting subsection of.

Rock paper, scissors strategy because people always say, oh, well I’ll just, I’ll just play random. Uh, and that that’s, you know, for some people that’s the answer to everything is, oh, I’ll just play random in the first place. Human beings can only. Approximate randomness. Uh, we’re, we’re not, we’re not random creatures.

So let’s say if you go in and you’re [00:21:00] getting ready to play someone and you’re like, okay, I’m just gonna throw random, and then you play the first throw that comes into your head. Uh, let’s say if I’m, you know, if I’m doing that and I throw paper, ’cause it’s the first throw that comes into my head now, did it just come into my head because I’m thinking randomly?

Or did it come into head because a paid associate of my opponent is shuffling a stack of newspapers just, just on the right of my field division to influence me. You know, you have to be aware that you can still be influenced in these things. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So when, when a lot of players, uh, say that they’re gonna play randomly, what they do is they’ll actually get a string of moves, let’s say five to 10 moves in a row and memorize them.

Right. They’ll go to a, a website, let’s say random.org and get a, a random set of throws. Mm-hmm. And they’ll have this random string. Memorized for, for use in play. Uh, there’re some of the top players, like say for instance, uh, sea Urbanas outta Philadelphia, who will go into a tournament with five or six random strings ready to go.

Mm-hmm. And you never know which one he’s gonna be using at any given point. Now, the the thing is, like in theory at least, you’re not gonna get much of an edge throwing randomly. Like you’re not gonna all of a sudden come, you know, you’re not gonna take that [00:22:00] one third percentage of winning throws and double it into a 60% of winning throws just by playing randomly.

Uh, at the very least, if you’re playing random, it’s something that you do if you know you’re going up against an opponent who’s better than you and you’re trying to take a little bit of the sting outta some of their strategies. So, you know, if you know someone is an expert at visual, visual manipulation or reading, you say, okay, I’m just gonna get my string.

I’m gonna go in random, and that’s gonna be it. But at the same time, you’re ignoring some of. The possible edges that you could get to help you win. Like, let’s say if I go into a tournament, a match with a random strings, and I notice three throws in that every time my opponent throws paper, they release it way early.

Mm-hmm. Or they’re elbow streets out to the side. And I notice this tell, and I know it’s the real thing, but it’s like, no, I gotta stick to my, my strategy. I gotta stick to my, my scripted random strategy. You know, you’re gonna be missing out on a lot of those advantages. So when, when a lot of the top players do.

They don’t rely on random strategies exclusively, but they will have, say like two or three small random strings [00:23:00] that they can, uh, just put into a longer match. Like, let’s say if I’m playing a race to 10 against someone, I may decide at the mid game just as a transition between throws four and six. I’ll go with a string of random throws, almost like a pallet cleanser before the, the delicate aif that is my end game, uh, comes into play, right?

But, uh, but yeah, so you’ll, you’ll have the random, but again, human beings can only approximate randomness. Um, you know, we’re, we’re not truly random. And so if, you know, you can ignore all the possible ways to become a better player at your own peril, uh, ultimately if you rely solely on nothing but random throws, it, it’s done true development as an overall player, you’ll never be one of the greats that way.

Zach: It’s very much like poker in that way. I mean, it’s a common discussion in, in the poker world and in most, uh, you know, skill-based games. You know, there’s, there’s the game, very optimal approaches, which are, you know, the equivalent of, of having a completely random. Uh, strategy and game theory optimal is not completely known in poker, but there’s, it’s known how to approach it for a lot of situations, so, sure.

But then, you know, people have the argument like, you’re leaving money on the table because [00:24:00] you’re not using that information. That, that, that the weaknesses that people have, you know, that game theory optimal is only best when you’re, you know, trying to play against someone who you think is very good.

It’s not a, it’s not a good solution for people that have a lot of weaknesses or even have a few weaknesses that you can find. Yeah.

Jason: Exactly. And, and what, what I find too is that, you know, in going to these, uh, tournaments and I, I’ve played in rock, paper, scissors, tournaments and private matches all over the world, uh, all over the United States, uh, Vegas, east Coast, west Coast, uh, I’ve played in Australia, I’ve played in Hong Kong.

And something that you find, you, you, you see a lot of the same people show up to these events like the, the so-called rock, paper, scissors professionals all show up to these same events. And if there’s somebody you know that you’ve played for a weekend, for five years in a row, you start to pick up, you know, not only tells but patterns, uh, specifics, you know, the, the way that a player, you know, might start off the day strong and end the day, week, every day.

And again, you can’t leave all that out, all that information out, um, you know, just because you, you’re have an addiction to throwing as randomly as [00:25:00] possible. And it’s, and it’s a lot more fun. As you figure out these, uh, these obvious tells and the way to read them and the the way to manipulate, you know, people as well.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Jason: Um, yeah, and, and you find too in, in looking at the, the sorts of tells in reading people, um, you know, there are definite categories. Uh, you know, there are sort of the physical tells that some people have. Like, as far as, you know, some players will throw their elbow out to the side before they go paper or do the, the, the thumb drop that I mentioned earlier.

Some, some people have, um, pattern based tells, which is, you know, like saying no one’s gonna throw the same throw more than two or three times in a row. That’s more of a pattern based tell. Mm-hmm. Uh, and, and there’s also what I would call more spiritual tells. Uh, or, um, a oc cult tells, if you wanna look at it that way.

Like, let’s say if I’m playing up against a player and I notice that, uh, every single time they throw scissors, they have a sort of a blue aura around them. Uh, now is that a real spiritual or occult manifestation? You know, most likely not. It’s just a, uh, a hallucination that my brain is creating. To communicate [00:26:00] information to me that that player is about to throw scissors.

So, you know, if I start noticing that hallucination of a blue aura or something like that around someone, a few times I start paying attention to it. And if it starts working against more than one player, I incorporate it into my playbook.

Zach: Hmm. So you think it’s just your mind, uh, giving you clues about something, you know, but it’s beneath the service that you can’t consciously know?

