How To Win At Rock-Paper-Scissors: A Deep Dive Into Manual Warfare

It’s a game that dates back potentially more than two millennia – and yet, even today, people argue about how best to play it. Is it possible to guarantee a win? Can you really math your way to the top, or is it all mental? Would a human ever be able to beat a computer?

We’ve got the answers – but you may not like them. 

Tactic one: go hog wild

If keeping up with your opponent’s throws is too taxing, don’t worry: there’s an alternative strategy, and it requires literally no tactics at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“There’s an optimal strategy for winning multiple rounds of rock, paper, scissors: be as random and unpredictable as possible,” wrote Denise Moerel, Manuel Varlet, and Tijl Grootswagers, all cognitive neuroscientists at Western Sydney University, in an article for The Conversation earlier this month. 

“Don’t pay attention to what happened in the last round,” the trio advised.

They’re in a good position to know. In a paper published back in September, they and their colleagues “asked people to play 15,000 games of rock, paper, scissors while recording their brain activity,” they explained. “Our results […] found that those who were influenced by previous rounds really did tend to lose more often.”

Now, this does make a kind of sense. If you have two computers playing against each other, or even one human playing against one computer, there would theoretically be no advantage to either player – you should expect both to win one-third of the time, lose one-third of the time, and draw the final third of the time. 

Game theory backs this up. If you’re looking for the theoretical “best” way to play – what game theory calls the “Nash equilibrium” – your prescription is to choose your throws perfectly randomly, and ignore every move your opponent makes.

This “random” strategy “cannot lose” overall, wrote Daniel Jones, a lecturer in the University of Birmingham’s School of Mathematics, in a May 2025 article for The Skeptic. But be warned: that’s not a promise that you’re going to win every game – it’s a purely mathematical statement, meaning only that “over time, as you play more and more games, your ratio of win:draw:lose will stabilize at 1/3:1/3:1/3 and your victories and losses will cancel each other out,” Jones explained.

“This is a common focus of Game Theory analysis,” he added. “We accept that we cannot control short-term luck and instead turn our attention to long-term results using the law of large numbers, considering what would happen if we used this strategy over millions of games.”

Here’s the problem, though: humans are very, very bad at being random. In the Western Sydney University team’s study, most participants showed a “clear bias” for one option – and their brain data showed that they were simply unable to ignore their opponent’s moves. 

What does this mean for game strategy then? Well, you may not be able to play perfectly randomly – not unless you have a random number generator, anyway – but here’s the secret: neither can your opponent. Assuming they’re not a pro player, that means you can take some foibles for granted: “Naïve players don’t like to repeat the same throw more than twice in a row,” pointed out William Poundstone, author of How to Predict the Unpredictable: The Art of Outsmarting Almost Everyone, in 2014. “They can’t accept that as random.” 

“That means that a player who throws rock[,] rock[,] is more likely to switch to something else on the next throw,” he explained. “This is a big deal in a game that’s nominally luck.” 

Once your foe throws two identical shapes, you have your perfect move ready and waiting: just choose whatever their sign would have beaten. 

For example, “should your opponent throw rock[,] rock[,] you’d want to choose scissors on the next throw,” Poundstone explained. “Given that the opponent is unlikely to play rock again, scissors would be unbeatable. In case of paper, scissors wins; should the opponent choose scissors, it’s a tie.”

Tactic two: learn from your opponent

Now, you may have noticed that, with that two-rocks-throw-scissors move, we’ve already strayed from the “pure random” strategy. But as it turns out, that might not be such a bad thing.

The proof? A 2014 experiment by researchers at China’s Zhejiang University, which followed 360 students playing 300 rounds of the game against peers for money.

“In recording what these students did […] the scientists came up with two quite important findings of how people try to beat each other,” explained Hannah Fry, now Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, in a Numberphile video shortly after the study was published. 

“The first one is that people who win tend to repeat their strategy,” she said. “So, for example, if I beat you by playing rock, there is a very high chance […] that I will play rock again the second time. If it worked once, it’s going to work again, right?”

Conversely, a player who lost a round would be more likely to switch their choice. And, if they’re smart about it, they’ll do so by going backwards through the hierarchy of moves: “imagine that your opponent won by playing rock,” Fry explained. That means they’re more likely to play rock again – and so “you should then play paper,” she advised. 

“Another way to say it is [that] you’ve just played scissors, they’ve played rock, so play the thing that didn’t come up,” she explained.

But what about if you’re the chad who just played rock? Well, then your role is to not stick with the winning strategy. “If you’ve just won, they’re going to expect you to play the same thing again,” Fry pointed out. “Which means that they’re going to play the thing that would beat the thing that you just played.”

“So you need to play the thing that would beat that would beat the thing that you just played,” she said. Get it? Simple!

No, seriously: it’s “equivalent to saying, ‘you need to play what they just played’,” Fry said. Not so scary after all.

Tactic three: play the player, not the game

So, some experts say you should pay attention to your opponent’s moves, and others say you should do the exact opposite. Clearly, there’s no real way to combine these two tactics – so what if, instead, we did neither? 

What if, rather than rely on math or neuroscience for direction, we just straight-up psych the other guy out?

“Trash talk is allowed in most tournaments,” pointed out Poundstone – and “most good players believe in tells.” Your opponent, especially if they’re a novice, may telegraph what they’re about to throw: for example, a tucked thumb under the finger during the “pump” stage of the round “often forecasts rock,” Poundstone wrote. 

Even if you can’t read your foe’s throw from their body language, there are a few ways to edge the game in your favor. There’s a cultural bias towards throwing rock first – there’s a common belief that this reflects its status as an “aggressive” throw, and that it’s particularly favored by male players, although given that paper is thrown second-most often and scissors least often, it could be as simple as the order in which the weapons turn up in the game’s name. 

Whatever the reason, it means that if you’re playing a noob – or somebody not taken by surprise – you could gain a slight advantage by throwing paper first: “When a suitable situation arises, you say, ‘Hey, let’s do rock, paper, scissors for it!’ Without waiting for an okay, begin pumping your fist,” advised Poundstone. “The usual preference for rock is greatly enhanced when the player doesn’t have time to think.”

But if such mentalist tricks aren’t working out, you can always try taking the reins yourself. Rather than reading your opponent, you can quickly brainwash them into throwing the losing move instead – whether by subtly broadcasting it via hand movements, or by outright stating what you want them to do. Seriously.

“When playing against someone who asks you to remind them about the rules, take the opportunity to subtly ‘suggest a throw’ as you explain to them,” advised Graham Walker, co-author of The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide and five-time organizer of the World Rock Paper Scissors Championships, back in 2006. How? Easy: “by physically showing them the throw you want them to play,” he wrote – for example, by explaining it with “Paper beats Rock, Rock beats scissors (show scissors), Scissors (show scissors again) beats paper.” 

“Believe it or not, when people are not paying attention their subconscious mind will often accept your ‘suggestion’,” Walker promised. “A very similar technique is used by magicians to get someone to take a specific card from the deck.”

And while we’re simply alpha-ing our way to the top, there’s one move that really takes the mind games to the next level: just tell your opponent what you’re going to do.

“Honesty can be the most Machiavellian policy,” wrote Poundstone. “Announce what sign you’re going to throw, and then throw it.”

“Most players figure you won’t go through with it.”