Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

Five throws instead of three. Each one beats two others and loses to two others, which cuts the odds of a tie from one in three to one in five. Free, no sign-up.

The ten rules

Each throw beats exactly two others. That is the whole system:

Read it as a ring: rock, paper, scissors keeps working exactly as you know it, and the two new throws slot in so that every throw has two wins and two losses. Nothing is stronger than anything else.

Where it came from

The five-throw version was devised by Sam Kass with Karen Bryla, and reached a wide audience through the sitcom The Big Bang Theory, which is where most people first hear the sequence recited.

Does adding throws make it more skillful?

Only a little, and not in the way people expect. Five throws cut the tie rate from 33% to 20%, so more rounds are decisive. But the game is still symmetric: if both players threw at random, each would win 40% and tie 20%, forever. Every real edge still comes from the same place — your opponent failing to be random.

In practice the extra throws help you in one specific way. Most people who learn this version reach for lizard and spock more often than chance at first, because they are the novel ones. If you notice that, rock covers both scissors and lizard, and paper covers both rock and spock.

The habits that decide ordinary rock paper scissors — repeating after a win, switching after a loss — apply here unchanged, and are easier to exploit because there are more ways to be predictable.

A version where the throws are only the start

Adding throws widens the table. Rock Paper Scissors War widens the decision instead: you get a hand of rock, paper and scissors cards and split them across three fronts at once. You see how many cards your opponent committed to each front, never which ones. Take two of the three fronts and you win.