Jason: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And, and a lot of times, like you can, you can develop those abilities as well. And, uh, I, I do develop, even though I’m retired from tournament competition, I still have a, a handful of, of students who, uh, who I train, who I work with. And, uh, again, you know, you. The, about the first year of, uh, my students’ training is spent convincing them that these sort of occult properties exist.

And then the whole second year is convincing them that it’s all their brain hallucinating and making these things up to communicate information to them. And occasionally you see a student get that breakthrough moment where they, they realize that, you know, for them maybe it smells, you know, and every time they smell like, you know, sort of a woodsy cedar smell for some reason, you know, paper’s about to be thrown.

And, and again, those aren’t you, you [00:27:00] can’t write a book about those tells because they’re gonna be different from person to person. But a lot of it is, it, it is going with the gut, but at the same time, realizing that like anything else, the gut can be fallible. And you’ve gotta, you know, at the same time that you’re learning to pick up on these extra sensory clues, you’re also, uh, trying to make sure that you, somebody’s not getting their hustle over on you.

Zach: Right. It kinda reminds me of when I talked to a, an experienced state policeman not too long ago where he was telling me, I was asking about how did you know, what are some indicators you might know that somebody’s up to no good on the highway and might pull somebody over for some, you know, or get a, or get a sense that somebody’s up to new good.

And he said usually he just had a vibe that he had before he even noticed any details about a car. He would just be like, outta the corner of his eye, be like, something wrong is here. And then he would, when he actually paid attention to it, he would, he would find details. But it sometimes when you really experience something, you get those vibes without knowing consciously what it is.

Jason: Absolutely. And, and in many cases when people refer to, uh, something they call intuition, you know, [00:28:00] there, there’s nothing metaphysical or paranormal or a cult about it at all. It’s, it’s one handle to get on your brain piecing together a lot of different information. Simultaneously, some of which you may be aware of, and some of which you may not be aware of.

Mm-hmm. And, uh, a, a large part of that comes with training and experience. Uh, so mm-hmm. You know, the intuition of a top level player is gonna be different because they played literally thousands of more games over the course of their life than an amateur player. So of course their intuition is gonna be much more finely homed than, than the, the average player on the street.

Zach: Let’s talk a little bit about that NPR interview you had because, uh, that was an interesting one. I was listening to that. And so long story short, you and the NPR re reporter, uh, I think it was Steve Vinke, did a little, uh, you know, best out of three, uh, rock paper, scissors over the air, and you beat ’em.

And, uh, one thing you did though, I almost didn’t notice it because it was in, in the, uh, you know what, what magicians call forcing, or you call, you would call influencing or, or manipulation leading up to it. You mentioned how, oh, some people say, uh, [00:29:00] women tend to use scissors more, and you’ve noticed that reporters like to throw paper more.

And it was very subtle. But after I heard you guys play, I realized, oh, you were kind of forcing him away from using, uh, using paper. I think you threw paper first and he threw rock, and, and you both threw that same way for the first two throws, and so you beat him like that. So I thought that was an interesting kind of, you know, influence in that direction.

Jason: Well, for sure. And, and a lot of what that, uh, takes, I was basically just starting with my standard belief, which is that most players aren’t gonna throw the same thing more than once and apply that specifically in this case. So that’s why he, he lost with, with, with two throws in a row. Um, and now let’s say for instance, if instead of being a respected reporter for NPR, um, that Steve had been, let’s say, a, a collegiate reporter working for the college newspaper who’s just starting to earn his stripes, just starting to get involved and wants to do it as a career, if I’d said something like, yeah, I noticed most, most journalists open with paper, most likely Steve would’ve opened with paper because he, you know, he wanted to, it was something that he [00:30:00] wanted to be, you know?

Mm-hmm. And instead of something that, that he was, and when I, when I told him, you know. Uh, oh. Most reporters, you know, will do this. Uh, you know, in, in his own way. He, he was going around the circle. He, he rejected it twice, right? Uh, Uhhuh, Uhhuh, uh, which, uh, that’s, you know, again, that’s one thing in rock paper, scissors, since it’s a circular play, you know, it’s not like people are reacting to your reaction, to your reaction, to their reaction.

You know, you can only go. So many levels, many spots around the circle before you’re back where you started. Right? In other words, so it doesn’t necessarily make it any easier, but it does make it a little, a little more classic, a little, a little more simpler. I mean, people scoff at rock, paper, scissors as a, as a child’s game.

But you know, if you look, our, our government in the United States is based on a rock paper, scissors like relationship between the legislative, the executive, and the judicial, you know, branches. It, it’s a rock paper, scissors relationship. And in theory, rock paper, scissors was created as a way to settle disputes that didn’t favor anyone over a longer period of time.

Right? Because in theory, everyone is gonna win and, and lose a third of their matches. But then, like any [00:31:00] other sport, you know, like, especially if you played poker or anything else, it’s not random. And the best players will always find ways to, to exploit that.

Zach: I read, uh, there was some studies about, uh, or scientific papers about how that same kind of.

You know, three-way balance or, or more than three way, three-way balance of, you know, this beats that and that beats that. And this, the third thing beats the first thing. That kind of balance was present in some, you know, natural systems, like between animal animal competitions, you know, like for mating and, and stuff like that.

Sure. The systems, uh, like define these solutions where it’s a more balanced approach. Well, I guess it, it’s probably more the fact that to survive they had to find a balanced approach, right? I guess it’s like, in other words, this rock paper, scissors dynamic plays a, a role in a lot of. Balanced systems.

Jason: Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, and I, I recently read a book, um, called, uh, rock Paper Scissors Game Theory for Everyday Life, uh, by Lynn Fisher, that, that explored that a lot and explored sort of that, uh, that, that dynamic, uh, is, which, which is known as a, um, a, a non-trans [00:32:00] tripartite. So it means, you know, three parts, each of which beats one ties itself and loses to another.

