The Big Throwdown

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In spring 2006, I attend my first competitive RPS event--the Chicago regional finals of the new Bud Light?sponsored USARPS League. Regional winners will receive a free trip to Vegas to compete for $50,000 and the chance to be crowned league champion. While I am waiting for my first match at Duffy's bar, I order a Guinness, flip through my dog-eared copy of the RPS strategy guide, and memorize a few gambits, defined as 'three prescripted throws made with strategic intention.'

Standing across from my first-ever competitive RPS opponent, I'm strangely nervous. My palms are dripping. The event is low-key--most bar patrons are more interested in the American Idol premiere on the television than in an RPS showdown--but along with 30 or so people in the corner of the bar, I'm sucked into the pure energy of the moment. Ready, set, 'ro-sham-bo.'

I begin with a gambit called 'the crescendo,' a classy series that builds from paper to scissors to rock. My opponent, a cocky financial trader in his mid-20s, is left reeling, so in the next set, after a few scissors ties, I finish him with 'the denouement,' a mind-blowing cooldown of rock-scissors-paper (and the crescendo's mirror image), earning myself a commemorative Bud Light RPS hand towel and a trip to the next round.

Round two, feeling confident and somewhat enlightened, I add a little glitz to my game. I perform elaborate arm stretches before the match. After we begin, I repeatedly call for time and slow-ly wipe my brow with my new commemorative hand towel. But soon I'm on the ropes. I never do catch her name, but she's wearing all black and doesn't blink once.

Her eyes lock on mine like a laser beam and I can feel her setting up camp inside my skull. Suddenly I'm making throws without any plan: no gambits, no instinct . . . rock, then paper, then rock again. I can still recall the steely aftertaste of her triumphant series: paper, followed by scissors, followed by another paper . . . the goddamn scissors sandwich.

At the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas three weeks later, the poolside crowd is dominated by backward-baseball-hat-wearing twentysomething white males, all treated to a weekend's worth of partying thanks to their friends at Anheuser-Busch. But a closer examination reveals a demographic divergence from this beer marketer's wet dream: There's a smattering of fiftyish guys in khakis on the periphery, looking slightly confused, like maybe they're at the wrong trade show mixer. I chat with Mike, an insurance salesman from St. Louis. He says his wife still doesn't believe he really won a trip to Vegas for playing RPS, even after he showed her the official winner's voucher.

Plenty of young women are here too--some girlfriends, many champions in their own right. It appears that a few winners brought their parents. In less than 36 hours, this mass of humanity will reconvene at the House of Blues in the adjoining Mandalay Bay Hotel Casino, where they will glue giant plastic scissors to their heads, dress in ridiculous costumes to resemble Vikings or oversize ketchup and mustard bottles, and compete for RPS glory.

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