[jerf]

My wife and I play RPS to determine who does things like change a diaper when we're out and about and stuff. We tie a lot. Far, far more than chance would dictate. We can tie for 10 in a row, quite easily, and before you jump up about how this can happen by chance, we tie in sequences a lot, not just 1/3^10 times. We're trying to second guess each other.

Since humans are bad at random, "just play randomly" doesn't really work; humans don't have access to "random" to play that way. So you often do get into the sorts of strategies you mention, to compensate for this.

Besides, it's more fun this way.

[bradleysmith]

I played for years with a close friend in high school to decide who was driving or whatever, or just pass time. The better we knew each other (ie the longer we were playing) the more ties.

I believe there's a natural intuition for reading the expected movements of the other player, and have seen this reproduced (if anecdotally by only testing between myself and her, and not recording results) hundreds of times. Like you, 10-12 streaks of ties were not uncommon, certainly less common than statistics would seem to dictate.

somewhat relevant, there's a competitive league: http://www.usarps.com/

I always wanted to see it in vegas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htX4T20t6lU

EDIT: clarity