And you’ll see it in, uh, you know, bacterial populations. You’ll see it in certain bird populations, et cetera. Um, you know, see it in situations where there are certain mating strategies that are used. Mm-hmm. Nature favors diversity in this case. Mm-hmm. And if it were a situation where one would automatically win and, and, and dominate, then potentially the whole species would suffer.

But because you have this right non-trans tripartite, uh, scenario going on, further ad adaptation and further development is possible, uh, which, which is always favorable.

Zach: So back to your NPR interview really quick. When you, I was curious when you told them that reporters like paper, was that a just made up to, to influence ’em or was that a real thing?

Jason: You know, it’s, it’s one of those things that in rock, paper, scissors, we say, well, that’s true, even if it’s a lie. Um, to the best of my knowledge, uh, I don’t think anyone had ever made that observation before. Mm-hmm. You know, for me it was more of an interesting line. I mean, no one has done more [00:33:00] rock, paper, scissors related media interviews on the planet than than me.

And I say that, you know, without ego, uh, it’s just a statement of fact. I. And you know, the fact I’ve ever since mentioning it, I’ve had a pretty good run of being able to use that against various people who’ve worked in media. Uh, and again, no, no one works with actual physical paper anymore, obviously, or very, very few people work with physical paper.

So, uh, you know, whether that’s gonna become an out outdated tell is, you know, that’s, that’s something that’s still remains to be seen. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I have to conduct a little more research into that, you know, b before I put it out there. But, but for sure, I think, I think that was the first time I’d ever taken that strategy out in public, you know, after trying it once, it won once.

So it’s, I’m not, I’m not ready to call it the next big thing in rock paper, scissor strategy, but, you know, it worked for me once. I’ll probably try it again.

Zach: So another thing you did in that, uh, interview with, with NPR was you said after the first throw, you said, let’s see what else you’ve got to, to the reporter.

And that’s, uh, some sort of strategy to what, what, what’s the implication there? Or what are you trying to do?

Jason: Yeah, 100%. Uh, so, you know, [00:34:00] let’s say, and you can do this, whether someone, uh, either wins or loses, uh, when you say to someone, so what else you got? You’re verbally challenging them. Uh, you’re, you’re throwing down the gauntlet to them, uh, to influence them to, to say, you know what?

Screw you. I’m not gonna show you what else I got. I’m gonna show you the same throw again. And, uh, you have to know the type of player you’re playing against, but most people will resist what they see as an obvious attempt to attempt to push them around. Mm-hmm. And yeah, so if you, if you ask someone what else you got, most of the time, or a lot of the time, we won’t, we won’t say most, but a lot of the time they’re gonna throw the same thing again just to show you that, you know, you can’t tell ’em what to do.

And of course, you know, you’re, you’re ready to go. Just like I was ready to go in that, uh, that NPR interview.

Zach: Yeah. He threw the same one again and you beat him again. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was really interesting because I thought you. The way you did it was quite subtle. Like, I didn’t notice either of those things, even though the, the one about reporters throwing paper probably should have been apparent.

But, uh, you know, that was, but still it was, it was very smooth. Like, you [00:35:00] throw it in along with other information and it just flowed by. But I can see how these subtle, uh, influences work. Like, even if they’re unconscious for that person, you know, they’re, they can have an effect for sure.

Jason: Sure. And, uh, and a lot of that, I find you can do this even before match starts.

And, uh, you know, I’m not gonna put all my secrets out on the table, but, uh, you know, again, something as simple as before a match, if you’re, you know, if you’re rubbing both your hands together, kinda like you’re trying to warn your hands up, you’re, you’re sort of making the physical sign of paper. There’s a certain percentage of people who are very visually oriented who will see you doing that, and without even thinking about it, they’ll, they’ll throw paper on their first throw because you, you’ve influenced them.

Mm-hmm. Uh, or there’s some players, you know, while I’ve got my right hand down taking care of business, I’ll do, you know, 1, 2, 3, shoot in between two and three, I’ll pull my left hand up. Just to show them the scissors. Uh, and a lot of times people will see the scissors and then throw it just because you, you flashed it in front of their eyes.

And I’ve had people get, you know, they’re laughing, but they’re all, they’re almost angry. They’re going, you know what? I was just gonna throw paper [00:36:00] until you showed me the scissors. And then they’re like, I didn’t even, you know, I, I didn’t even mean for my hand to do it. It just did it by, by accident. And, uh, you know, so again, going back to the earlier comment on the, the random tells, that’s the sort of thing you’re, you’re giving up on if, if you’re just going purely random, is the ability to kind of, you know, push, push people around like that or influence people to do what you want ’em to do.

Zach: Mm-hmm. Uh, let’s talk about, uh, other common or reliable tells. You’ve talked about a few, but are there any that stand out that you, they haven’t mentioned? And, and I know of course, you probably don’t wanna give away everything, but if, if there’s anything you can give away in that regard.

Jason: Yeah, absolutely.

Um, if you’re looking just at types of tells, uh, the first thing that anyone thinks is I. Purely physical tells. Um, which, you know, a lot of that carries over from poker whether you’ve got the person who, you know, tugs on their ear or scratches their eye if they’re trying to bluff or something like that.

And it’s not always that simple, but, but again, if you’re looking for a straight up physical tell against someone that you’re assuming is an amateur player, they’re not trying to hustle you if they’re gonna throw a rock. A lot of times we’ve mentioned earlier, if their hands, their fists are clenched, [00:37:00] uh, if they, if they’re looking happy, even when they’re losing, I’ve noticed.

And, and a lot of times if the player looks like they’re already on their way to celebrating before they even win, so if they’re like, you know, one, two, yes, three, shoot, you know, a lot of times they’re just gonna end up throwing rock. Or a lot of people, if they get confused or if they get, um. Let’s say if you’ve got a, a friend with a megaphone who between throws two and three starts shouting out random, unrelated information from like half a block away, and you notice the person paying attention to that, they’re gonna just stick with rock because they’re not even thinking about throwing anything that, that’s more, that’s, that’s less of a reading thing, but it is something you can do.

