Rock paper scissors: the rules, the variants and the history
Rules · · 4 min read
Almost everyone learns rock paper scissors as a child, usually without anyone writing the rules down. They are short, but there is more to them than three hand signs: how you count in, what happens on a draw, how many rounds make a match, and a few variants that change the numbers.
Here is the whole game in one place, along with where it came from and a couple of times it was used to settle something that mattered.
The basic rules
Two players face each other and count in together — in English usually “rock, paper, scissors, shoot”. On the last word each shows one of three hand signs, both at the same moment:
- Rock, a closed fist. It beats scissors, because it blunts them.
- Paper, a flat open hand. It beats rock, because it wraps it.
- Scissors, the index and middle fingers held out in a V. They beat paper, because they cut it.
Draws, and why no sign is best
If both players show the same sign, the round is a draw and is simply played again.
Each sign beats exactly one other and loses to exactly one other, so the three go round in a circle. No sign is stronger than the rest, which is what makes the game fair — and why the only real edge comes from reading the other person. Our guide on how to win at rock paper scissors looks at what the research says about that.
The signs have to come out together. Showing late, or changing your hand after seeing the other one, is the one real way to cheat, which is what the count-in is for.
How many rounds make a match
A single throw is fine for deciding who goes first. For anything more, players usually agree on a match, and draws never count towards it:
- Best of three: the first to win two rounds takes it.
- Best of five, or first to three, for a little more certainty.
- First to five, which is how online matches of Classic RPS are played — long enough for habits to show and for skill to matter.
What it is called around the world
The game is played almost everywhere, under many names and count-ins. A few of them:
- Japan: janken, counted in with “jan, ken, pon”.
- Korea: gawi bawi bo — scissors, rock, cloth.
- France: pierre-feuille-ciseaux, or chifoumi.
- Germany: Schere, Stein, Papier — scissors first.
- Parts of the United States: roshambo.
Where it came from
Hand games decided by a circle of signs are old. Around 1600 the Chinese writer Xie Zhaozhi described one and traced it back to the Han dynasty, some two thousand years earlier. Those early games did not necessarily use a rock, a sheet of paper and a pair of scissors.
Japan had several games of the kind — one, mushi-ken, used a frog, a slug and a snake — and the version with rock, paper and scissors, janken, took shape there in the nineteenth century. From Japan it spread to Europe and America during the twentieth century.
When it settled something real
In 2005 a Japanese electronics company, Maspro Denkoh, could not choose between Christie’s and Sotheby’s to sell its collection of Impressionist paintings, and asked the two auction houses to play rock paper scissors for it. Christie’s chose scissors, reportedly on the advice of a director’s eleven-year-old daughters, who reasoned that everyone expects rock. Sotheby’s chose paper. Christie’s got the sale.
A year later a federal judge in Florida, tired of two law firms arguing over where to hold a deposition, ordered their lawyers to settle it with a game of rock paper scissors.
Variants with more signs
The best-known variant adds two signs: rock paper scissors lizard Spock, created by Sam Kass and Karen Bryla and made famous by the television series The Big Bang Theory. Lizard is a hand shaped like a mouth; Spock is the Vulcan salute from Star Trek.
With five signs, each beats two and loses to two, so the game stays balanced while draws get rarer — two players show the same sign one time in five instead of one in three. The same trick works with any odd number of signs: arrange them in a circle and let each beat the half that follows it.
- Rock crushes scissors and crushes lizard.
- Paper covers rock and disproves Spock.
- Scissors cut paper and decapitate lizard.
- Lizard poisons Spock and eats paper.
- Spock smashes scissors and vaporizes rock.
Rock paper scissors on a board
RPS Board takes the three signs off your hand and puts them on pieces: fourteen a side, hidden from your opponent, fighting their way across a seven-by-six board. Every capture is decided by the same circle — and when two identical pieces meet, both players secretly pick a sign to break the tie.