The Iocaine Powder Strategy in RoShamBo | Hacker News Reader

The Iocaine Powder Strategy in RoShamBo

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There was an amusing comment related to this over on the Metafilter thread on this earlier today which included this impressive detail:

Naturally, we did what any self-respecting half-in-the-bag Americans would do upon meeting so-called champions of the rock-paper-scissors arena on the streets of a foreign nation, and challenged them to a duel on the spot. We proceeded to go a spectacular 0-24 against our fellow countrymen, before realizing that maybe there's more to the metagame than we had previously considered.

https://www.metafilter.com/181225/Iocaine-Powder#7714208

Any competitive RoShamBo players here willing to share their metagame strategies?

>Any competitive RoShamBo players here willing to share their metagame strategies?

Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

I came here to say this

Ha Ha! You fool, you fell victim to one of the classic blunders...

i always pick the same 2x or 3x. this lets my young daughter win a lot.

An excuse to post my favorite RoShamBo scene ever: https://vimeo.com/210145683 , from the show Patriot. (There's a lot of context that's missing but it's hopeless for me to try to explain it. I highly recommend the show.)

That is great, I wonder if they memorised the sequence, had notes out of shot, were signalling to each other on the side away from the camera, or just did a lot of takes.

This also gives me an excuse to post Lasse Gjertson's excellent short animation, 'Roshambo' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGzdzRFftBc

Just guessing, but the scene is really well set-up for cues to be given from directly in front of the relevant actor.

I guess this shows my ignorance, I had no idea rock paper scissors was called this. I only knew of the South Park version http://southpark.cc.com/clips/103724/rochambeau

I was trying to think how iocaine powder would help in this scenario when I clicked in. Shows how our vernacular was shaped a bit though.

For an interesting roshambo variant take a look at: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/animal_world_2018 or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiji_(manga)

I understand this meta-strategy on an intellectual level, but I'd find it easier to fully understand with a concrete example or an interactive example. It mentions that this meta-strategy only works if your opponent's strategy is consistent. I'd like an interactive version to play with to show that. Also, I'm curious how this strategy fairs against itself.

The only winning move is not to play. ;-)

Aren't all strategies, except perfect randomization, consistent?

I suspect the answer is "yes, but not in the sense of this meta-strategy".

Kudos to the submitter. It got me to watch WarGames again. (Even though tic-tac-toe is the metaphor used in the movie, not rock-paper-scissors.)

Perhaps the title should include (2016) as that is when this archive snapshot is from. It's unclear when the page was originally created.

A cursory Google search for the title of the paper points to around 2000

Ok, but what if your opponent also uses the Iocane Powder Strategy? Just the assumption they can puts you back at square one.

"You are using the Iocane Powder Stragety against me."

"I found it appropriate considering the terrain."

The actual contest sounds really fun, does anyone know where can I find more of this "competitive" programming?

Another one I know of is Core War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War

    > History matching: This is easily the strongest predictor in Iocaine Powder's arsenal,
    > In fact, it looks for the longest match to recent history; a repeat of the 
    > last 30 moves is considered better than just the last 3 moves.

So LZW is a way to win at roshambo.

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