Is that more of like,

Zach: do you think that’s just because it’s like rock is kind of the path of least resistance? It’s just the first thing people think of?

Jason: Yeah. It’s the only throw that’s preformed. You know, it’s the only throw that that, that you start off in that position. So paper is one of the throws that has the, the most obvious tells.

Partly because it’s the only throw that requires a 90 degree wrist rotation. Uh, rock you throw with thumb on top, pinky on the bottom, scissors is thumb on top, [00:38:00] pinky on the bottom. Uh, but when you’re throwing paper, you rotate at 90 degrees. So your, your thumb and pink here pointing to the sides. So, um, two tells that I’ve noticed, uh, one from myself, and I don’t have this tell anymore.

Uh, otherwise I wouldn’t be putting it out there. Uh, when I made that rotation, I would lead with my elbow and, uh, you can kind of do this on your own. Or for those of you listening at home, you can try this. You know, as you turn your left hand over, invariably your right elbow kind of wants to shoot out a little bit just to Oh yeah, I can feel that, that move.

Right. And so me personally, and a lot of other players too, they’ll lead with the elbow. So before they even. Start doing anything with the fingers, the elbow is already starting to point out to the side. Mm-hmm. And it took a lot of work for me personally to get past that throw. Uh, another friend of mine, and this, this is just a coincidence, but she works as a, uh, a zookeeper, a reptile zookeeper, uh, but a zookeeper nonetheless.

And she, whenever she would throw a paper, she had what I would call Tiger Claw. And with Tiger Claw, you know, you do the 1, 2, 3 shoot, same as anybody else. But as soon as you begin that three, [00:39:00] she would already start extending all of her fingers. Like not even on the delivery, the approach at the very end, but on the way up like a tiger trying to claw someone.

And, you know, you could, you could read that it wasn’t a matter of me changing my throat last second. I had, you know, I had all the time in the world I could hang out, I could run, get a coffee. I could, you read a book I had, you know, all the time while, while she was busy giving me that tiger claw. Mm. And I’d have the scissors ready to go.

So that was. A real obvious one there. What the one thing that makes scissors different is it’s the only throw where you retract some of the fingers and extend the others. Uh, rock has all five fingers retracted. Paper has all five fingers extended. So with scissors, it’s the only one where you’re putting those two fingers out and you don’t wanna be too slow with that.

So that develops most people to develop, use what we call spring loaded scissors, where you drop the thumb down over the index and middle fingers and just shoot them out last second. But that in and of itself, you know, can become a very easy tell, uh, for a lot of people to read if they see you drop that thumb down to, to deliver, to deliver the throw.

And another thing too, is, and this is something [00:40:00] that I, I noticed after my first, uh, one of my first big tournament weekends at the World Championships in Toronto. I was doing matches, demonstration matches, uh, media matches, personal matches, money matches, left and right. By the end of the second day, my whole forearm was in pain.

And literally every time I would try to throw scissors, especially. Just the el the area right on the outside by the elbow would be in agony, just because I wasn’t used to, I wasn’t used to throwing it hundreds and hundreds of times in, in the course of a day. Hmm. So, uh, and then of course, you know, once I started feeling that soreness, I.

I started not throwing scissors as much. I started throwing paper and rock more just because they didn’t hurt. And needless to say, going into the tournaments after that, we spent, you know, a good, at least, you know, 30 to 40 days, uh, incorporating that into my training of just getting in, you know, 50 or 60 throws a day just to get the sort of the long term conditioning down.

Hmm.

Zach: It’s like tennis elbow or something? Yeah,

Jason: exactly, exactly. Primer’s elbow is what we called it. Primers. And primers, yeah. Because when you’re priming the, the, the, the prime is the 1, 2, 3, uh, shoot part of it. So we call it [00:41:00] primer’s elbow, but for me it was more like a, a a, a scissor arm, uh, you know, or scissor hand, some people would call it.

But it really, for me, for me, it tended to strike more in the, the lower part of the arm. And it’s, it’s no joke. It’s painful. That’s, you know, what makes me, you know, tell people if you don’t believe rock, paper, scissors is a sport, you know, play me in the best of a thousand and we’ll see who’s crying at the end.

Talk.

Zach: Talk to the doctors. Absolutely. Absolutely. Down the line. I think we could do another interview. ’cause I feel like we could have a whole nother. Talk sometime about just the patterns, you know, we’ve talked about more about the behavior stuff and influencing. Mm-hmm. But I feel like there’s so much to say about, you know, noticing what people are prone to in terms of patterns.

So maybe down the line, we’ll do that again for now. Let’s, if you could talk a little bit about kind of dirty tricks, like say, obviously you wouldn’t do these in a. Competitive setting or, or, or competition. But I was thinking like, if you were in like a, you know, if you were a hustler in a, uh, you know, hustling people at this game, going bar to bar, just trying to make money, what are some tricks you can do to, like, can you like, throw your thing out really last minute to fool them or, or something like that?

Can you [00:42:00] talk a little bit about that?

Jason: Yeah, for sure. And the, the thing is there are what we call dirty tricks in the sport. Uh, you know, things that most of the top players don’t admit to using at the very least. But a lot of those same players when they were, you know, first coming up in the sport and they just lost big at a tournament, they’re outta money at the bus stop trying to get money for a ticket home.

Uh, you know, they’re gonna be employing some of those dirty tricks ’cause mm-hmm. That they, that they have to do it to get home. So these are things like, and, and I know these are ones that you’ve mentioned to me as well, where like, you know, one dirty trick is changing your throat at the last minute. So, you know, let’s say 1, 2, 3, shoot, and you see that the other person, you know, has thrown paper prints and then you, you put in scissors at the last second.

Uh, you can try to get away with that. Again, that’s a very low kind of play in my personal experience. There’s not a huge edge on that, but maybe that’s just because of the type of player that I am. But even amongst the top players, you have to know these dirty tricks just so they don’t get used against you at some point.

