Roshambo World Championships
The Roshambo World Championship
by Perry Friedman (with assistance from Imachi Tentau El-Hed)
The 2001 Roshambo World Championship was held last August at BARGE (an
annual Las Vegas gathering of participants in the rec.gambling.poker
Usenet group.) If you think you aren't familiar with Roshambo,
think again - it's just another name for the "simple" children's game of
"Rock-Paper-Scissors"
"They have a world championship for that?" you might ask.
The RWC, held in Vegas or Tahoe each year for the past 8 years,
doesn't have a large following yet, but with the seriousness the
participants in the 2001 RWC showed, you may be hearing more about
this event in years to come. For comparison, there is a large
Roshambo following in Pacific-rim nations, where Roshambo tournaments
are broadcast nationally and substantial prizes (including
endorsements) are awarded.
For Roshambo experts, Roshambo isn't just a "handy" dispute settling
tool; it's a game of outwitting your opponent by reading your opponent
and manipulating them into making mistakes. Sounds a little like
poker, doesn't it? Like poker, Roshambo is often perceived by the
unacquainted to be merely a game of luck. And like poker, nay-sayers
may realize otherwise when they've played a "professional" in a
race-to-ten match.
The fact is, a human being is a poor random-number generator, and when
playing rock-scissors-paper, the average player will try to compensate
and adjust to previous outcomes. (For example, if you've just lost
three throws in a row by choosing "rock", what are the chances you'll
select rock a fourth time?) The experienced "roshamboist" will take
advantage of tendencies and adjustments, much like picking up a tell
on another player at a poker table.
It's no accident that a relatively small group of players show up at
the final tables of major poker tournaments year after year.
Likewise, a group of about a dozen poker players known as the
"Tiltboys" keep showing up in the winner's circle at the RWC year
after year - a Tiltboy has won the RWC each year since the
tournament's inception eight years ago. At the fourth Championship,
they all turned up wearing T-shirts with the bold challenge, "IN YOUR
HEAD" splashed across the front.
Granted, the Tiltboys seem to take this game perhaps a bit too
seriously. They claim to have gambled thousands on Roshambo matches,
at stakes far exceeding their weekly home poker game. At one point,
they even (facetiously?) founded the Religion of Roshambo on the
Internet (see http://www.emf.net/~estephen/roshambo/.) But you can't
argue with their results.
Among the non-Tiltboy entrants that shelled out a C-note to enter the
$100 buy-in winner-take-all 2001 RWC were Phil Hellmuth, Paul
Phillips, Jeff Shulman and Patti Beadles. Hellmuth was overheard
saying, "If there's a World Championship of anything at stake, count
me in." The RWC is single-elimination, one-on-one matches, race to
ten. By a quirk of the draw, the quarterfinals featured four Tiltboys
against four non-Tiltboys.
Roshambo tournaments are rife with verbal sparring, psychological
one-upmanship and manipulating opponents into tells. Former World
Champion Phil Hellmuth, Jr. is generally right at home in such an
environment, but met his match in one quarterfinal against Tiltboy
Perry Friedman.
Hellmuth strode forth confidently to center ring, his 6-foot-6 inches
towering a good foot above Friedman. He assumed his usual table
demeanor, threatening to "look into Perry's soul" as he often does
with his poker tournament opponents. After a few early ties when both
players threw rock, Friedman switched to scissors to beat Hellmuth's
paper. Friedman disdainfully exclaimed "rock, rock, paper?!" in a
manner that clearly suggested it was an amateurish maneuver. For the
remainder of the match, Friedman would outtalk and out-throw Hellmuth,
until, leading 9-6, he proclaimed (in his best Scotty Nguyen
impersonation): "If you go rock, it all ova baby!" Hellmuth couldn't
resist the challenge, threw a rock and lost to Friedman's paper,
sending the smirking Friedman to the semifinals. Perry smiled and
confessed to the audience that he actually had no soul.
For fans of the RWC, the outcome of the quarterfinal matches was
predictable - the other three Tiltboy entrants also disposed of their
non-Tiltboy foes, and suddenly it was a Tiltboy-only tournament.
Friedman proceeded to chatter his way through the semifinals, ousting
Josh Paley with a score of 10-7. Meanwhile, Lennie Augustine quietly
defeated Bruce Hayek, and marched resolutely into the finals with the
still smirking Friedman.
In the finals, it seemed that Friedman's bluster would carry the day,
as he quickly jumped to a 7-4 lead over Augustine. But a collective
hush fell over the audience of spectators, as Augustine successfully
employed a risky "scissors gambit" (going scissors several times
consecutively) to tie Friedman at 7 apiece. At this point the
loquacious Friedman glanced around, commenting how quiet things were
when he wasn't talking. A fan yelled back, "we never had a chance to
notice before!" Friedman proceeded to take the next two throws for a
9-7 lead and triple match point. Augustine came firing right back to
crawl within one at 9-8 before Friedman finally put him away 10-8 for
the victory and the title of World Champion. The crowd rushed the
stage to congratulate him, and local cameraman Rudy Tatay videotaped
the moment for posterity.
If all this high-stakes wagering on Roshambo seems a bit ridiculous,
consider this: how many times have you found yourself facing a
daunting bet on the river and asking yourself, "is he bluffing, or
isn't he?" That question is not really so different from, "is he
going to throw paper again, or will he switch to rock?" And just
possibly, if you'd had to answer that second question a few times, you
might possess the insight to get "into his head" and make the correct
read of your opponent at the table.
For information about the 2002 Roshambo World Championship, you can
contact the Tiltboys at their website, www.tiltboys.com.
(Incidentally, Friedman recently added a second Championship to his
resume, when he took down first place in the 2002 World Series of
Poker $1500 Omaha/8 event, winning the $176,000 first place prize. He
asserts that his Roshambo reading skills were invaluable against Phil
Ivey, Dan Heimiller and the other final table opponents he faced.
Indeed, Friedman proudly sported his "IN YOUR HEAD" Roshambo T-shirt
at the final table. When asked which Championship he prized more,
Perry demurely avoided a direct answer, but stated that "a gold
bracelet is nice, but the random break of the cards introduce a bit
more chance into the equation, so it doesn't seem as pure as
Roshambo.")
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