"not simply a game of luck". Of course there's luck involved. There's luck involved in tennis as well. Would you consider tennis a coin flip?
I think what we want to look at is how much luck/skill percent is there. If tennis was luck overpowering skill, it wouldn't be an international sport in my opinion.
So rock paper scissors is 90% luck + 10% skill. A kid can potentially beat a professional rock player. Same is not the case for tennis.
I'd put rock paper scissors more into the poker category, but actually there's less of a luck-component in rps, because there's no drawing of random cards. You're only playing your opponent, and unless your opponent hast figured out a way to be completely random, you can "read" them if you're good enough. But that's very hard and impossible to do perfectly, so we call it luck.
Tennis is mostly a matter of the body, rps or poker are games of the mind.
Tennis would also have some part of mind games right ? The more I think about it, obviously it definitely is a matter of body excellence, but if you can always predict where your opponent going to hit, wouldn't that be a sure win (considering the players equal in matter of body)?
I don't see any "reaction time" available in RPS (considering equal in matter of body), and no way to predict the choice of the other one (as you stated) so similar to coin toss (you can't influence the choice of the opponent).
Poker also gives you some amount of time to "react" to what others did. So I am still seeing RPS heavily biased towards luck.
> I don't see any "reaction time" available in RPS (considering equal in matter of body), and no way to predict the choice of the other one (as you stated) so similar to coin toss (you can't influence the choice of the opponent).
But you do have ways to predict the choice of your opponent. You "just" need to understand how they think. If you chose rock and they chose scissors, what will they choose next? Are they the type that figures "he will choose rock again, I'm going to pick paper", or are they thinking "he will try to mix it up and pic scissors because he thinks I'm going to react to rock by using paper, I'll take rock"?
If you played against a computer that just used a perfect random number generator, I'd agree with you. But you're playing a human, and they're terrible at being random.
It would be absolutely a game of luck if you played one game against one person without knowing who they are. But since, similar to Poker, you can learn over multiple rounds, the luck quickly fades. And apparently, if you're playing the odds, many people will start with certain choices, and they don't pick each choice at the same rate. There are quite a few articles (and books) out there, and they often mention the World Rock Paper Scissors Society, which also holds international tournaments.
the entire accepted premise of a coin flip is fair probability; yoou've subverted the game otherwise and should probably start working at a carnival.
With a fair coin and enough practice, you can: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8248810/
Normally if the coin landed heads-up in your palm, it would then be tails-up on your other wrist. But with a little practice it was easy to sneak in a half-flip during that last maneuver, so heads-up in your palm would also be heads-up on your wrist.
If you did all this fast enough, the other person wouldn't notice that you got a peek at the coin as it landed in your palm, so you could decide whether to do the expected final flip or the sneaky one.
I got away with this for quite some time before anyone figured out what I was doing!
You see this sequence:
> Shadow took a quarter from his pocket, tails up. He flicked it up in the air, knocking it against his finger as it left his hand to give it a wobble that made it look as if it were turning, caught it, slapped it down on the back of his hand.
> "Call," he said.
> "Why?" asked Wednesday.
> "I don't want to work for anyone with worse luck than me. Call."
> "Heads," said Mr. Wednesday.
> "Sorry," said Shadow, revealing the coin without even bothering to glance at it. "It was tails. I rigged the toss."
> "Rigged games are the easiest ones to beat," said Wednesday, wagging a square finger at Shadow. "Take another look at the quarter."
> Shadow glanced down at it. The head was face-up.
> "I must have fumbled the toss," he said, puzzled.
> "You do yourself a disservice," said Wednesday, and he grinned. "I'm just a lucky, lucky guy."
There is a detailed analysis in 10.3 "How to cheat at coin and die tossing" of E.T. Jaynes's Probability Theory.