Posted BySimpson on March 08, 2001 at 17:02:37:
Travelling Matt has been fooled. 'Spoof' isn't a drinking version of RPS, but a different game altogether albeit with some of the same psychological characteristics. Spoof works as follows...
There are any number of players (though it gets a little unwieldy above 5). Each player gets three coins. In each round, every player secretly places (e.g., under the table or behind his/her back) any number, including zero, of those coins in his/her spoofing hand. All players then raise their clenched spoofing hands to signify that they've made their decisions. Then, the players take it in turns to 'guess' how many coins they are collectively all holding e.g., if there are 3 players, the maximum collective total is 9 and the minimum is zero. No one can guess, or 'call' the same number as anyone who has called before him/her. So there's some advantage in calling early on (though to begin with you don't want to be first, since the first couple of callers reveal the most about their own hands). The first caller of the first round of the game is arbitrarily chosen, but players then call in clockwise succession (anti-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere or Hampshire).
Anyone who estimates correctly 'wins' and drops out. Successive rounds are played until there's only one person left who is the loser and must perform some forfeit, drinking penalty or whatever. In each of the successive rounds, the duty of first caller rotates clockwise (or anti-clockwise as above).
Of course, it's plain to see that as the number of players remaining dwindles, the more advantageous it can become for the experienced spoofer to call first. The skilled initial caller can bluff rookie opponents who most likely are likely to be employing the standard linear-interpolation calling algorithm. E.g., in the two player case...
Spoofman holds 0 but calls an unachievable 4;
Layman, himself holding 1, assumes that Spoofman is holding half of his call so his own call is 3;
Spoofman smiles;
Layman crumbles;
Spoofman cleans up. A school-boy error.
Some of the old and loved RPS strategies work relatively well e.g., the 'money-bags' or 'pauper' opening gambits (analogous to avalanche/toolbox etc). And the concealed throw, which in the spoof context might be, for instance, the 'wishing-well', which involves putting an elicit fourth coin into the spoofing hand and allowing it to 'accidentally' drop out of the hand. Cheap but cheerful.
But I've yet to find a spoof gambit analogous to the ole scissor sandwich, which remains easily my most successful RPS opener - along with it's sister gambit, the steel quarter-pounder (P,S,S,P) as exercised with much aplomb by the winner of last year's UK Home Counties pro-am handicap charity shield, Chunky Singh. Any offers?