The age old “random”decider of all things: the Ching-Chong-Cha! The also affectionately called Rock-Paper-Scissors has been baffling scientists for years and just when they thought they had finally cracked the “complex” code of this game of chance, someone has come along and told them they were wrong, it actually works in a far more complex way. For those of you wandering how to beat this tricky evil-master of a game and be the winner of all disputes for ALL eternity listen closely:

A new experiment by Zhijian Wang at Zhejiang University in China that used real players, has revealed an interesting wrinkle to the original theory. In the experiment, Zhijian noticed that winning players tended  to stick with their winning strategy, while losers tended to switch to the next strategy in the sequence of rock-paper-scissors, following, what he calls, “persistent cyclic flows.” (Business Insider)

What this means for us laymen is that they have found that the loser of the first round will move on to the next option in the Rock-Parper-Scissors artillery and that the winner can keep winning by knowing this and predicting the next move of the loser. This is fantastic if you are the winner. Especially if you are winning something monetary out of it.  All they have really managed to show is that winners can keep winning and losers are a lost cause. Thanks Zhijan, way to build us up! So pretty much it’s down to chance. Useful and totally surprising, I know!

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[Source] Business Insider