Right. Defense. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The best defense is knowing in this case and in in a lot of the [00:43:00] top tournaments. You’ll have a referee there whose role is kind of like the referee in a sumo match. You know, they’re, they’re the third individual at the dance and they’re there to watch for those last minute throws.

Uh, you’ve got, you know, some of the, some of the great tournament referees like, uh, Brad Fox, uh, out of Toronto, the head referee of the World Championships. Try pulling any of that stuff in one of his arenas and see how far it gets you. But again, if you’re playing things like, you know, there’s the last minute throw, and then of course, uh, there’s, there’s one that you mentioned to me, which is where you, you, you play someone and if they win, you put your hand up and go, oh, it’s, you know, everybody knows it’s the best two out of three.

Mm-hmm. Um. Ag against a, a certain type of player. Both of those strategies will work. That type of player, uh, are what we call drunks. Uh, so a lot of times if people are intoxicated, they’re not paying attention. So you can do that last minute throw because they, they’ve had a little bit too much and they’re a little easier to, to take advantage of as in terms of mm-hmm.

You know, they’re not paying attention. Or you can do that best two out of three, just again, because they’re not paying attention. You can do the same with someone when they’re tired. You know, if it’s the end of a long work night, it’s anything that’s [00:44:00] gonna be where, where the person’s not in their element.

Let’s, let’s say you’ve got a player like the greatest Australian player of all time, uh, uh, Clayton Dwyer, who’s known as, uh, custard Chuck. That was his competitive name. You know, you knew that when you saw him, it was great to see him, but you also know he was just getting off a, uh, a 20 hour flight and was not gonna be on top of his game and that his sleep schedule was gonna be kind of screwed up for the next couple of days.

So, you know, invariably a player like, uh, Clayton has a couple plans in place to counteract that, and I’m not gonna give away all of his secrets, certainly at this point, but, but yeah, for sure. You’ll, you will find that in terms of that, those low types of play. Again, they’re, they’re mostly dead ends. Uh, they’re good to know.

Just so you know, when they’re being used against you personally, I find a lot of the things like influencing players and, uh, reading their tells and knowing just general patterns. I, I view, for me, it’s been a much more profitable path. ’cause again, there’s things like the last minute switch on someone.

That’s something you’re only gonna be able to get away with once. Right. And if, if you have a certain very meek sort of player who’s not gonna challenge you on it, they’re still, they’re not gonna play you again. Mm-hmm. Whereas a lot of the strategies that I [00:45:00] use, you know, like reading auras on someone, I can keep doing that over and over again.

There’s, there’s certain patterns you can read over and over. You can keep going back to the well as many times as you want.

Zach: Yeah. You’re, you’re developing real skills, not cheap things that you can only use a couple times. Yeah,

Jason: exactly. And, uh, and a lot of the players will not respect you for using those types of throws because we, we, we like to think we’re capable of much better than that.

Zach: What about how, how much gambling goes on? I’m, I’m curious, like, you know, when you go to these competitions is, are there, is there a lot of betting before and after the competitions? Or how does that work?

Jason: Well, realizing that, uh. There are many younger players in the sport. Uh, and I, I don’t wish to, to to advocate what some may see as a questionable lifestyle.

Uh, I, you know, on one level I don’t wish to, uh, speak to potentially illegal activities at some of these events. But, but I can say instead of, um, instead of saying gambling on the outcome, I will say that, uh, many, many players have, uh, looked to me for some personal tuition, and they’ve been more than happy to pay that tuition [00:46:00] in terms of, uh, receiving some valuable lessons, uh, in, in exchange for their hard-earned money.

So what I can say though is that, um, most of the, the gambling, quote unquote, that you see is mostly gonna be amongst professionals. And when you’re playing the top other players in the sport, nobody’s really going that far up or that far low on each other. I. People are trying out their new strategy. So, you know, let’s say if I’m going up against a player like the Saint who comes in from New Jersey, I haven’t seen him in a year, he’s gonna be showing off some of his top new strategies.

He’s gonna be sort of working on the, you know, rounding off some of the, the rough edges and, and we understand that. So it, it’s not like you’re gonna be, you know, it’s, it’s not like you’re gonna be putting your, your, the real money on stakes like that with small edges especially. Yeah. Right. For sure. And, uh, part of the appeal of the lifestyle of being a rock paper scissors professional is this sort of.

Shady CD, conman, uh, con artists, I should say. Uh, you know, smoky backroom sort of environment, you know, hustling with the other hustlers, getting one over on the house, that sort of thing. Uh, you’re thinking like movies like The Sting with, uh, with Newman and Redford, all these classic old con artist st [00:47:00] things.

Mm-hmm. That’s part of the appeal of the sport for sure. Mm-hmm. So a lot of these players are trying to get over on each other. The World Rock Paper, scissors Society saw that and, you know, they didn’t want, want their tournaments to be turned into, you know, illegal casinos more or less. So they introduced what’s called Street RPS, where if you started a tournament, you would be entered into the tournament and you’d also get say, 10 street bucks, basically like Monopoly money, which you can then steal from other players, you can play with other players.

And whoever has the most of that money at the end of the night gets some, you know, gets their own street prize. Ah. Um, and there was, uh, uh, one player who had been, whose, whose name is, uh, Giannis, Y-A-N-I-S, who won the street tournament two years in a row, two years running, which is, uh, tremendous. Like I know he’s the, the best street player of all time, uh, but better street player than I am, as a matter of fact.

He’s hustling, right? Yeah. But what a lot of the things that were found, ’cause one of the big questions when you look at these events and some of these events, you know, you’d, you’d be the winner would get, you know, 10 grand, 50 grand, something like that. People would say, well, you know, why do the amateurs, why do the amateurs make it to the finals?

Instead of just, why isn’t it just the [00:48:00] people that you say are the best professionals in the world? Why aren’t the top players always in the top three or four? It’s like poker and, and yeah. And that’s, and that’s a very good que Yeah, exactly. Much like poker. And that’s a very good question. Uh, you will see some of the top players eventually win.

