This from Yahoo.
“While they previously had devised a theoretical answer to
the question, an experiment by Zhijian Wang at Zhejiang University in China that
used real players has revealed an interesting wrinkle to the original theory.
“In the experiment, Zhijian noticed that winning players
tended to stick with their winning strategy, while losers tended to switch to
the next strategy in the sequence of rock-paper-scissors, following what he
calls ‘persistent cyclic flows.’
“Here's how it works in practice: Player A and Player B both
start by using random strategies. If Player A uses rock and Player B uses
paper, Player A loses. In the next round, Player A can assume that Player B
will use paper again and should therefore use scissors to win. In the round
after that, because Player B lost, Player A can assume that Player B will use
the next strategy in the sequence — scissors — and Player A should then use
rock, thus winning again.
“If you take the game on a theoretical level, the most
mathematically sound way to play rock-paper-scissors is by choosing your
strategy at random. Because there are three outcomes — a win, a loss, or a tie
— and each strategy has one other strategy that it can beat and one other
strategy that can beat it, and we don't care what strategy we win with, it
makes the most sense to pick paper, rock, and scissors each one-third of
the time. This is called the game's Nash Equilibrium.
“While the Nash Equilibrium should be the best strategy in
real life, Zhijian found a decidedly different pattern when he and some other
researchers recruited 72 students to play the game. They divided the pupils
into 12 groups of six players and had them each play 300 rounds of
rock-paper-scissors against each other. Zhijian also added a payout in
proportion to the number of victories.”
Read more here.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/beat-anyone-rock-paper-scissors-002424689.html
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