I'm interested in the backstory. How do two people decide to wager such amounts of money over rock paper scissors? Like were they bored or was there some serious reason such a casual game was chosen over a serious amount of money? Clearly the loser couldn't easily afford the amount they were wagering since he had to take out debt for it, which makes it even more confusing why this seemed like a prudent decision.
500K bet on rock paper scissors ruled invalid by Quebec court
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Re: 500K bet on rock paper scissors ruled invalid by Quebec court
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jesus, you need new friends. "Weasel" is not a word you want to associate with people you should be able to trust.
If you don't have at least one "weasel" friend, you need more friends.
If you don't have any weasely friends, you just may be their weasel!
Re: 500K bet on rock paper scissors ruled invalid by Quebec court
#83I want to know more about the circumstances that led up to this. What situation results in someone saying "I'll let you $500k I can beat you at Rock, Paper, Scissors..." And actually being willing to follow through?
Re: 500K bet on rock paper scissors ruled invalid by Quebec court
#84> the game also involves a large part of chance I can't find the source right now, but I remember reading about a court case centered around whether Bridge (the card game) is gambling or not due to the influence of chance on its outcome. It was settled by holding a string of games that pitched players with varying experience against each other and the outcome was that better skilled ones _always_ prevailed. And so th…
Bridge is unfortunately rife with cheating at the highest levels. It's simply too easy to communicate information with your partner that you're not allowed to through subtle signals, and this is very hard to police except at the macro level using a statistical analysis of many games to determine if it seems like players are acting on more information than they should have. The only way to play Bridge without cheating…
I guess bridge is a game where having a poker face is a disadvantage.
Re: 500K bet on rock paper scissors ruled invalid by Quebec court
#85> In the 2017 judgment, Superior Court Justice Chantal Chatelain found that rock paper scissors is not simply a game of luck. > the sense of observation or the putting in place of a strategic sequence The court can ask him to defeat 10 other people in that game consistently to prove that ? But then he could argue the others were also skilled ?
Re: 500K bet on rock paper scissors ruled invalid by Quebec court
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just watched that video. Fascinating. Of course it means if the other person is playing the strategy, then you want to play the strategy to beat that strategy, which is just as simple. But if they realise you are doing that they might switch to the one that beats the one that beats the one. I guess it gets a bit like poker where you are trying to appear "loose" then suddenly play tight or whatever. I was wondering…
> Of course it means if the other person is playing the strategy, then you want to play the strategy to beat that strategy, which is just as simple. But if they realise you are doing that they might switch to the one that beats the one that beats the one. Reminds me of Iocaine Powder: https://web.archive.org/web/20100131080653/http://ofb.net/~e...
My favorite entry in that competition was Fork Bot.
The contestants were written in C, you see, and all rounds of play executed in the same process. Obviously there's all kinds of ways you could cheat in this environment but Fork Bot struck me as especially clever.
Fork Bot, on its turn, would fork() twice and return a different move in each of the three resulting processes. On its next turn, it would look back to the previous turn and see if it won. If not, it would exit(). So only the process where it won every round would survive...
Though, it ran into a problem with one of the other cheaters: "Unfortunately, since all three moves lost to the Psychic Friends Network after the first turn, the program exited and the remainder of that match was declared forfeited."
Re: 500K bet on rock paper scissors ruled invalid by Quebec court
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fwiw when playing my wife at rock paper scissors I once won over 20 times in a row. The odds against this happening randomly are pretty extreme - but I know her very well and can read her well enough that it was possible. I think it's fair enough to say that there might be a psychological element there that could pull the game out of straight random chance.
Maybe she sensed that you would tend to be a better provider if you were a little more confident and let you win.
How do you let someone won a game of chance?
Re: 500K bet on rock paper scissors ruled invalid by Quebec court
#88>The court also upheld the lower court's conclusion that the $517,000 wager was excessive. Quebec courts are not arguing that Rock Paper Scissors is not a game of skill. They only ruled that the bet was "excessive" which is against the law. IANAL, but betting half a million dollars on three hand gestures qualifies as excessive imho. I am thoroughly impressed that the loser actually made good on their commitment thoug…
> I am thoroughly impressed that the loser actually made good on their commitment though and took out the mortgage on his house!
Well he didn't commit to it because he went to court to get out of it.
Re: 500K bet on rock paper scissors ruled invalid by Quebec court
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is no one talking about the true jerk in this situation? The guy legally forcing the other to mortgage his house in order to give him $500k — because of rock, paper, scissors...
Well, we do not know what would happen if the situation were opposite. They both entered into the agreement, presumably seriously. It seems like just playing the game qualifies both sides as jerks.
If the roles were reversed, I would have a similar criticism of the other guy. Clearly, the loser didn’t want to pay because he contested it in court — and the victor could have forgiven the debt.
I wouldn’t even make my friend pay me back for lunch if they forgot their wallet — let alone put them through financial hardship for such a trivial, low-effort event as a game of RPS.
Re: 500K bet on rock paper scissors ruled invalid by Quebec court
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love playing cards, but poker is just... not as much fun because there's too much luck involved compared to, say, Rummy-type games (like my biased favorite, the Brazilian Buraco: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buraco )
Burraco (that's how's called here) is fairly popular in Italy as well. My family has been playing it for generations and has been a staple of family reunions.
My family has a lot of long-lost Italian influence (my father is called Mario, same as 5 other relatives including great-grandfather, uncles and cousins...) so I'm not surprised it's popular there! My family actually called it Biriba, which I learned is the name of the Greek variant, though our rules were closer to Buraco...
Now I wonder what your family rules are! A lot of people restrict the types of runs you can play (like only allowing grouped runs with for face cards and aces, or banning groups altogether), but my grandpa was a beast at the game so we played with pretty open rules which actually made the game more aggressive – i.e. wait too much to act and you'll fall behind, but play too open early on and you give away your strategy.