Like, um, Sean Sears, uh, was one of the great players who won, uh, one of the great national tournaments in the us What was happening in a lot of these large events is it, it kind of, I mentioned the Sting earlier, which is a, a great movie I would recommend for anyone interested in that sort of con artist lifestyle to see the top players realized that there was more money to be made outside the tournament than inside the tournament.

Uh, or in many cases, at the very least, it would be a sure path to a little less money. So let’s say you had a one in 128 chance at getting 10 grand. Or you had probably a 60% chance of making, we’ll call it five to eight grand on the average. Mostly people would probably go for that lower average. So you would, what you would find is players like C Urbanas from Philadelphia and you know Clayton Dwyer, who would travel from Australia to Toronto and be out in the first round.[00:49:00]

Uh, like every year. Mm-hmm. And he’s one of the top players in the world. How is that? But in the end, he was, uh, he was making all of his money on side matches at the event. He was, you know, he was playing street tournaments and he was also, you know, he’s also conducting some private seminars, shall we say, along the way.

Zach: Right. It’s a lot like the World Series of Poker and, and those kind of tournaments where, you know, a lot of the reason people poker players want to go to those things is the, you know, the cash games that go on. They’re not the tournaments. They might not even play the tournaments, but the, these, these things attract a lot of people that want to want to gamble and want to play the, the cash game.

So I’m sure it’s kind of a similar, uh, atmosphere where you could, yeah. You could get into some, you know, some, some lucrative spots without ever even entering the competition. Sure.

Jason: Absolutely. Um, you know, and, and again, a lot of these, um, events were run kind of like the big house in, in classic con artist terms, where, where all the players were kind of in on it.

And I’m not saying that these matches were fixed, you know, ’cause they certainly weren’t, uh, at all. But, you know, we’d [00:50:00] say there was the first, uh, world Championship in Toronto. Uh, master Pete Lovering, again, one of the great players of all time won that tournament. And you know, of course he did. But there’s a lot of talk where people were saying, okay, let’s let Pete win this one.

You know, like they could have stopped him, but at the same time, you know, once he started heating up, uh, he had that glow and you knew he was gonna go a long way, people had said, oh, you know what, instead of facing Pete in the finals, I’ll go out early and make up all my money on the side. And, you know, uh, the, the thing is, if you’re a good player in an event like that and you keep winning those money matches, you know, and your pockets are bulging by the end of the night, there, there’s an old expression, which is, uh, nobody wants to be the only person with money in a room full of broke crooks.

You know? So you, you don’t wanna make yourself too big of a target. In other words. Uh, you wanna be kind of like that NPR interview. You wanna be, you know, you wanna make your coin, but you wanna be just subtle enough about it that you can go back to the well and that nobody’s coming back looking for, for revenge in a, a less, you know, a less conflict free, free version than rock paper scissors.

Zach: So, uh, if you were gonna go into a [00:51:00] bar and try to, um, make money at this with someone in the bar, is there, are there like known approaches, like how do you, how do you organically, uh, get into a, a match with an amateur at a at a bar kind of scenario? Any tips for that?

Jason: Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you this, the, the, uh, at, and a lot of this may have, may have changed.

Um. And unfortunately recently with, uh, you know, a a lot of the larger rock paper scissors tournaments are gonna be on hold. You know, at the time that we’re doing this recording, there are concerns, um, uh, you know, about, uh, the, the coronavirus, uh, spreading and, you know, avoiding large gatherings of people, that sort of thing.

So you’re not gonna have these large 500 player tournaments, at least for a little while. Right now, formally I would’ve said that the best way to go into a bar and make money with rock paper scissors is to get a promotion together, approach a local beer distributor or alcohol distributor and, you know, offered to put together a string of tournaments for them for a set amount of money.

It’s always been where the most money is to be made in the sport is, is by people, by promoting, uh, people who are running events. You have people [00:52:00] like, uh, the Walker Brothers, uh, uh, Douglas and Graham, uh, who hosted the World Championships of Rock Paper Scissors. They’re both advertising guys. You know, they, they both have a long history of, uh, doing great work with promotion, great work with advertising.

And, uh, you know, they’re much better at doing that than they ever were as players. You know, I’ll tell, I’ll tell you that much. Um, you, you find that a lot, that the, the players are really horrible as promoters, and the promoters aren’t really that great as players. But in terms of just playing against someone, uh, in a bar, like just randomly meeting someone, the best thing that you can have going for you is a good reputation.

And by good reputation, I mean, you know, just to be known. For me it’s like I’m known as that guy, you know, the guy who has the rock paper scissors. So when people, you know, are introducing me, it’s like, oh, Jason is a, uh, they don’t, they don’t know me as Master Ro Ebola at this point, but they say, oh, Jason’s got a, you know, he’s, he’s a, a rock professional, rock paper, scissors player, and then nine times outta 10, the person’s like, what is it really a strategy for that?

And you start asking all the top 10 questions, almost like in a row. You know, is it really a strategy? Can you do this? Can you do that well? Well, let’s go ahead and play da, da, da, da. So a lot of what I have are, you know, I won’t go so, so far as to call [00:53:00] them, uh, managements or, or managers, but I have agents, uh, people who work for me who know these things.

Um, like in, in the, the Seattle, Washington area, uh, I have a, a, a good friend and associate who’s also named Jason, Jason Middleton, who has acted as an agent for me in any match that he sets up for me that I win, he gets 10% of those of those funds. Hmm. Um, so, and I realize that’s not, when you asked, I’m sure you’re asking for like a hands-on strategy, like, okay, what do you do as a strategy?

How do you approach this person? How do you do your reads? ’cause that’s the subject of your, uh, you know, of your podcast. But at the same time, to answer you truthfully, you know, a the best thing to do is to either be promoting, uh, a large event if you wanna make money with rock, paper, scissors, or have other people who are promoting you just enough to get your foot in the door.

