Some might question the wisdom of my going from zero competition experience straight to the World Rock Paper Scissors Championships. However, I’d devised a strategy which I felt gave me a solid, underdog fighting chance at the $10,000 purse.

The strategy was two-pronged: the first part being, simply, that my initial throw in any given game would always be rock. This was based on the supposition that any opponent’s least likely initial throw was paper.
Secondly, I would look into my opponent’s eyes, peering into his soul, ascertaining the core of his character, which would reveal to me the throw he was most likely to make, and I would respond with the prevailing option. If I saw scissors in his heart, I would crush it with rock, etc. It was not lost on me that this was a subjective strategy, but I felt confident that I would see accurately into the soul of my opponent approximately thirty-three percent of the time, see cloudily thirty-three percent of the time, and get lucky thirty-three percent of the time, which left me a solid two-thirds win strategy. Most importantly, I thought, was to eliminate randomness by just having a strategy of my own, not one culled from Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide, which I refused to read.
It’s a supposition I’ve always carried with me, that by refusing to understand the strategy of any given game, I should be able to subvert the strategy of those who are trained to play against strategies similar to their own. This to a large degree explains my miserable history with most sports and games, poker being one of a few exceptions. My friend Mike is a killer, has the card player’s memory and dexterity to play on any high-dollar table, but every time we throw down, I clean him out simply because I don’t know how to play. Involuntarily, I bet on crap and then hesitate on straight flushes I don’t even know that I have. My strategy in poker, as opposed to my RPS strategy, is to have no strategy, which should work for any game of chance.
But once in line at the RPS Championships at the Steamwhistle brewery in downtown Toronto, I started to get nervous. This guy behind me kept saying things like, “Dude, I am going to drop a ton of alternating gambits tonight.” On one hand it was exactly what I wanted to hear. The principle of any gambit is that you give up something small to get something bigger. Such a technique could not work on someone who could not perceive what his opponent had given up. On the other hand, the guy who said this was wearing an Afro wig and had a twelve-inch dildo dangling from the crotch of his jeans.
Nearly everyone—all 514 competitors—was attired in suede overalls or psychedelic hippie wear or a cowboy hat or a Captain Hook ensemble or a stick-on Hitler mustache. And then there were all the teams: The Scarlet Begonias, The Glory Holes, The We Will Rock You’s.
While I waited for my wave, I watched a woman from What Would Jesus Throw who was extremely drunk, and I wished she was my opponent. She was making dough eyes, trying to psyche out her opponent. She was a cinch to read. The big, blank sclera gave her away as paper. I knew she’d over rely on it, and she did, but she also couldn’t seem to get it right, firing off vertical paper after vertical paper after vertical paper, in violation of tournament guidelines, which clearly state that a paper throw must be horizontal. She was disqualified.
As she sheepishly stumbled away, I whispered, “Jesus definitely wouldn’t throw a vertical paper.”
Then my wave came along, “Eye of the Tiger” crooned from the amplifier behind me. My opponent stood about my height and had no costume, no team, which relaxed me. Then the ref said go, and my opponent’s gaze immediately fell to my hand.

This floored me. When my dad taught me to shake hands he ordered me to always look into the person’s eyes. My wife has a theory that if you don’t look into your partner’s eyes when you toast you will have seven years of bad sex. This asshole never once looked up, and somehow, he glimpsed what I was to throw just before I threw it.

The initial rock part of my strategy gave me the advantage in all three of our games, but after that, left only to my guesses, I was rudderless.

In the middle of the match I heard someone imploring me to “Bear down, buddy. Bear down.” I looked over and it was Andrew Bergen, the 2005 World Champ, in a white and red robe and crown, an entourage behind him toting his championship belt.
I tried to follow Bergen’s advice, to bear down, but I had no idea what that meant.
I had no insight into my opponent’s soul. I didn’t know if his strategy was in the Guide or not, but it did the trick by nullifying my own pitiable idea. Perhaps next year, I’ll read it, or maybe RPS is just another game I suck at.

Jeff Parker is the author of the novel Ovenman (Tin House Books) and The Back of the Line, a story/visual art collaboration with artist William Powhida. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Hobart, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Walrus, and other pubs. He teaches at the University of Toronto and is the Russia Program Director of Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg