How To Play Rock-Paper-Scissors
by L Wiles - 2008-08-01
Rock-Paper-Scissors is a simple and easy game played by creating symbols with your hands. This is a great travel game and is often used as a way to pick a player to be IT for other games.
What You Need To Play Rock-Paper-Scissors
- Two or more players with the ability to form shapes with at least one hand each
- Paper and pencil (or other writing tool) - Optional
Rules For Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors
The basic rules to Rock-Paper-Scissors are simple. To start all players make a fist and and count "one, two, three" (usually you move your fist up and down to the rhythm of your counting). On "three" each player makes a symbol with their hand, choosing from one of three symbols – rock, paper or scissors. The symbol for a rock is a closed fist. The symbol for paper is an open, flat hand, palm up. The symbol for scissors is two fingers (index and middle) parted in the shape of a “V”.
Rock Hand
Paper Hand
Scissor Hand
Rock smashes scissors, scissors cut paper and paper wraps around rock. So if player 1 chooses paper, and player 2 choose rock, then player 1 wins that round of Rock-Paper-Scissors. If you are playing with more than two players there can be multiple winners in each round and in fact one player can both lose and win a round.
Optional Rules For Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors
Usually Rock-Paper-Scissors is played mainly to pass time, but if you like having a clear winner of a game you can easily keep track of your scores. On a plain piece of paper simply mark one tally for every win a player gets. Decide ahead of time how many rounds you will play and at the end of those rounds whoever has the most points wins. If you have a tie, you can decide the winner by doing one more round of Rock-Paper-Scissors with just the tied players.
Rock-Paper-Scissors as a Way of Choosing IT
Rock-Paper-Scissors is often used to pick IT for many other games. If you have just two players then it's pretty straight forward, but there are several ways to use Rock-Paper-Scissors as a way of picking an “IT” when you have multiple players.
- You can use a scoring system (see Optional Rules For Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors) and have the player with either the highest or lowest points be “IT”
- The first Rock-Paper-Scissors player who does not have at least one “win” is “IT”
- The first Rock-Paper-Scissors player who does not have at least one “win” is eliminated until only one player remains and they are “IT”