Because if you, if you just randomly introduce some self to someone, it’s like, hi, my name is Jake, so and so, I’m a professional rock paper scissors player. They’re just gonna assume that you’re some kind of low life or some kind of creep, which, you know, most of the professional rock paper scissor players that I know have that at least as a part of their persona.

But, you know, you’re not gonna get your foot in the door that way. It’s, you know, to give people just enough to make them interested, [00:54:00] but not enough to push them away at first. And that’s, that’s kind of a tough line. I. To walk. Mm-hmm. But, you know, but if I, if I see someone is leaning that way to start the match, I’ll, I’ll start sizing them up.

I’ll, I’ll start, you know, looking at their physical tells. I’ll notice if they seem nervous or confident, you know, I’ll notice, uh, verbal patterns. Uh, a lot of the, one of the first things I’ll do when I’m trying to read a person is to figure out if they’re, um, more, more visual or more verbal or more tactile.

So it kind of edges into the, sort of the neurolinguistic programming approach. Like if, you know, if you’re talking and the other person says, okay, I see what you’re saying. Yeah, I can see that. It’s usually a sign that they’re more visual. So that’s a person that you want to start flashing things to, like flashing scissors or flashing rock, just outside their field of vision.

So it influences them, whereas if the person says, oh, I hear what you’re saying. Yeah, I, I hear you on that, they’re more verbal. So that person is a little more susceptible to getting influenced verbally. The longer I’ve played, the more I’ve really gone less towards reading and more towards influencing.

’cause for me it’s been a more profitable path. But a lot of it for me is I have the reputation. So pe people, people assume that I’m better at reading, so of course I’m gonna go with, uh, influencing to, you know, as the path of better [00:55:00] resistance.

Zach: I, I’ve read thoughts on that, even in, in, in poker where you, you know, just by trying to, if you, for example, like if you want someone to fold when you’re, when you’re bluffing, you know, you could kind of say something with the word fold in it and might, you know, uh, might affect somebody unconsciously or, or else, uh.

Even, you know, whispering the word fold or something like that. I’ve seen people talk about those kind of ideas, so it kinda reminded me of that.

Jason: Sure. Or you can just mouth it or say, you know, or say a word like old that rhymes with fold. Mm-hmm. Uh, and it’s still just kind of, you’re, you’re playing for very, very small edges here.

But you know, at the same time they add up. So if you’re, you know, if you get a good rock read on someone and then you say rock, and then you do a couple of other things, you know, you can start, there’s little, you know, percentage here, two or 3% there. All of a sudden, you know, you’re gonna have a 60 or 60 or so percent chance of winning a throw.

And that’s great. You know, it’s, it’s, that’s a great place to start. It’s a great place to work from. Right.

Zach: In little in, in a game of, of small edges, you’re looking for any little boosts. Absolutely. So, yeah. And speaking of, uh, [00:56:00] the coronavirus stuff, as you pointed out, um, when we were texting earlier, you said, um, rock, paper, scissors is a good game for playing remotely.

You can play it across the street or through the window, you know, it’s something to pass. Yeah, for sure. Time when you’re quarantined or something.

Jason: For sure. It’s, uh, it’s one of the, the few, uh, especially few one-on-one sports that you can play while maintaining that six foot radius, uh, or six foot distance that, that, uh, folks are suggesting these days.

And, uh, you know, a lot of those other sports are, are paddle sports like pickleball or badminton or sports where people take turns like say pool or, um, you know, bowling or things like that. You know, sure there’s gonna be that six foot distance there, but if you look at other things like one-on-one basketball or you know, that there’s a current, uh, uh, sumo tournament that’s going on in Japan, sumo wrestling or, or any other sports like that, you know, and by sport I do mean a game with a physical component.

Yeah. Rock paper, scissors is great for that because, you know, I can play rock, paper, scissors from 20 feet away from someone. I can play from someone across the street. You know, people are out of work. Uh, [00:57:00] people have a lot more time on their hands. I’m not gonna be down on the corner shooting dice on the sidewalk, uh, to get my hustle on, you know, because everybody’s handling those dice and it’s, you know, it’s not as clean of an approach.

And, and you don’t wanna be pat. Nobody wants to be the person. Passing out latex gloves at the, at the, the local corner dice game. You know, you don’t, you don’t wanna be that, you don’t wanna be that person.

Zach: And, uh, I should say too, you know, if we descend into an apocalyptic scenario, rock paper, scissors can be good for peacefully negotiating, uh, conflicts in the, in the post apocalyptic world, you know, and, uh, that kind of thing.

So it can come handy.

Jason: Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, and, and again, but a lot of it comes down to, you know, if, when you’re, we, we’ve always suggested to not use rock, paper, scissors in matters of, of life and death. There, there’s, there many times there’s other and better ways to, to go about it because, you know, otherwise the world is just gonna end up being populated with only high level rock, paper, scissors players.

And, uh, you know, as great as that sounds to me, uh, you, it may not be as good for, for diversity. For diversity, [00:58:00] uh, you know, if you, if you’d call it like that. So, so yeah, if it does come down to that scenario, uh, you have to make sure that if you’re playing a match of rock, paper, scissors against someone and they lose that they’re not just gonna.

You know, act like they won anyway and take whatever you’re, you’re arguing if it’s a ar arguing over the last supply, and if they lose, they, they, you know, they kill you. You know, something like that.

Zach: Yeah. Make it, make it close. You gotta make it look, uh, you know, best out of a, you know, 10 or something or whatever, make it, make it look like you, they almost won.

And give them a little bit of respect, like that way.

Jason: Right. And, and I think as a strategy, it would be best used if you’re trying to, if you’re dealing with, uh, a peaceful negotiation with someone who is a known quantity and with whom you are expecting to have, uh, future interactions going forward. So, you know, sort of a, a mutual, mutual reliance, uh, in other words, comes into play there.

