Rock paper scissors
One outcome in 3
Drawn in your browser · nothing stored
Press the button and get rock, paper or scissors, each exactly a third of the time. Use it to settle something, or to practise against an opponent with no habits to exploit.
How to use it
Throwing at random is not a lazy strategy; it is the solution to the game. Rock paper scissors has exactly one Nash equilibrium, and it is throwing each of the three a third of the time. Any deviation from that mix is exploitable by an opponent who spots it, and against an opponent who does not deviate, nothing you do changes your expectation: a third win, a third lose, a third draw, whatever you pick. So a uniform random throw cannot be beaten, and it cannot beat anyone either. It is the fair way to settle something rather than a way to win.
Why humans are beatable and this is not
People cannot generate that mix. In a laboratory study of the repeated game, Wang, Xu and Zhou found that play does not settle into the equilibrium at all: it circles it. Their players showed a conditional response pattern, repeating an action after a win and switching in a systematic direction after a loss, which produced persistent population-level cycles that the equilibrium prediction does not allow for. Competitive play is built on exactly that: not on guessing, but on the fact that a person under time pressure produces sequences with structure in them.
This page has none of that structure. There is no record of your last throw, no adaptation, and nothing to read in the timing, because the throw is drawn at the end of the pause rather than during it. That makes it useless for practising against a real opponent and ideal for the thing most people actually want, which is a neutral third party.
What people use it for
- Settling who goes first when nobody has a coin
- Playing against someone at the other end of a video call
- Practising against a throw with no habits to read
- Running a best of five in one press
- Demonstrating why the equilibrium strategy is a third each
Questions
Not reliably. Against a uniform random throw every strategy wins exactly a third of the time, so there is nothing to learn.
No. Every throw is independent, which is what makes it unexploitable.
A third each of win, lose and draw, regardless of what you pick.
It is the game’s only Nash equilibrium, so yes against a strong opponent. Against a weak one you can do better by reading them, which is what tournament play is.
Because human throws are not random. Repeating after a win and switching after a loss are measurable tendencies, and they show up even in players who believe they are choosing freely.
Yes. Set the count to three and get all three throws at once. Each is drawn independently, so two of a kind in three is ordinary.
No. The pause is animation and the draw happens at the end of it, so nothing about when you press or how long you wait affects the result.