And instead of it being sort of a, an angry thing where one person walks away the loser and is looking for revenge mm-hmm. You realize, okay, the next time I encounter them, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna be playing this game again. 10 or 20 times, uh, to, to, to settle disputes. And in the long run, it’ll, it’ll all [00:59:00] work out.

That’s, that’s what people think anyway, you know, but of course they’re not taking into account, uh, the mastery of some individuals over the sport. But

Zach: what, uh, one more question. Have you ever used your skills to throw a rock paper, scissors match for those kind of reasons? Like for the benefit of, um, something in the future?

Jason: You know, it’s, it’s so funny. It’s like your psychic. I was, uh, I was actually just getting ready to bring, uh, to bring that up as a concept. There’s a time for winning and a time for losing. And, uh, a good rock paper scissors professional will know that one of the great players of all time that I know have mentioned before, Clayton Dwyer from Australia, uh, has said that you, you have to master losing before you can master winning.

And that, that’s a deep statement. And I’ll leave that to your, to your listeners to, to meditate on that one. But sure there’s a, a time and place for everything. Uh, one of the more common things you’ll see in the world of rock paper scissors is that professionals are always happy to lose for free. Um, you know, they can do little, little fun matches every now and then.

And, uh, you know, winning a media match is good because it generates, you know, more interest in the sport. It sort of increases your aura as a player and all those things are good. You know, there’s a price on that. You have to [01:00:00] know, you know, kind of what you’re looking for. But at the same time, sure if you, if you play and, uh, win every match, all of a sudden everybody knows all your tricks.

And, and you can also look at, there’s players, uh, and I know I’ve mentioned earlier, uh, c Urbanas. Uh, out of Philadelphia has made, uh, based his whole career on what’s known as the urbanist defense, which is where you intentionally lose the first throw in a match. So if you’re playing a race to five mm-hmm.

You start off down oh one in order to work from a defensive position. And, uh, you know, I’d say that roughly, I mean, that, that’s such an influential strategy. I’d say roughly half the players, uh, in tournament play use the urbanist defense, whether they realize it or not. But sure, there, there’s a time and place to, to win and time and place to lose and, uh, mm-hmm.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Jason: You know, and again, when you’re dealing with the small edges, you have to, to, you have to go with those things. And it, it’s really hard, like, because a lot of times, uh. If you’re one of the best players in the world and you know that you can win these matches, it takes a lot of discipline to realize that, okay, it’s, it’s best for my long-term strategy.

If I lose right now, it’s hard to force yourself. It’s hard to, sometimes it’s hard to [01:01:00] force your hands to lose, you know? So it’s like even if you’re, um, you know, your brain is trying to force you into that losing position, your, your hands will still almost rebel against you. Hmm. Um, and I’m, I’m actually, you know, like looking forward more to the future of the sport, uh, just, you know, not just with the matters of winning or losing, uh, look at sort of the next level things that are going on.

Something that I’m looking into at this point. I recently read a book called, uh, other Minds about the, uh, the evolution of cephalopod consciousness. And, uh, one of the statements in the book was how, uh, octopuses have about two thirds of their neurons. In their tentacles. So about two thirds of their, their neurons aren’t even in their brain, which I found fascinating.

It allows the tentacles some degree of independent action. So, uh, one of the things that I’ve been looking into, those procedures aren’t, aren’t legal in the United States yet. Uh, I do know that there are currently some, uh, some Russian physicians that are offering that, uh, the ability to implant a neural net inside the, um, the throwing hands of, um, you know, in this case, rock, paper, scissors, athletes allowing the hands, some degree of independent [01:02:00] thought of away from the central, central mind, and a lot of what that’s gonna do.

I mean, that, that’s one way to get around to tell, but at the same time, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got my hands full facing other players, and now my, my hands are gonna be acting independently of me as well. I mean, it’ll be an interesting strategy, but, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll see how it works. And I’ll, I’ll

Zach: you, you just, you just pulling my, pulling my leg now, huh?

Jason: You know, it’s like you, you can, you can believe me or not. Okay. All I’m saying is I’m looking into,

Zach: yeah, let let the, let the audience form their own, you know, form their own opinions. Um, so yeah. I have a lot more questions for you actually. I had a whole list of questions, but, uh, and, and a lot of ’em were about thinking about the patterns people throw and mm-hmm.

And I think maybe one day in the future, you know, we’ll, we’ll have another conversation, but I think this has been really awesome so far, uh, what we got today. And, uh, again, this has been Jason Simmons, AKA Master ro Ebola. If, if there’s ways people want to get in touch with you, what’s, what’s a good way for that?

Ha

Jason: at this point, like a lot of other players in the sport, I’m keeping kind of a, [01:03:00] um, a low profile. Uh, but probably the most, um, some of the more recent work that I’ve done has been for, uh, the Moxie Games. Uh, basically they run an event called Skill Con that has everything from competitive juggling, uh, they have head, which is ping pong, that you play with your head.

There’s a version of volleyball that you can only play with your feet using kicks, speed, Rubik’s cube, solvings, basically every sort of fringe sport imaginable. Uh, and I’ve worked with them a little bit and actually I, one of the more recent ones, uh, I, uh, was involved with professional, uh, poker player Perry Friedman, who a lot of your listeners will probably be familiar with.

He and I played a couple of, uh, grudge based rock paper scissors matches. So that’s going to air on ESPN. Uh, it’s still being edited, so I’m not quite sure when the air date is, but yeah, it’s, it’s some, some truly interesting and great stuff, uh, going on in terms of, uh, fringe sports. And your, your viewers are more than happy to check out if anybody wants a private match or a spiritual, uh, you know, spiritual instruction.

They can, they can find me around if they look hard enough. Mm-hmm. I’m not, I’m not that hard to find, especially, uh, you, especially if you’re on the professional RPS scene.

Zach: Awesome. This has been very interesting. [01:04:00] Thanks, Jason. Thank you. This has been the People Who Read People Podcasts with Zach Ellwood.

To learn more about my poker tells books, check out reading poker tells.com. Thanks for listening.